Inform yourself and then vote on the proposed UNTF contract

UNTF members can vote on the proposed UNTF contract this Thursday May 20. Details were emailed to members and can also be currently found on the UNTF website homepage: http://untf.org/

Union contract FAQ posted on UNTF website

Several UNTF members have been hard at work creating a FAQ based on the flurry of questions UNTF members may have noticed in their email inboxes in the past few days. You may find the FAQ on the UNTF website: http://untf.org/UNTFFAQ.pdf

Email UNTF sent members today re: new contract

If you are a UNTF member you should have received an email today from UNTF about the new contract and the ratification process happening in the next week. I can't figure out how to elegantly collapse and expand text, or attach documents, in this blog, so rather than post the whole long email here, I will refer you to the UNTF Facebook page, where the email text is posted. However, Facebook does not let you attach documents either. If you did not get the email and thus those documents (which include a form for a proxy vote if you cannot be there in person next week to vote on ratifying the contract), please contact UNTF--office@untf.org or call 517-203-0880.

And more on the contract...

I mentioned the contract secures members' salary raises for the next few years, and a path to 3 year contracts. I want to emphasize that the way I read the contract, you are free to try to negotiate a better deal with your chair, as before the contract. I myself have a multi year appointment, satisfactory salary, and my pay raises have exceeded those secured by this contract. I am hoping to continue working under these conditions once my current appointment runs out.

HOWEVER, I am aware we have the current economic downturn (which the MSU administration has labelled as a "crisis" and used as a pretext to corporatize this university). Given this "crisis", if this contract did not exist, I doubt my pay raises would exceed what we achieved in the contract. For example, tenure track faculty have been forced to agree to a 0% pay raise for 2010-11, and I'm pretty sure any tenure track faculty pay raise for 2011-12 will be quite meager. As for me, I doubt how much leverage my chair would have to offer me another multi year contract once my current one runs out [the chair often has to ask the dean who has to ask the provost]. I felt my most realistic non-unionized scenario was reappointment under a series of 1 year contracts. But now, with the contract, I at least have a safety net of guaranteed raises (OK, not guaranteed, these are "merit" raises where each unit will determine how to divide the pot of money among its UNTF members, but it has to go to them) and a clear path to 3 year contracts.

Despite my fortunate position (it's really not that great, but compared to the horror stories I've heard about how other members have been treated, I feel fortunate), I voted for the union and spent countless hours on the bargaining team because I believe in unions, know that I would have been very vulnerable to the whims of any new chair that may come in my department, and that as a non-tenure track, non-unionized faculty I was an easy mark in the game of budget cuts. My individual talents, fame, value, "indispensability", whatever they may be, count for ZERO in this high stakes game. As universities have become corporatized, administrators have gained tremendous power vis a vis the faculty in academia. Witness the huge salaries and continued large raises MSU administrators continue to enjoy during this economic "crisis" and their ability to cut programs and academic staff at will (allegedly they run all of this by the faculty via "academic governance" but at MSU this is largely a rubber-stamp process). A union is the only viable countervailing force I could see in this setting. Our contract may not be perfect, but having it and a union make me sleep much better at night.

More on the contract

[These are truly my opinions, not UNTF's] Our last post before we reached agreement with the MSU administration mentioned 2 outstanding items. What became of those 2 items?

1. Salary raises: we really wanted a big raise the first year, the really wanted 0% the first year, we got 0% the first year. But in exchange for that, we got slightly higher raises the next few years.

2. A HUGE achievement was getting them to agree to a system where you eventually are eligible to apply for 3 year contracts. Going into the last day of negotiations 5/12, the problem was they wanted you to serve 10 CONSECUTIVE semesters to do be eligible. After LOTS of back and forth, we got them to agree to 10 semesters over 6 years, so if you took a semester or two off, you would not lose this time served. We asked for lowering the requirement to 8 semesters but that was a non-starter. Really, we were lucky to get this deal, it will dramatically improve job security for many of our members. And you may get to count up to 4 semesters of service prior to the contract.

The first issue was pay raises over the next few years; I don't have the document in front of me, but they WOULD NOT budge on the 0% pay raise for 2010-11. I think it's partly because tenure track faculty have agreed to a 0% pay raise for that period, so it would cause some controversy if non-tenure track faculty got anything better than that (never mind the fact that even a 10% pay raise would not bring most of us close to the average salaries enjoyed by tenure track faculty). We did get modest pay raises for the following years-great for many members who have not enjoyed a raise in many years. Even for those of us who have enjoyed merit raises, this is a good cushion should MSU finances continue to give the administration a pretext to keep pay raises low or at 0% for non-unionized folks. I hoped for higher pay raises, but in this economic and political climate, I think we were lucky to get what we did. And if you feel you are essential and valued by the market, nothing is stopping you from trying to get a higher raise or better salary, the contract just provides a safety net.

WE HAVE OUR FIRST CONTRACT! STUDY & DISCUSS IT. RATIFICATION VOTE NEXT WEEK!

UNTF members should have received an email today May 14 with details about our first contract. Agreement was reached with MSU just after midnight on Thursday, several hours after having started negotiations on Wednesday at 3PM. Full details about the contract are in that email.

If you have questions or concerns, please contact us at office@untf.org or at 517-203-0880.

4:15 PM May 12--Bargaining right now: waiting for mediator

The UNTF bargaining team is waiting for the mediator. At this point, we believe that there are only two outstanding issues that need to be resolved. One is our request for an across-the-board pay raise in year 1 of the contract. And the second concerns the definition of the amount of time required to be able to obtain a multi-year contract. The university says that we can apply for a multi-year contact only after 10 consecutive semesters of teaching with only summer breaks. We want them to remove the word ?consecutive? because some of our members have breaks in teaching at other times of the year. The mediator will come to determine our position and then go speak to the administration team to determine theirs. Earlier there was a wonderful group of members meeting outside of Nisbet Building to show their support and demand for the university to negotiate a fair contract. Right now, there are about 15 people here to support the UNTF negotiation team.

Commencement

Members are encouraged to think about and suggest to UNTF leadership creative & positive actions for this Friday's Commencement ceremonies, should negotiations not lead to a fair contract for UNTF. There are only two more official bargaining sessions left, today Tu 1-5 and Th 9-5 (oh, and please consider showing up at one of these for an hour (or more) so the MSU administration sees what the bargaining team has been trying to communicate: that UNTF members are united in their desire for better job security, pay, and benefits.)

Commencement actions: add to the UNTF pool of ideas
Anything could happen in these 2 bargaining days, so members should prepare for any contingency. Members are encouraged to think of and suggest to UNTF creative & positive visibility actions for this Friday's Commencement, when alumni, parents, and new graduates will be on campus. Anecdotal talks with current students and other members of the public give reason to believe many members of the public are receptive to the idea of encouraging better teachers by properly treating our teachers. Visitors will be interested to learn about the job situation of many of their professors, who in their minds are often an undifferentiated group of highly privileged individuals--should MSU continue to deny UNTF members basic job security and decent pay, something many other Michigan universities seem to be able to do for their non-tenure track faculty.

IMPORTANT: picnic, BBQ + ways you can help for last week of UNTF negotiations, May 5, 6!!!

MAY 5 PICNIC (11:30-1) AND RALLY (11:30-4) IN FRONT OF ADMINISTRATION BUILDING

We having a picnic—with a serious purpose: to show the University that we stand united in our request for job security, benefits, and the recognition we deserve for our service to our students and to the university community.

Time & Location: Wed. May 5, from 11:30 AM – 1PM, on the steps of the Administration Bldg. There will be a gathering of supporters through the afternoon until 5PM).

Enjoy: music, pizza, beverages, & great conversation with your fellow teachers. Plus: Make it visible to the administration that we are a LARGE part of the teaching faculty at MSU. Come on out and join us! Introduce yourself to others and stand together in these final days of bargaining for our first contract.

THURSDAY MAY 6 NOON LUNCH BBQ SPONSORED BY GEU AND DROP IN TO SHOW SUPPORT FOR UNTF BARGAINING TEAM THAT DAY (SHOW UP FOR HALF HOUR OR MORE BETWEEN 9-5)

Support us on our Final Day of Bargaining: Thursday, May 6, 9AM – 5PM or until we reach an agreement.

Come anytime to the Nisbet Bldg, on Crescent Road, the bldg. on the right (with the “pink windows”) on the road that heads toward the MSU Credit Union (off Harrison).

The Graduate Employees Union will be supporting us with a BBQ at noon in front of Nisbet. The fantastic MSU TA's recognized years ago that a union was the only way they could get decent pay, benefits, and working conditions from MSU. It's not too late for us-- let’s show the TA’s that we too deserve and can demand the same basic things. MSU needs us; we know that individually most UNTF members are not satisfied with how MSU is acknowledging this need; YOU must know MSU will meet our demands if we show them we are indeed united.

Time is running short

Today: got administration counters to our proposals on workload (general issue of how many courses/credits taught make you full time, part time, etc.) and on leaves of absence (paid and unpaid: vacation, bereavement, short term and long term disability, military service, etc.), and on transportation issues.

LEAVES OF ABSENCE. They had indicated last Thursday general agreement with our leave proposal, which basically asks that current policies in the Faculty Handbook be maintained. After some negotiating about how to say this (we want to specify the Faculty Handbook in effect as of next week; why next week you ask? Because they are finalizing some ongoing revisions regarding when you can take a leave for the funeral of “Other Eligible Individuals”). But basically we got what we wanted: preserving the generous MSU benefits for eligible employees. Given the slow pace of negotiations and current atmosphere of cutbacks, we felt this is an achievement.

WORKLOAD. We had presented a workload proposal that asks that MSU preserve whatever workload arrangements currently exist. We acknowledge the diversity of practices across MSU so we do not impose any rigid formula. The basic idea instead is to avoid units unilaterally increasing our members’ workload using the excuse of budget cutbacks—we’ve already seen examples of this.

TRANSPORTATION. Last Thursday we had also discussed transportation issues. Two of our requests we will not get. For many reasons, MSU is unable to deduct monthly parking fees automatically (and using pre-tax dollars) from all members’ paychecks. Similarly, MSU will not provide free bus passes to use the campus buses (run by CATA) to employees hired at less than 50%. Strangely, it seems some individuals do get these benefits and it is not always clear if they are eligible, but the administration at least is not interested in taking these away from them. However, we did get language stating that mileage reimbursement must follow guidelines laid out in the MSU business procedures manual; it seems in some cases members’ supervisors were not following these.

WHAT'S NEXT? We will put together a counter-counter proposal on workload. Also, some of our bargaining team members will informally discuss our key issue, an appointments system, with some of their members. We found that these informal discussions help each side better understand the other side’s concerns.

NOT A GOOD SIGN: Disturbingly, the administration asked that we schedule additional bargaining days after our original last day of May 6. We had offered to meet on additional days next week but they seem to want to prolong negotiations into the weeks after spring term ends--which is not a good time for us since many members will be gone.

Pictures from April 22nd Bargaining Session

Thursday, April 22nd

We had 35 members show up to bargaining today! It scared them out of the room. They refused to come in and negotiate for almost a half hour. This is just the kind of pressure we need to put on them in order to get the contract we deserve!

After the finally came in, Stephen Thomas from Zoology gave a brilliant presentation on our Job Security provisions to the assembled members and the administration's representatives.

Pictures forthcoming!!!

Plan on attending one of the three remaining sessions. Monday the 26th 1-5pm, Tuesday the 4th 1-5pm, and Thursday the 6th from 9-5. Be there at the Nisbet Building, room 125. Contact us at (517) 203-0880 or at office@untf.org for more details.

RALLY at Board of Trustees' Meeting!!!!

We had a great turnout today at the rally today at the Board of Trustees' meeting! In addition to the dozens of UNTF members that attended, we also had support from tenured professors, undergrads, and other labor organizations! Check out these great pics!

RALLY at Board of Trustees' Meeting!!!!

April 15th, at last some progress at the table

So today at the table was a landslide of Tentative Agreements (T.A.s). We reached 12 T.A.s! (for the most part, still agreeing on the tweaking of a word or two). The signing of these T.A.s marks the end of non-economic issues. You can now breath a sigh of relief.

...sigh...

Alright, now that you have rested, it is time to get down to business. We start negotiating economic issues on Monday, and these promise to be…difficult…at best. Imagine that you walk into your chair’s office and asked they give you a raise and a multiple year contract. The response that you would get is similar to what we will probably get.

Regardless of how articulate or logical we are, we will get nowhere without your support and participation. One of the main reasons we organized was the fact we are more powerful as a group than as an individual. As a group, we can demand that based on favorable evaluations we gain increased security. As a group, we can demand that we be paid what is equitable for our training. As individuals we can ask for these things, and we will be denied.
How can you participate in the group you ask?

Tomorrow, Friday the 16th, 8:45am Rally at the Board of Trustees Meeting, Hannah Administration Building

Write a letter to Lou Anna Simon telling her you support the UNTF

Write a letter to the Lansing State Journal or the State News, saying that UNTF supports high-quality education

Thursday, April 22nd, 1pm, attend the Bargaining Presentation on Security Provisions and Wages, Nisbet Bldg 125

Demonstrate, Wednesday May 5th, location and time TBD, Our last chance for a contract this term

These actions may seem small, but they tell the University that we are a cohesive group that means business. Today’s agreements are significant, but what happens in the next 3 weeks could have profound implications on your career (group), or not (individual). Your choice.

One members recap of Thursday March 25 bargaining session

Today felt to me as one of the more positive sessions we've had. Both sides seemed to actually dialogue and respond to each other on some points and said they "heard" (even if did not necessarily agree with) the other side's perspective on a few things. I don't think any tentative agreements were reached today though. A partial summary follows hopefully other folks who were there can chime in.

KEY THING I noticed (somebody else pointed this out): their level of willingness to hear us out and dialogue with us seems correlated to the presence of UNTF observers in the room, there were 2 such folks today. So it is crucial that different UNTF members come to at least 1 bargaining session; the ones who come always find it interesting and you don't have to say anything, just sit quietly in the back row (you can even be like your students and slyly read your State News during the boring parts...).

Discipline section: frank exchange on what a process for discipline should look like. Our proposal describes a 3 step process, they seem to want a more informal process which of course would leave the union out of the loop.

Grievances: they still really seem to want the union member to sign a grievance but conceded the union does own the grievance. One of their team expressed the concern about having an "out" for a member who REALLY does not want a grievance filed on their behalf. We responded with our concern that out of fear and powerlessness a member may be afraid to press a grievance but does that mean they don't want to? Other people who were there may wish to clarify my explanation of this.

Health and safety: they had given us a counter proposal deleting major portions of ours: our request for some kind of process to ensure employees know the basic MSU resources re: these issues. They repeated their view that health/safety issues vary by unit and that maybe we should develop these in an ongoing conversation with the administration outside the contract. Seems to be a misunderstanding on their part about what we are asking for: we are not asking to develop detailed instructions re: classroom violence etc. we are just asking that MSU (either centrally or via its colleges or units) commit to ensuring employees know some basics and where to go for help and information.

The psychology of the taboo trade-off: Surprising insights into sacred values, and what they mean for negotiation.

This intriguing Scientific American article argues certain things (your lucky beer mug, "right to choose", "right to life", whatever) have a special sacred meaning to people, and that negotiating about these can be very tricky. I'm skeptical about reductionistic pop psychology, but I wonder if this perhaps explains the MSU administration's seemingly irrational, rigid position on a variety of small issues (no bulletin boards for example): maybe they represent a bigger sacred something to them. If we could figure out what this is maybe we'd have a better handle on how to negotiate with them. (Of course, the converse is also probably true).

"What truly distinguishes sacred values from secular ones is how people behave when asked to compromise them. When people are asked to trade their sacred values for values considered to be secular—what psychologist Philip Tetlock refers to as a “taboo tradeoff”—they exhibit moral outrage, express anger and disgust, become increasingly inflexible in negotiations, and display an insensitivity to a strict cost-benefit analysis of the exchange....A more successful tack for negotiating over sacred values, as it turns out, is to simply use the right words. ...using specific rhetorical strategies can make trade-offs seem less taboo and can facilitate conflict resolution." http://bit.ly/9vGnNn

Stormy weather ahead...

Atmospherics today were relatively good, maybe the nice weather or the fact it was their lead negotiator’s birthday (since we negotiate in his building he even offered us leftover cake from an earlier workplace celebration), or maybe it was because we only discussed a few minor issues. But stormy weather lies ahead. I am excited and worried, because we are moving to the high stakes controversial stuff like our right to strike, wages, discipline procedures, review procedures, and job security.

Today there was not too much to talk about. We gave them a copy of a half finished counter proposal on grievances. They gave us a completed counter on supplies and equipment, a topic on which we’ve spent WAY too much time in my opinion. Let's focus on the grievance issues, since this is a key part of our contract:

Grievances: Alex our lead negotiator today explained key aspects of our half finished counter proposal. Essentially, the union wants to own the grievance procedure and specifically the right to file a grievance on behalf of an individual even if the individual does not sign the grievance. Essentially, we want a low barrier for filing a grievance and a high barrier for halting this process, administration wants the reverse. Besides that, we want a longer time period to file a grievance, whereas they want a very short time window (e.g. something bad happens to employee, employee must initiate the grievance process within 10 days of that, problem is, often you're not immediately aware something happened, or you are not able to meet your Chair within 10 days because of scheduling problems).

Regarding who "owns" the grievance (employee or union), I’m still not sure about all the issues here. Obviously if a member has to sign a grievance, intimidation factors may work against this. Administration’s concern is that such matters are often best resolved informally and grievances will escalate matters, an example was cited of an employee who really did not want to be at a grievance (this was another MSU union I presume) who started crying. We explained the union would be reasonable in these matters. So hopefully all sides can work something out. Commonsense tells me that if a member does not want their issue trapped in a high stakes, high visibility grievance procedure, then how would the union even know about this issue? It’s true there could be a widespread problem the union wants to file a grievance about and that I the meek employee might not want to be involved in that and might have to testify. But isn’t the whole point of the union so that I have a means of redressing problems in the workplace rather than meekly accepting them out of fear?

I did not have time to review their counter on supplies, they said it had 4 bullet points that essentially dove tailed with our proposal. All I can say is that it is ridiculous that the administration is fighting over the wording of simple things like access to buildings and mailboxes, I need to sit down and see if in this latest proposal they have stopped being so recalcitrant.

For Thursday: I suppose they will respond to our grievance counter proposal. Oops, just got an email from Alex (UNTF staff) that we have to meet on Wednesday to work on some more stuff, so I guess more stuff will be discussed.

Not quite time for Kumbaya (Bargaining on 3/15)

This last Monday’s bargaining session is not what you would call radical or highly successful, but for me it represented a shift in thinking about our bargaining experience. Even though we did reach a tentative agreement on medical disputes and came close to a couple of others, for me, the progress was in the interactions between the union and the administration. More than once we had discussions about the issues, what we were attempting to achieve with our language and what the administration was attempting with theirs. We did not sit around and sing Kumbaya together, but I think it did foster some indication that we are all interested in helping to strengthen the university.

It strengthen was during one of these explanations of viewpoint that I realized one of the difficulties we are wrestling with at the table is with the level of organization. Anyone who has been at MSU long can tell you that it has a very strong decentralized approach to many of its academic policies. This approach allows departments to have a lot of freedom for how they approach education, which can be a good thing. However, this approach has allowed for some departments to exploit non-tenure track faculty. Many of the things the union is asking for is a centralizing and standardizing of some academic policies, which may go against MSU’s institutional “grain”.

So, I guess the epiphany for me this week was that institutional structure may be one of the bigger hurdles we have to overcome to reach our goals for this contract…and it isn’t just a greedy, power-hungry administration trying to keep the little guy down (I think).

--A Bargain

From the Table 3/11

At the table today, March 11, 2010, Penny Gardner, Bargaining Committee reporting!

Sometimes I am a Rachel Madow wannabe..

Anyway, at the negotiating table today, we made progress through testy moments provided by those across the table from the UNTF bargaining committee. Proposals and counter proposals were presented by both sides, and hallelujah even three tentative agreements were signed. It is a chipping away process to come to agreement and our chief negotiator keeps strong presence in light of hostility and negativity that erupts from the other side. The last thing today was our words "without penalty" in the medical dispute section being replaced by them with the words "without termination" counter proposed by us with the words "without discipline" countered by them, "without discipline and/or discharge". We agreed. Of course there was much more to this than meets the eye, but I couldn't resist sharing this little moment of progress....

Come join us. There is lots to learn. Contact us to sign-up and be caught up! Penny

Membership Meeting @ Dublin Square March 18th, 5:30-8:00pm

Hi Everyone,

We'll be sending out emails and putting some flyers in folks mailboxes about this event, too. It is a great opportunity to talk directly to the bargaining team and have your voice heard as to the progress of contract negotiations.

We are going to have some hot apps for people to snack on, and of course, access to Dublin Square's excellent selection of on tap brew, and Scotch and Irish Whiskeys.

See You There!!!

Thusday March 18th, 5:30-8:00pm, in the Event Room at Dublin Square.

Thoughts from an Observer

I was mostly aware of the energy flows in the room. It was interesting to observe the ritual of gauging the opposing side by
their demeanor, their tone of voice, eye contact, sense of humor, and ability to articulate points in a logically convincing way. On one level, it seemed there was a lot of straight forward stuff, given that there are precedents for many of the contract points discussed, so that the process became more of a reasonable exchange (compromise) on both parts to arrive at the middle, where some things may be granted and others withheld given the particular atmosphere in the room that day. By that I mean that, everything else being equal (the precedent of other contracts), our presence in the room or the perception of it by management may tip the scale. So, while some things did seem more difficult to pass and were deferred, others seemed to respond more easily to the atmosphere and presence that we may have in the room either as articulate, intelligent, and able to counter back arguments or as an incompetent and easily tricked bunch of people. Alyssa--our lead negotiator--seems to handle them (and their egos) beautifully. So, it seems that, at least on one level, management?s perception of a strong will (ours) and controlled egos (ours) does play a role in our favor.

Editorial: Raises for MSU Administrators

The following editorial was among the several letters submitted by UNTF members in response to a Lansing State Journal Article reporting that MSU administrators are accepting big raises in years when the faculty and the many of the unions on campus are receiving very little or no adjustments.

Read the article at http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=20102280561

Dear Editor:
I was astounded to read the State News editorial justifying raises for William Strampel, dean of the College of Osteopathic Medicine (58%), Marsha Rappley, dean of the College of Human Medicine (26%), and Provost Kim Wilcox (20%)—all within a 3-year period.

This comes at a time when the University is demanding that non-tenured track teachers pay 50% of their health care and that ALL MSU unions agree to cancel post-retirement health care for new employees. This comes at a time when many people at MSU have lost jobs, when programs are being cut, and when many students have to take on crippling debt in order to pay tuition.
Yes, while some employees make enormous sums, the University is trying to take health care away from other employees. By what possible system of ethics, morality or social planning can this possibly make sense?

In truth, it doesn't make sense. We cannot have a healthy society when some people live like royalty and others cannot get health care.

The rational that both your editorial and that the administration give is shocking, frankly. Are we to believe that these deans have so little dedication to their work that they have to be bribed with great sums of money in order to stay at MSU? Are we to believe that in this great nation of ours there are no other people qualified for these jobs?

When our country was founded, we chose not to create a King and aristocracy. However, the exorbitant pay for corporate and academic administrators in this country convinces me that we have created a financial aristocracy, which rules with the same blindness and lack of compassion, as did aristocracies of yore.

RS

Layoffs at MSU: the best of times and the worst of times...

Though continuing MSU layoffs (through Spring 2011 and possibly beyond!) are likely in this economic climate, a strong UNTF can advocate for its members regarding layoff decisions and provisions, and work to avoid situations where somebody is laid off only to be eventually replaced with cheaper labor. A strong UNTF can also push so that our members don't bear the brunt of these budget cuts and layoffs (whereas with no union, the pattern will continue of administrators giving themselves raises while cutting budgets and laying off staff, as was documented in a recent Lansing State Journal article.

Layoff provisions will be part of the contract we are currently negotiating, and will surely be a top priority and contested item. The contract should be in place in time to affect layoffs in Fall 2010 and afterwards. So it is vital that we secure good layoff terms in our first contract given that this issue is very real. For example, widespread in many faculty contracts is "layoff status" which in part determines if and how laid off workers will have "first dibs" should the employer once again require somebody to do the work they were doing. For example, if you are laid off because the course you are teaching is cancelled, you would want your contract to specify that you have certain rights if that course (or a similar one) is offered a semester or year later. How favorable this and other UNTF contract items end up depends a lot on the MSU Administration's perceptions of UNTF member support. We know we have a strong group of supporters but the Administration doesn't know this and so must see signs of this. Therefore, your support in upcoming UNTF events (which includes showing up as a guest observer at one of our bargaining sessions) is ESSENTIAL to visibly show the Administration we are a strong union.

Signs are not good, with Michigan facing a serious budget deficit next year. The MSU administration clearly anticipates layoffs, and without a strong contract and union, non-tenure track folks at MSU are particularly vulnerable. You may be aware the Administration has recently asked unit heads to prepare budget scenarios for next year that respond to 3 levels of budget cuts. Another round of program (and maybe even department) cuts is inevitable. All of this comes only a few weeks after Academic Human Resources and Human Resources presented a LEAD workshop in early February, "Being Prepared: What Administrators Need to Know in the Event of Personnel Reductions". Documents were distributed with detailed instructions for layoffs and position elimination for both faculty and academic staff positions, and for support staff positions ("Layoff Summary Chart and Process"; "Elimination of faculty academic staff 2010"; "Involuntary Reduction in Percent Employed").

This is truly the best of times and worst of times to be negotiating a faculty union contract at MSU!

Coffee Talk

Today’s session at the bargaining table, as far as they go, was quite congenial. We were able to sign a couple of tentative agreements and got closer to two or three more. Right now we are looking at non-economic issues, with today’s main attraction being the resources fixed-term faculty have to carry out their jobs (office space, mailboxes, textbooks, access to classrooms, etc.).

The administration thought some of our language was taken from other contracts and that it did not represent the situation on MSU’s campus. For example, they thought that all faculty had office space and resources that accompany an office. We told them that is not the case and gave examples of fixed-term faculty who share one desk with 10 other faculty. To gain access to this office, administrative assistants have to unlock the door for the faculty, and they only have two hours in that space for each class they teach. Other fixed-term faculty have to hold office hours in coffee shops because they don’t have an office. Although this improve drink options, it makes it hard to set the proper tone to discuss issues such as student grades with mocha lattes surrounding you. The administration seemed to take the examples to heart.

In general the tone was better than I had seen to date. There were a few times where the two sides seemed to be cooperatively working on creating a formal system of recognition and rights for nontenure-track faculty. It was very warming...not like having your own barista in your “office”, but a definite start.

No Bulletin Boards!

It was an interesting time at the table. To date, our meetings with the administration have been about exchanging proposals and setting ground rules. This was our first meeting with actual negotiations. It was both frustrating and hopeful. We came out of the meeting with a tentative agreement and made headway for a couple more agreements (the hopeful part), but came up against unexpected roadblocks.

The administration’s bargaining team had some points that they would not budge on … NO BULLETIN BOARDS. I’m not sure what this was about. Their argument was that there are much better means of communication such as Twitter or Blogging. During a break we talked with the members who sitting in on the meeting. One member said that they were surprised about the administration’s vehemence against bulletin boards especially because faculty in her program found them invaluable. Our testimonial didn’t seem to faze them. Luckily we were able to move forward on other topics, but it was odd.

We had five or six members of the union (besides the bargaining committee) who sat in. I have to say, it was great getting to meet them and to hear their take on what went on in the bargaining process. If you are interested, you should sit in on a meeting. It’s a very interesting time…if you can get over the intense dislike of bulletin boards.

What kind of University do you want?

Can you imagine an MSU where?

• Full-time Nontenure-Track faculty earn only $20,000,
• pay $464 dollars a month for their family's health insurance,
• and gay and lesbian faculty members won't be granted leave to attend their partners' funerals?

We can't imagine this either. Thats why union-supporters from all over campus will be working together to build the support we need to get a contract we can all get behind.

On February 8th, the administration presented its initial proposals, revealing that MSU is planning to balance its budget on the backs of fixed-term employees.

The admin's proposals fell short of not only of our proposals, which could have been expected. But for employees starting after July 1, 2010, management's proposals on compensation and benefits also fall short of what is currently in place.

This is the just the beginning, so we hope that as many of you as possible will be with us on Feb 18th at 1pm in the Nisbet Building, when we will be discussing Union Rights, Employee Rights, and Faculty Support--three items on which we hope that we will be able to reach rapid agreement.

What kind of MSU can you help build? Send us your comments!

Unions and nontenure-track faculty?

There's a stereotype of unions as creatures of heavy industry: steelworkers, miners, garment workers, construction workers—and it's certainly true that the historical roots of organized labor are the factories and foundries of the early twentieth century. Working-class men and women struggled to forge the basic concepts of fair employment: freedom from discrimination & arbitrary treatment, the 40-hour work-week, and paid heath insurance. Like most stereotypes, however, this characterization of unions falls short of the truth—especially now, in the early 21st century, when professional and technical workers are the fastest growing occupational groups in the country. Musicians, engineers, airline pilots, doctors, nurses, social workers, researchers, and teachers have all turned to unions to advocate for themselves in the new service-driven economy.

There's a stereotype of higher education, too: the ivory tower set aside from the getting and spending of the real world, a place where reason rules and rational argument wins the day! Even if many of us still want to hold onto this image as an ideal, it's hard to do as colleges and universities move increasingly to corporate models to maintain their bottom lines.

Unions of university and college faculty are nothing new; tenure-track faculty—especially at public institutions—began organizing in the 1960's following huge nationwide increases in undergraduate enrollment and the exponential growth of what University of California president Clark Kerr famously dubbed "the knowledge industry." Here in Michigan, tenure-track faculty unions won certification elections at a regular pace: 5 in 1965; 16 by 1975; and 37 by 1980.

The union movement among nontenure-track faculty is thus a second wave in higher education, one that follows an equally radical change in the structure of our industry. Between 1970 and 1995, the number of full-time faculty grew modestly—49%—while the number of part-time faculty grew an astonishing 266%. This surge (which does not even count the growth of full-time nontenure-track faculty) was partially an effect of declining state funding for higher education, but other factors—such as the overproduction of Ph.D.'s for the academic market—contributed as well.

In the Fall of 2007, there were more than 1.5 million people working in post-secondary instruction; of these, less than 430,000 were so-called regular faculty, tenured or tenure-track. 330,000 were graduate student employees—meaning that over half of the total number are full and part-time nontenure-track faculty.

Nontenure-track faculty earn less too; in 2003-2004, full-time nontenure-track faculty at public research institutions—such as Michigan State—earned on average half as much per class as their tenured and tenure-track counterparts. Part-timers earned less than half of that, making their per class salary less than 25% of that of tenure-stream professors.

Unionization is one of the clear ways in which nontenure-track have been able to improve their working conditions in the face of these trends. Lecturers of the University of California system organized early in the 1980’s, and in the 1988 the nontenure-track instructors at the State University of New Jersey at Rutgers voted to join a union. Other notable locals include the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties (APSCUF), which represents nontenure-track faculty at many of the campuses of the State University System of Pennsylvania (though not PSU), United University Professions (UUP), which represents some part-time and full-time faculty as part of 34,000 unionized employees of the State University of New York system.

Here in Michigan, nontenure-track faculty unions have been successful as well; they are either currently represented or currently struggling to unionize at Eastern, Western, Wayne State, at all three campuses of the University of Michigan, as well as numerous community colleges. Locals at Michigan, Wayne, and Eastern, with support from the AFT, have made significant gains in the areas of greatest concern to nontenure-track faculty: job security, health care for low fraction employees, and in progress towards salary parity.