Below is an email from EMU-AAUP president Susan Moeller about what is likely to be one of the major topics of negotiations this season, health care costs. What else is new? It sounds like the administration is trying to force a plan before negotiations proper begin; still, before the union reacts too negatively, perhaps we ought to see what the administration’s plan actually is all about.
Read on after the break.
EMU-AAUP sent around the following email to faculty, but I’m assuming these are petitions that can be signed by any legal voter in the state:
We really need your help. It is important that we support the Protect Our Jobs campaign. Protect our Jobs is the campaign run by the AFLCIO with all the other unions in the State to get the right to have collective bargaining in the State’s constitution.
The MIAAUP has a seat at the Labor Table which is running the campaign. The campaign needs to gather 500,000 signatures from Michigan citizens. Without collective bargaining at EMU, you would not have the benefits you have. Many of you have been helped by the union – please give back.
The EMU-AAUP has promised to collect 700 signatures – one signature per member. The MIAAUP has hired a student to intern for us and help organize this campaign at the local level. His name is Daniel Routley and he is an Economics major at EMU.
We have a goal of 12 signatures per faculty member – which is getting one petition completed. Daniel will be at the following locations and would like you to come get a petition on Monday, May 7th, and then return the petition on Wednesday,May 9th. We only have until July 1 to complete this campaign.
For next Monday, May 7th, Daniel will be at the following locations:
8:45-9:45 Pray Harrold
9:45-10:45 Porter-Marshall
10:45-11:45 Library
5:00-6:00 COBHe will return to the same places and same times Wednesday, May 9th to collect the petitions.
I think I signed this earlier, but I’ll definitely try to take a look at it again. Of course, the timing is kinda bad since lots of people who would be around at these times a couple weeks ago aren’t around now. Anyway, if you see this petition and you believe in the right for workers to organize, take a few minutes to read it and sign it– faculty-type or not.
Posted in EMU-AAUP, State Government
The Michigan AAUP sent around an email this afternoon with this interesting tidbit:
The Michigan Legislature is in the process of finalizing the 2012-13 budget. The House version of this bill contains language that would prevent universities that receive public funds from collaborating with any nonprofit organization that publicly criticizes any Michigan business.Specifically: ”It is the intent of the legislature that a public university that receives funds in section 236 shall not collaborate in any manner with a nonprofit worker center whose documented activities include coercion through protest, demonstration, or organization against a Michigan business.”The proposed language is so broad that it could potentially prevent public universities from forming partnerships or placing students with virtually any civic, religious, or other nonprofit organization that engages in public outreach. This is clearly interference in the curriculum that is offered at our universities and therefor an infringement on the academic freedom of the students, faculty and universities.Take Action - tell your legislature to reject Sec 273a of the 2012-13 House version of the higher education budget bill.
Posted in Budgets, EMU-AAUP, State Government
In response to the EMU-AAUP’s call for a formal apology from EMU Faculty Senate, it would appear that Faculty Senate Matt Evett has responded. Here’s the email he sent around to faculty:
Dear faculty colleagues,
I have just sent the following letter to Provost Schatzel. I understand
that many of you will not have read the draft resolution that this
letter refers to, as it was never distributed beyond the Senate
membership. Nonetheless, the Senate Executive Board feels that it is
important that this letter be seen by the entire faculty.Yours, Matt
==========
Dear Provost Schatzel,
The Faculty Senate Executive Board’s process for creating the draft
resolution (20120418.1) for the consideration of the Faculty Senate at
the April 18, 2012 meeting was flawed.Although the draft resolution was never brought to the Senate floor and
has never been an official position of the Senate, we regret the
dissemination of the resolution’s preliminary draft, which contained
unfounded allegations of wrongful actions attributed to you. We
recognize that your actions were consistent with the EEOC and the AAUP
Collective Bargaining Agreement.The Executive Board takes full responsibility for any misrepresentations
of your actions in that draft. We apologize for any negative
repercussions to the Office of the Provost and you personally. We are
examining our internal processes to ensure improvement.Members of the Faculty Senate Executive Board:
Matt Evett
Daryl Barton
Marti Bombyk
Perry Francis
Suzanne Gray
Patrick Koehn
Robert Orrange
Posted in Administrator Life, EMU-AAUP, Faculty Life
A loyal EMUTalk reader emailed me this morning wondering why it is that Susan Moeller’s email to faculty on Friday (I include it with the “Continue reading” link) hasn’t generated more discussion on EMUTalk and elsewhere. Speaking just for myself: I was super-duper swamped Thursday and Friday last week with the day job, so my basic reaction to this reader’s question was “what email?” So I just went back now and read it.
Yikes!
The short and non-technical version is that EMU-AAUP President Susan Moeller is strongly critical of the way the Faculty Senate tried to pass some resolutions against Provost Schatzel because she made associate provosts Jim Carroll and Rhonda Longworth permanent. Here’s the paragraph in Moeller’s letter that jumped out at me:
The Senate President owes the Provost a public apology. In addition, it is imperative that everyone understands that the EMU-AAUP is the sole bargaining authority on the contract and the Senate President does not have the authority to interpret the contract. Contract language that is negotiated at the table is done so with specific intent; we must adhere to the intent of the agreement.
Again, yikes!
Posted in Administrator Life, EMU-AAUP, Faculty Life
From The Chronicle comes “AAUP Election Results Reflect Backlash Against Recent Leadership Decisions.” I have to say that I don’t follow the national politics of the AAUP that closely, so I’m not completely sure what this is about. But I think this is passage mostly sums it up
The slate of candidates who won had adopted a platform arguing that “the single most effective way to protect academic freedom and shared governance is through collective bargaining” and that the association’s top priority must be organizing, through the formation of union chapters where collective bargaining is allowed and advocacy chapters elsewhere.
Among its campaign promises, it pledged to expand the role of the organization’s national council, which votes on the recommendations of the executive committee, and to change the AAUP’s constitution “so that committees are not solely appointed by the president.”
But I could be wrong. Any EMU-AAUP-types out there want to comment?
:
Posted in EMU-AAUP, In the media...
The EMU-AAUP is currently “gathering data” from faculty about various IT concerns at EMU, and it occurred to me that I might as well post that here for non-faculty-types to chime in on too. I will kick things off by mentioning two and a half concerns:
My 2 cents. What does everybody else think?
Posted in EMU Technology, EMU-AAUP
Here’s an interesting piece from today’s Inside Higher Ed, “Slow Recovery.” To quote the opening paragraphs:
An annual survey of faculty salaries being released today by the American Association of University Professors paints a dismal picture, suggesting that a historic low period for compensation increases continues. This trend may go on for a while, the report says, and it questions whether the numbers will ever go back to where they were before the Great Recession.
According to the survey, titled “A Very Slow Recovery,” average faculty salaries rose by 1.8 percent in 2011-12 at institutions that submitted data for this academic year and the last one. The increase, the survey points out, is less than the 3 percent rate of inflation in the same time period.
“When all of the salary data submitted in each year is adjusted to account for inflation, the overall average salary of a full-time faculty member in 2011-12 is less than 1 percent higher than it was five years ago, in 2006-2007,” says the report, which includes data from 1,250 colleges and universities.
But I really think they buried the lead here. The piece also includes a handy chart that compares the average increase in tuition and fees at colleges/universities over the last 30 years versus increases in faculty salaries. So, for example: while tuition and fees at public four year institutions have risen 72% over the last 10 years, faculty salaries at maters universities (e.g., places like EMU) have declined 5.3%.
Posted in Administrator Life, Budgets, EMU-AAUP, Faculty Life, In the media...
From annarbor.com comes ”Graduate student unionization bill heads to Snyder.” It’s an AP wire story about how bill designed to block unionization of graduate assistants at U of M has made its way to Governor Snyder’s desk, and he’s likely to sign it.
Two things that occur to me about this. First, this is the climate in which the faculty are about to start negotiating a new contract. I have no idea how that process is going to go, but it seems pretty clear to me that striking faculty will not be looked on kindly by the legislature or the governor. And second, why in the heck does annarbor.com need a wire service to do a story that is this local?
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….
Posted in Administrator Life, EMU-AAUP, Faculty Life
