Will Wisconsin Prof's Unionize?

From the WSJ:

If some professors at the University of Wisconsin at Madison get their way, the first thing a newly minted PhD will learn about is not research or teaching—but union dues. This summer Wisconsin's Democratic Governor Jim Doyle gave the school's professors the right to unionize. Not all want to, so this fall the faculty lounges are livelier than usual.

Organized labor has already wreaked havoc on the nation's K-12 public-school system, and it's often thought this could never happen to a higher education system that is the envy of the world. But over the past 10 years or so, unions have become an increasingly common presence at colleges and universities. More than 375,000 faculty and graduate students are members of a collective bargaining unit, according to the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions. That's about a third of the total, and a 24% increase in the past decade.

If the union push is successful, what are some of the things we might see?  As with most policies, there are winners and losers.  Faculty unions, like many unions, fight wage dispersion.  That means that some faculty are paid higher than they would be otherwise and others are paid lower.  Not surprisingly, those faculty tend to be separated into groups, with those groups with less of a private market for their skills being paid more in faculty unions.  Here's something I wrote in a previous post on faculty unions with data from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Top 5   Observed Relative Wage Advantages
Philosophy   and religious studies - 17.5%
Foreign   languages, literatures, and linguistics - 15.2%
English   language and literature/letters - 14.9%
Visual   and performing arts - 13.9%
Parks,   recreation, leisure, and fitness studies - 13.6%

Bottom 5   Observed Relative Wage Advantages
Biological   and biomedical sciences - 1.9%
Business,   management, marketing, and related support services - -0.4%
Engineering - -2.6%
Natural   resources and conservation - -3.4%
Legal   professions and studies - -10.3%

All - 3.9%

John Chilton noted:

My conjecture is if you account for quality self sorting between union and nonunion settings you will find in union settings the quality for philosophy profs is relatively high and the quality of legal studies profs is relatively low.

and:

I'd further conjecture that union shops make tenure and promotion decisions more mechanical and as a consequence make it easier to shirk and aim for effort that meets the letter but not the spirit of good teaching, research and service.

I'd say that's an accurate description of the tenure process, based on my experience in my faculty union.  The tenure process is pretty regimental and, as you'd expect, outlined step-by-step, in the collective bargaining agreement.  In my union, faculty must satisfy 5 criteria to get promotion and tenure:

1. Teaching
2. Research
3. Continuing Preparation
4. Contribution to Student Growth (i.e. beyond the classroom)
5. Service

There are more than the standard "teaching, research, and service" that are used at most universities. 

I've always found #3 to be particularly curious mainly because if a person is doing research, then that person is doing preparation.