Professors at public universities are not necessarily entitled to bargain collectively with their employers over their workloads, according to a decision of the Supreme Court last month.

With only Justice John Paul Stevens dissenting, the 8-1 decision reversed a previous judgment of the Supreme Court of Ohio.

At stake was a law passed in 1993 that aimed to increase the number of hours spent in the classroom by professors at Ohio's state universities.

To achieve this goal, the law barred state-school professors from engaging in collective bargaining over their workload.

Jonathan Alger, counsel for the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), which opposes the Ohio law, says that employees of the state--including professors at state schools--generally have the right to collective bargaining.

"The state law attempted to mandate increased teaching loads without a corresponding decrease in other responsibilities," Alger says.

The AAUP was successful in its original suit, decided by the Ohio Supreme Court. The Court ruled that preventing professors from exercising their right to collective bargaining violated both the state and federal Constitutions.

Ohio's Central State University then challenged this decision. On March 22, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its judgment in the case of Central State University v. American Association of University Professors, Central State University Chapter.

The Supreme Court found that the Ohio law does not violate the U.S. Constitution because it passes the rational basis test.

According to Alger, this is a low threshold for judging measures that establish exceptions to federal law--in this case, the employees' right of equal protection.

But the Supreme Court sent the matter back to Ohio for a re-consideration of whether the original legislation that bars collective bargaining is in violation of state law.

Alger says Ohio's existing statutes protect the right of employees to participate in decisions affecting the terms and conditions of their employment.

At privately owned Harvard, by contrast, faculty members are not unionized and do not engage in collective bargaining, says Merry B. Touborg, director of communications for the Office of Human Resources.

"Our collective bargaining units are made up of staff, [many of whom do belong to unions], not faculty," Touborg says.

Friendly Professor of Law at Harvard Law School Paul C. Weiler, an expert in the field of academic labor who has been at Harvard for twenty years, says he cannot remember there ever being a movement by the faculty to unionize.