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

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.