This in from Provost Schatzel:
EMU’s negotiating team for this summer’s faculty contract negotiations has been named. Team members are as follows:
- James J. Carroll, interim Associate Provost and Associate Vice President for Research, Chief Negotiator
- Rhonda Longworth, interim Associate Provost and Associate Vice President for Academic Programming
- David Woike, interim Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs
- Christine Karshin, Director, School of Health Promotion and Human Performance
- Todd Ohmer, Executive Assistant to the Chief Financial Officer, Business and Finance
I don’t think there’s any real surprises here….
Let’s hope the union shows some cajones this time around.
How long has David Woike been an admin? Nice to see the music department pushing some weight finally.
Looks like good teams on both sides of the table.
With three of the administration’s team being interim, it sure doesn’t appear as if any one of them will have the power to make meaningful decisions. I suspect the process will not proceed as rapidly as one might hope due to the following: when the AAUP team proposes something, the administration’s team will have to request a recess to enable them to phone for instructions.
Yeah, this is my fear too. I think these are all good eggs/good people, but I’ve seen good people on both sides of the table do some really shitty things. The strike that really launched this site in 2006 immediately comes to mind.
BTW, do we know who is negotiating on behalf of the faculty yet?
Well, those are very skilled people. And the interims you note have extensive academic experience.
As Susan Moeller reported at the regents meeting, it’s: Susan Moeller, Howard Bunsis, Donna Selman, Joe Bishop and Suzanne Gray.
Contract talks by EMU administrators have never before had a named team of negotiators that actually had the authority to make agreements at the table. Instead, the administrative team’s decisions are all made by somebody not on the team….be that the president, a couple powerful Regents, whoever. Judge Donald Shelton, a former Regent himself, acknowledged this problem when he was under consideration in 2008 to become EMU’s president. He vowed to fix it, but didn’t get the job as president.
So Lamont is right. No reason to think this year will be any different from other contract years.
From what those on campus tell me, it may well resemble a bad TV Land rerun of the last negotiations, I’m afraid. To make any decisions at the table, administrators will have to make clandestine calls to the president, who will then channel the information up the orchestrated puppet string to Regents who will be way too involved in contract talks, but spread the word (i.e., veiled threats) that the media is not too know the level of their sordid involvement.