By a narrow margin, the faculty at Michigan Tech has voted out its union. Here is the university’s release.
I’m going to try to find out more about this, but on its face, this tells us that a lot of smart people – a majority of the MTU faculty – concluded that the benefits of union representation weren’t worth the costs. If union representation were a matter of individual contract, as it should be, the professors who had been compelled to accept union services they didn’t much value would not have had to go to the trouble of petitioning for an election. By the same token, the professors in the minority could still have their union, although its clout would probably be weaker than it was when the dissidents were captive.