The clerical workers and librarians remained on strike for several more days despite this, and some professors tried to hold classes on locations away from the university as a show of solidarity with the strikers.
[3] Early in his presidency at BU, Silber made a series of decisions that proved unpopular with members of the university's faculty.
[3] In particular, Silber pushed for departments to hire friends of his at an inflated pay and vetoed some recommendations for academic tenure, particularly for professors who had expressed a left-leaning political stance.
[3] Additionally, the Massachusetts branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) accused Silber in 1979 of violating academic freedom and basic civil liberties, stating that they had never received as many complaints targeting a single institution as they had with regards to Silber's administration at BU.
[4] Around the same time that Silber joined BU, there had been a nationwide push for unionization among professors at American universities.
[5] By 1975, dozens of universities and over 200 two-year colleges were unionized, representing approximately 15 percent of all professors in the United States.
[7] The union and university were primarily at odds with regards to pay increases, highlighted by a letter released by a trustee in January 1979 that read, "More than anything else, we seek tranquility on campus.
[12] On March 31, the university and union came to an agreement that would see changes in governance and tenure rules as well as a 32.4 percent salary increase over the course of the three-year contract.
[7] The previous day, Silber had held a closed-doors meeting at the Algonquin Club with several prominent members of the board.
[8] About 400 professors participated,[14] with some picketing with signs that included quotes from Paul the Apostle, William Shakespeare, and Voltaire.
[1][14] On April 9, the students' union at BU announced they were filing a class-action lawsuit seeking tuition reimbursement for classes cancelled due to the strike.
[13] The Harvard Crimson reported that up to 150 professors were holding classes in this manner in order to show some solidarity with the other unions.
[13] As a result, in 1982, when the labor contract with BU-AAUP expired, the university sought and attained decertification for the union.
[17] In retrospect, Zabel called the strike a Pyrrhic victory and stated that Silber's eventual success in breaking the union was emblematic of university administrations' efforts to "regain lost ground" following the radical period of the 1960s and 1970s.