Slight update: Susan Moeller sent this around this morning (even though it says Friday– the EMU email system seems kind of messed up right now):
Dear EMU Faculty Colleagues:
Today, Friday, August 27, 2010, we countered the administration’s proposal at 1:30 p.m. The EMU administration will counter our proposal at noon on Saturday, August 28, 2010. We will let you know the status of negotiations as soon as possible. We are negotiating all day Saturday and Sunday.
We hope you are all following our press releases, presentations, and articles about the negotiations. Our website at www.emuprofessors.org also has some wonderful photos from the rally (the pictures are part of a set of scrolling photos at the top of the page). Please take a look.
And then she has links to the various things that the EMU-AAUP has already sent out.
Incidentally, the administration has been posting their own updates on their web site here. Okay, back to what I wrote last night:
Things are going to get kind of busy for me personally around the sitedad household– house guests, some family events, etc.– so I thought I’d get ahead of the curve here a little bit as we head into the “moment of truth” with the contract talks.
First, I saw a good piece in Crain’s Detroit Business this morning, “No deal yet on salary, health-care costs in contract talks between EMU, professors.” It’s mostly a summary of what has come before, but it ends with this important to keep in mind sentence: “The negotiation fallout comes on the heels of EMU’s April announcement that it would freeze tuition, room and board, and fees for the 2010-2011 academic year to boost enrollment.” In other words, when the Board of Regents (through the administrators negotiating at the table) force a faculty strike, then all of that good 0/0/0% PR will vanish and we’ll be set back at least four years.
Let me parse that out a little:
- I say “when” and not “if” because that’s what I think is going to happen. I think we’re going to strike. Part of this is a bit of George Costanza thinking– you know, do the opposite of what you gut tells you, and since my gut tells me a strike would be stupid, that the union and the administration aren’t that far apart and since everyone knows a strike will be bad for everyone, surly there is a solution, etc. So now I’m saying it’s going to happen and hope I’m wrong. But I have to say I don’t think I’m wrong, and while it’ is perhaps easier to be a pessimist than an optimist about such things, I haven’t talked to anyone lately who thinks this will all work out.
- Anyway, we’ll vote to go out on strike and when the EMU-AAUP calls for its members to suspend their work activities, to not teach and to carry around picket signs, I’ll be right there with the rest of the faculty. Apparently, there are some in the administrative/BoR ranks who think the union is bluffing on this, that they wouldn’t go on strike during times like these. Believe me, the EMU-AAUP does not bluff, and I seriously doubt more than a handful of faculty will cross the lines. We might all have our various qualms and quibbles with the union, but faculty are not going to oppose a walk out, and when we do walk out, we will be out as long as it takes.
- Having said that, what I wish we would do is agree to keep working without a contract and let the negotiation process either continue or move to some sort of arbitration/mediation/fact finding solution.If we work without a contract (or really, under the previous contract), then everyone avoids the bad PR, everyone’s lives are much less disrupted, and we actually have more opportunity to persuade students, parents, and other stake-holders that they ought to be on the faculty side. To me, there’s not a lot of evidence that faculty strikes have really worked that well, and the best example as to why we should keep working without a contract came in 2006 (more on that below). But then we went back to teaching without a contract, and while I hope we don’t repeat that 8 0r 9 month process, faculty ultimately ended up with a fair deal.
- Like Jeff Bernstein, I’ve lived through three strikes in my 12 years at EMU. Though I think that one of those strikes was just barely actually a strike; someone will correct me if I’m wrong about this, but I think the strike “in the middle” was only a few hours long. Anyway, the first time I was on strike was I believe in 2000 or 2001 (I can’t remember now), and by all accounts I have heard since, it was a strike that was both avoidable and largely caused by the union. I don’t want to relive that ancient history, but the EMU-AAUP then was a very different and less capable group, and that changed for the better starting in 2003, when there was more or less a purge of the previous leadership.
- The third time I was on strike in 2006 was bitter and nasty and ugly. It was a bit of a “perfect storm” where I think you could argue both bargaining teams made mistakes and had some problems, but I mostly blame that strike on an 0ver-reaching and micro-managing Board of Regents and John Fallon’s incompetence. Actually, in hindsight, it was sort of the beginning of the end for him. Four days in, the BoR and Fallon issued a really mean and ugly ultimatum/take it or leave it or we will walk out of negotiations at 10 PM the fifth day into the strike.Five days in, the administration’s negotiating team walked away from the table. I was there and I recorded this audio that night and edited it together after (it’s a 9:32 mp3 file). I just listened to that recording again and if you are reading this now and weren’t around in 2006 (or maybe even if you were), I’d encourage you to give it 10 minutes of your time. For me, it brought back some dark memories: one of the most viscerally angry crowds I have ever seen, and one of the most bizarre events of my academic career.
Ultimately, the faculty went back to work without a contract and we went into a “fact finding” process that a) went on all year, b) cost the university A LOT of money, and c) ultimately resulted in a deal pretty close to what the faculty was asking for. The then chair of the BoR (and I think one other member?) resigned (I’m not sure how “voluntarily” that was, to be honest), and Fallon and Vick were fired for covering up the murder of Laura Dickinson. In other words, not exactly a win for anyone, and certainly not for the administration.
- This time around looks a lot more like 2006 than 2000, though there are some important differences. As unpleasant and as ugly as the current process is, it doesn’t seem quite as unpleasant and ugly as 2006. I think the negotiating team for the EMU-AAUP is rock-solid: besides the fact that “this is not their first rodeo,” so to speak, they have been even and reasonable. The administration’s team features a number of new people (for example, both the director of academic HR and the person in charge of benefits have been on the job less than four months, not to mention that no one at the very top was here to experience the 2006 strike), but it also includes a number of old-timers too. And “mean Jim Greene” is out of the picture. But what is the same now as in 2006 is we’re mainly talking about insurance, we’re again not talking about an enormous amount of money (relative to the overall budget of EMU), and we’re still dealing with a Board of Regents who are too involved in the process.
- My hope is that Susan Martin or Jack Kay or John Lumm or even someone on the BoR has the common sense to realize that everyone loses if the faculty go on strike, and, because those people have more to lose, they will lose more. My hope is that the university leadership team will actually take up the charge and lead to a reasonable solution. My hope is that the administration doesn’t continue to think the faculty is bluffing. My hope is that the folks negotiating for the faculty know what they’re doing and consider all the options (including working without a contract), though I also hope and believe that they will hold the line and not accept a pay cut. My hope is that I won’t have to go to a meeting on August 31 and I won’t have to picket on September 1 because we’ll have a deal. My hope is to teach on September 8, to be there when my honor’s section of freshman composition meets for the first time. I remain a hopeful man with many many doubts.
Hear, hear. Wonderful post and I wholeheartedly agree with Sitedad’s take on 2006 and the redux currently unfolding. I too hope we can continue teaching without a contract rather than walk out on strike. Then I hope we can move to factfinding/mediator to solve the impasse.
I too hope that the current administrator negotiators realize that their stance is a lose-lose one, and that as a university (note the “uni-” part of university), we are all in this university together. Creating negative PR, offering fuzzy, incorrect figures, and generally trying to short change the faculty while lining their own pockets with an 8.9% increase does not bode well for a happy, productive campus.
I thought Bunsis was the Treasurer now and someone else is the President? I couldn’t tell from all the news reports, he’s still clearly the spokesperson.
Well, Susan Moeller is president, and her name shows up in the press releases a lot. Donna Selman is the chief negotiator, by the way, though her and the other negotiators (other than Moeller, that is) aren’t really in the press that much. I guess they’re busy negotiating. Bunsis is indeed the elected Treasurer, but he’s also an officer (maybe Treasurer there too?) with the national AAUP, and he’s kind of become the “go to accountant” by the AAUP for countering administration arguments of “we have no money.” He’s done this for EMU of course, but he’s also done it for some other AAUP affiliates.
And Howard’s pretty good at talking/presenting in front of a big group, so he tends to show up in the press a fair amount.
Steve, our first strike was 2000. The middle strike was in 2004, and that was the one that lasted approximately seven hours. It is a damned shame I have brain cells still storing that information.
Steve and Cheryl, I think you’re right on. There is a lot of potential room between (1) not having a contract when the previous one expires and (2) going out on strike. There is the potential for continuing the old contract while the current one is negotiated, or agreeing to mediation, or agreeing to arbitration, or taking a week to cool down and breathe before negotiating, or perhaps various other possibilities. The union does not HAVE to call a strike the minute it is able to.
I said in a previous post that the PR implications of this can be disastrous, for the union and for the university. One of the e-mails Susan Moeller sent today referenced the comments section on AnnArbor.com and how out-of-touch the anti-union vitriol on that site is. Sorry, I don’t buy that. People all over this state are experiencing pay cuts, loss of hours, loss of jobs, etc. We simply cannot count on sympathy from the community. I know we are not directly comparable to the private sector, I know it is apples and oranges. I also know that people who’s pay was cut 10% earlier this year and not going to be inclined to support comparatively large raises for faculty at a state-supported institution. If we think they will, I think we’re deluding ourselves.
During the last strike, I proposed in many conversations with people, rank-and-file as well as union leadership, that a better strategy for the union would be to start the semester, even without a contract. Show the community that we’re not rushing to strike. Show our students that we are willing to work without a contract (or under an extension of the old one) for their educational benefit. The union can always call for a strike a couple of weeks into the semester, if it must. But the PR benefit of being there to start the semester will help counter the inevitable negativity that a strike will bring.
Remember, we are not obligated to strike the first chance we get. Remember that.
The administration has to agree to the idea of us continuing to work under the old contract while we continue to talk. Last time, that agreement came after a strike. (I had just arrived then).
If you’re going to strike, it seems start of fall is the only realistic time. You’re not stopping something in the middle. I’m not advocating a strike. I’m just saying that’s pretty much the only and most effective time to do it.
It is true that the administration would have to agree to this, but my sense is that if the EMU-AAUP asks, they will agree. This is what the PTs have done, by the way– the latest update on the negotiations on their page says they’ve agreed to work under the same/current contract until September 30.
Conversely, if the EMU-AAUP asked to extend the contract and the administration said “no,” then the EMU-AAUP would get a huge PR boost. The argument would then shift to “the administration has locked us out,” and there is no way faculty would get blamed for that.
It’d still be bad, of course. My preference, obviously, is to just settle the contract by the deadline.
bottom line, I’m not prepared to take a pay cut for what I do. My services are not worth less this September than they were in April.
Bud, there are a lot of people out there right now who have had to take a pay cut, through no fault of their own. Good luck in staying whole, but be careful how you present your case.
Well, see above and see other posts. I completely agree with Bud, and I frankly think that this is the position of the vast majority of faculty. I think that it’s pretty reasonable for faculty to say we want to break even, and while I appreciate that a lot of people are taking pay cuts and/or are out of work, EMU is in pretty decent financial shape.
Unlike the auto industry or the airline industry or many other kinds of private enterprises, EMU can afford it. And btw, we’re a public institution designed not to make a profit, so it seems to me that EMU has a certain obligation to use its money to treat its employees right.
You know, there are times when the powers that be have no choice but to pass along pay cuts to everyone, but generally speaking, when that is happening, the balance sheet looks very bad and the powers that be take pay cuts too. Neither is the case here, and in fact, the administration really hasn’t disputed any of the money issues brought up by the union– that is, about how the ratio of administrator pay versus faculty pay is out of whack, etc.
Rimshot, the key point in any negotiation is what is your best alternative to negotiated agreement. It pays always to have alternatives open.
It’s really a simple contract issue, not a moral one, and it happens all the time. The fact that others are accepting pay cuts doesn’t mean I have to and vice versa. It all depends on your alternatives to a given contract.
As my colleagues’ comments have indicated, the timing of a strike is a crucial strategic choice for any labor union going on strike. Often, in American labor history, the most effective strikes came as surprises to the employers. That is rarely possible in modern situations with “mature” labor contracts (ones that have existed for years and been revised over time, like the EMU faculty’s contract). But still, it was a serious strategic error in 2006 for the AAUP to start that strike the moment the contract expired, days before the first classes began. Despite widespread beliefs in the faculty at the time that that strike was poorly timed, the faculty struck with banners high and a tremendously impressive unity. Tactical errors by a union’s leadership hardly, in the views of nearly all faculty members, warranted any reason to NOT stand firm in the face of utterly narrow minded management objectives. Management was taken by surprise by what should have been as obvious as daylight: The EMU faculty is strongly united behind our collective bargaining representatives and determined to not lose at the table what years of struggle have built up. The EMU-AAUP has done as much if not more, than any unit of the university, over the decades, to make EMU a more professional and effective university.
I see no signs whatsoever that now, in 2010, faculty unity is any less than it was in 2006, even though, clearly, the management side is now made up of more capable and more decent human beings. Management is always at EMU overconfident in its own judgments and too removed from the real life of the university. That is less true now than ever in my 16 years here, but much truth remains in that statement, despite recent and real improvements.
I am personally very sorry that the two sides failed to reach an agreement before the last minute. Being on the brink of war is costly in variety of ways — the biggest one being, of course, that war will erupt, despite the stated intention of each side to avoid war. Strikes, like wars, have consequences and at EMU, they’ve not been contemplated or recognized in advance by the management negotiators.
Personally, I’m very tired of the EMU wars, and I’m a veteran of them. Reasonably capable, highly educated people on both sides of the table ought to be able to reach an agreement before the last minute. Yet time and again, each side has its own reasons for waiting til the endgame. History of course is the best predictor of the future, and by what’s come before, a strike this year has all along been probable. More probable as each day goes by. In 2004, when I was most deeply involved in AAUP, management made more concessions in the first few hours of the 7 hour strike than it had made in the prior 4 months: such experience teaches that EMU negotiations is a high stakes, last minute game.
Like many colleagues, I’m just sorry that it’s come to this, and I hope management doesn’t think the faculty lacks resolve. As Sitedad has wisely noted on this blog, the EMU faculty and our union do not bluff and the faculty is united. Most everyone I’ve talked to on the faculty are sad and disappointed, by the apparent probability of a strike and the failure to get a reasonable agreement in a timely fashion; but being sad and disappointed isn’t the same as unwilllingness to do what might become necessary.
It’s a lovely day outside. May the two sides make it even better by reaching an agreement.
Solidarity forever! Education First! Go Eagles.