Sponsor
Portland State University. Conflict Resolution Program
First Advisor
Rachel Halfrida Cunliffe
Term of Graduation
Summer 2020
Date of Publication
8-27-2020
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science (M.S.) in Conflict Resolution
Department
Conflict Resolution
Language
English
Subjects
Labor unions and education -- United States, Universities and colleges -- Employees -- Labor unions -- United States, Peace-building, Industrial relations, Neoliberalism
DOI
10.15760/etd.7443
Physical Description
1 online resource (xv, 157 pages)
Abstract
Unionized contingent faculty in the United States face an increasingly difficult economic landscape in their labor-management conflicts with university administrations. These unions, comprised of graduate student employees and adjunct instructors, won significant victories for their members but have failed to shift the broader patterns of casualization, unsustainable compensation, and job precarity, stemming from the systemic debasement of higher education institutions and the American labor movement, both of which pose significant challenges to conventional conflict resolution strategies. To find a path forward, this thesis explores the nature and possibility of transforming of the academic labor conflict, using a transformative peacebuilding approach to identify the underlying forces driving the current discord and creating a framework to affect long-term, constructive change. Analysis of the literature surrounding higher education and organized labor revealed the hegemonic influence of neoliberalism as the systemic force driving the conflict. This thesis answers that system with the Systems Ecology Framework of Transformative Care, a schema that combines the transformative peacebuilding framework, ethics of care, and a socio-ecological model for union organizing to contextually reduce the harm caused by neoliberalism and increase justice for stakeholders in the academy. It closes by offering recommendations for union strategy and further applications for conflict transformation in complex social conflicts.
Rights
© 2020 Sam Frazier Hediger.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/33869
Recommended Citation
Hediger, Sam Frazier, "Trailblazing Transformation: Pioneering Transformative Peacebuilding in Academic Labor Conflicts" (2020). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 5569.
https://doi.org/10.15760/etd.7443