Unions protect the rights of their workers when it comes to professional issues, salary and benefits. But they also protect their members’ most basic rights. For anyone who doubted that, the lockout of the faculty at Long Island University in Brooklyn over the Labor Day weekend made it crystal clear.

About 400 faculty members were locked out of the school on Sept. 2 as the LIU administration attempted to play hardball with only three days left before the contract expired [see Labor Spotlight]. The Brooklyn faculty members, represented by the LIU Faculty Federation, an AFT affiliate, were not only locked out of the classrooms and their offices, but they also were kicked off payroll and their health insurance was suspended. It was an unprecedented move. Unqualified replacement workers were brought in to teach classes.

The professors were stunned.

Salaries are one of the major issues of the contentious negotiations: LIU faculty members want parity with their counterparts on the Long Island campus of the school, while beleaguered adjuncts are fighting a cut in salary.

If LIU administrators thought they could get away with it, on the Labor Day long weekend of all times, they were mistaken. The union rallied support on social media and elsewhere, keeping the pressure on the university. Labor unions from across the city, including the UFT, closed ranks in support of the LIU faculty, and students expressed their outrage in demonstrations in support of their teachers as well.

The lockout ended after 12 days, with the contract extended until the end of May, giving more time for negotiations to continue. Without a union in place, the faculty would have had to accept whatever salary and working conditions the administration deemed appropriate.

As it happened, just weeks before the LIU lockout, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that teaching and research assistants at private colleges and universities (such as LIU) have the right to unionize. LIU’s failed attempt to make an end-run around the professors and stomp on their rights could serve as exhibit A in any campus-organizing effort.