Legislators in Annapolis are currently considering legislation, H.B. 661, that, if passed, would provide faculty at the state’s four-year higher education institutions with the right to engage in collective bargaining on issues like wages, hours, benefits and other working conditions.

Many of the University System of Maryland’s peer institutions and those we aspire to emulate already have this right, as well as a union through which they can collectively bargain, including the University of Massachusetts and University of California systems.

These university systems also have strong shared governance in which the faculty and the administration work together to create and inform policies of the institutions.

During testimony on previous versions of this bill from the last two years, some spokespeople from the university system administration argued that employees do not need collective bargaining rights because they have shared governance — that is, the right of faculty to participate in governing the university.

However, these are not mutually exclusive. Shared governance involves faculty, students and staff being involved in the development of policies and strategic plans; it does not ensure (or even suggest) agreement on issues of workplace equity, safety, benefits and wages.

At the University of Maryland, College Park, there are many policies and procedures that every school or department is required to adopt through shared governance. These policies are supposed to govern workload, merit pay distribution and other important matters that often are associated with union contracts at other universities, including our peer institutions. However, there is no oversight to ensure schools adopt and follow these policies, and the committees that write them are often not democratically selected by the faculty they represent. And without a union, faculty have little, if any, recourse if they endure inequitable treatment.

For example, there have now been several rounds of merit pay at the University of Maryland, College Park. However, many schools have yet to develop or adopt a merit distribution plan despite the fact that it has been required since 2017. As a result, the administration allocated state funds for merit pay, but in many schools within the university, the money was given out with no transparency and through processes faculty did not agree to — or even have a voice in shaping. In many schools there was also no transparency about how the merit pay was distributed, so how could faculty members ensure they were treated fairly or the same as their colleagues?

University policies are supposed to guarantee a process by which faculty members can appeal if they feel they are being treated inequitably.

But how can faculty do so if there is no clarity about how the process is supposed to work, and no transparency in its implementation? They can’t. There is no administrative body that even ensures that each school is adopting and following university policies. Shared governance is a process by which to adopt policies, not a process to enforce them.

H.B. 661 offers the university system an opportunity to make long-needed improvements in governance. Anyone who truly supports and understands the value of shared governance would embrace collective bargaining.

The irony is that even as the university system argues that having both shared governance and collective bargaining would be inappropriate for faculty, university staff have had both since 2000. Clearly, one does not replace the other.

Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz is the Saul I. Stern Professor of Civic Engagement at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy