Category Archives: The Strike of 2006

We all know plenty about the bad things about the faculty stirke going on here, of course.  But hey, it could be worse.  According to this story in Inside Higer Ed, the situation at Hartnell (Community) College in California is pretty freakin’ grim:

A faculty strike involving about 150 full- and part-time instructors began at 5:30 a.m. Friday, an aggressive action after more than two years of relative inaction regarding a new faculty contract that would now, if approved, be retroactive to the 2004-5 school year. Not a single class has been canceled since the strike began, President Edward J. Valeau said, despite the fact that only about 100 of the college’s regular faculty remain on the job. Administrators are plugging in the holes — a decision college officials characterize as a will to continue offering a core educational program, and a faculty leader characterizes as “bordering on fraud.”

To make matters worse, they tried “fact finding” out there, and had an experience that doesn’t exactly reassure me:

Faculty supporters point to a July report released by a state-funded “fact-finding panel� that argues that the administration can afford to meet the demands of the Faculty Association.Yet [President Edward J.] cited a May report by the Fiscal Crisis Management and Assistance Team, an entity designated by the state of California to assist local educational institutions with financial concerns, that states that Hartnell, which faces declining enrollments, could find itself with a negative balance by fiscal year 2007-8 if current levels of deficit spending continue. “To pile on any more costs that we have to incur, the district will not be able to hold,� Valeau said.

Yikes!

I drove by the Convocation center Saturday afternoon (while on an errand to solve the problem caused last night when our TV just stopped working) and I saw part of the “stealth PR� campaign being waged by the EMU-AAUP to remind people we’re still on strike.

Bunsis sent around an email the other day that said something like “Can you believe it? People think we’ve settled the contract!� Well, yeah, I can believe that. We’re teaching classes, there’s been nothing by the EMU-AAUP on campus to inform folks otherwise, and they’re just now getting around to having some kind of “informational� picket. And BTW, if you want the media to show up at an event, don’t post the press release the day before that event.

But even with that, it looked like a good turn out, at least from my drive-by. I saw a good handful of people waving red signs outside the Convo. I didn’t see any media. And I did see some anti-choice folks out there with big signs of aborted fetuses, presumably having their own sideline protest.

Anyway, the real news for me is Friday’s article in the Ann Arbor News, “Auxiliary pay boosts salaries of EMU profs.� It leads off with mention of one of my colleagues down the hall, Harry Eiss, who earned an extra $95,000 from “auxiliary� teaching last year (we’ll get to the “how� of that in a bit) and then goes form there. Here’s a passage:

Eiss is just one of dozens of EMU professors who earn considerably more than their base salaries, according to a faculty pay list released by EMU under the Freedom of Information Act.

The gross salary figures add another, less-publicized element to the current negotiation impasse between the university and its faculty, which is teaching under an expired contract.

Faculty members struck during the first week of class, citing faculty pay as a main issue, but returned to work under their old contract. Now, the two sides are trying to agree on a state fact-finder, who will conduct a hearing after the lengthy process of trying to sort out the two sides’ differing versions of economic reality.

In public statements during the negotiations and the ensuing strike, the faculty union said professors are underpaid compared to their peers at other Mid-American Conference universities, while the administration maintained that they have a better ranking than professors at universities with missions similar to EMU’s.

Faculty leaders repeatedly cited the $68,161 average salary of professors as they talked of the need for better pay. That figure doesn’t take into account that nearly three-fourth of the more than 660 professors listed on EMU’s payroll for 2005 received a higher gross pay than their base salary by teaching extra courses.

Now, to be fair to the AA News, they do get around to explaining how some of this comes about later in the article, though it’s still not that clear. So here’s my effort at trying to explain what is a situation that is a heck of a lot more complicated than it might at first appear. Bear with me; this post goes on for a bit. Continue reading →

Recently, a colleague (who I am sure would prefer to remain nameless) sent me an open letter written by a faculty member at SUNY-Potsdam to a then president of the school, none other than John Fallon. The letter is linked here (it’s an MS Word document).

The controversy then had to do with Fallon’s appointment of a Provost through less than official/proper means, not unlike what happened with Don Loppnow in the Winter term (though, to be fair, there are some differences that become apparent in this letter, the process at SUNY-Postdam seems a bit more fishy than it was here, and faculty on the whole liked Loppnow when he was named Provost, and I think he still has his fans through all of this).

What’s striking to me though is how a similar feeling of exasporation with Fallon and the leadership of the insitution. Here’s one example of what I mean:

In short, it is difficult for me to imagine a more bungled process, nor a more muddled decision. One must be seriously concerned with the direction of the College after having seen this process in action. But this alone might not push me over the edge if I didn’t see it as merely the most recent bit of an emerging pattern of disdain and disrespect for the academic side of the College. The opinions and expertise of the teaching faculty have consistently been ignored or dismissed from the outset of this President’s tenure. Financial decisions are made without consultation of the academic leaders, including the Provost … or in direct opposition to the clearly expressed will of the faculty ….

Here’s another example:

The College can be more accurately described as being run from the financial and enrollment management sides of the College than from the Academic side. And the evidence supports the idea that these are not units working together for some single end. Rather Academic affairs has become more and more emasculated and eviscerated. One might very well speculate that the decision concerning Interim Provost is a calculated one designed to further undermine the academic voice on this campus. One might speculate that the candidates whose names were forwarded to the President by the search committee were unacceptable to him precisely because they appeared to be strong advocates for the academic mission of the college (thus explaining the painfully, discourteously slow decision process which in itself undermined any possibility that either candidate would seriously consider the position even if offered).

But like I said, read the whole thing for yourself if interested….

Recently, College of Arts and Science Interim Dean and head of the Administration’s negotiating team Hartmut Hoft sent around an email and a spreadsheet that tries to explain the administration’s take on how they explained the salaries. Here’s a link to it (an excel file), in case you’re interested.

Shortly after this was sent out, Jim VandenBosch sent around another email to faculty where he expressed his own reading of the question of salary comparisons and such. Jim’s version is available here via the EMU-AAUP web site.

Three basic thoughts about all of this stuff:

• I have to say that nothing makes me glaze over more quickly than excel documents and talk about salaries and numbers and stuff. To be honest, I really don’t even know how much money I make exactly. I mean, I have an idea, and I know how much money I don’t make, but I have to say I just don’t pay as much attention as I should.
• For me, the really meaningful statistic is not the average salary for faculty at a particular rank; the really interesting number is how many faculty fall below the average salary. For example, according to Hoft’s excel sheet, the average salary for an associate professor at EMU (my rank) is $64,345. Well, look, I know I make A LOT less than that. So the question is how many associate professors are there who are in the same boat as me and who make considerably less than this so-called average.

  Afterall, the average of $30,000 , $40,000, $40,000, and $100,000 is $52,500 and $52,500 is a number that a) is a fair distance away from $30 K or $40 K, and b) when three out of the four numbers are well-below the average, there’s something wrong with the average.

• I don’t want to sound too much like Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer here, but I am but a simple English professor and I cannot pretent to understand your complicate numbers and math and formulas. But I do know this: ever since I’ve been here (I came in 1998) and long before that, both the administration and the EMU-AAUP agreed that faculty at EMU were underpaid. Hell, even Sam Kirkpatrick said that faculty weren’t paid as well as they should be. The debate– contract and otherwise– was always about what could the institution afford or not afford to pay faculty to help bring up their rate of pay.

  But that’s all seemed to change. All of a sudden, this group of administration negotiators has said that faculty at EMU are paid quite well. Aren’t numbers a funny funny thing?

A fellow student asked me to pass this on in response to Bud Gibson’s post. The content is his, I tried to make the appearance a little better for the blog.

Thanks for your analysis of student involvement in the recent faculty strike. Throughout the events and discourse of this past strike I have heard arguments coming from some students saying that ‘the students’ are the heart of this college and their needs (lower tuition, primarily) should be in the fore. Likewise, I have heard some faculty members proclaim that it is they who are the heart of this university. Let’s complete this, shall we? It is the student and faculty nexus that creates real ‘currency’ for any university – EMU included. Of course, full time lecturers, GA’s, maintenance and all other university staff play major roles in shaping this and other universities – and the AAUP needs to be more sensitive to and to build alliances with those populations if they are to mount successful campaigns in the future. Believe me, after losing this strike, they are acutely aware of this.

The faculty had voted 311 to 14 to authorize the strike on August 30, 2006 if an agreement was not reached by the end of the day on August 31st. Students became aware of the strike as they moved into their dorms and apartments or otherwise heard about it via local media from September 1 and throughout the Labor Day weekend. Three fellow students and I met on Tuesday September 5, the day before the first day of classes. We organized ourselves to rally student support for the faculty, obtaining material support (tables, chairs, copiers) from the union office. We quickly developed leaflets and literature to hand out to students as well as a petition letter of support for the faculty which demanded that the administration return to the bargaining table with real intentions of negotiation. This is it:

STUDENTS SUPPORT PROFESSORS STRIKE
Whereas, students at EMU understand that the current strike of the professors is one ultimately based on the interest of making this institution one that can actually provide the quality education that students here pay for, expect and deserve.

NAME PHONE NUMBER E-MAIL ADDRESS

We gathered over 1200 student signatures in the first three days of classes. We delivered them to the Assistant to the Vice-President of Student Affairs (Administration PR ‘yes man’) at 4:45pm on Friday September 8, 2006.

I am truly disheartened by your analysis. It is as though you believe students are pawns of the faculty/administration chess match of strike maneuvering. Sure, there was direct interaction between students involved in supporting faculty and faculty who were active union members. Professor/student interactions are what drives and makes the university experience a high-energy learning experience for all involved. I am curious as to why you frame the issues in this manner.

“I think the president of the student government is spot on. Sure, Bunsis may have met with him a few times. That’s not going to change the reality of the students’ situation. They’re caught in the middle. I don’t think it is right for us to try to recruit students into this. They should represent their own interests. Student interests are different from those of faculty.�
“The comments I received on my post about whether faculty should be recruiting students to their side elicited two kinds of responses:
Faculty and students who said this was not happening (I did not entirely buy that, but you can read their comments and decide).
Dismayed observations that the faculty might not have engaged in enough proselytizing in light of the administration’s efforts.�

I think the president of the student government is playing the triangulation game. I think both of you are falling for the administration ‘wedge propaganda’ (not that the union doesn’t have propaganda) perpetuating the myth that faculty salary and benefit increases are the reason that tuition continues to rise – ostensibly putting students in the middle of the dispute between faculty and administration. This is a misrepresentation of the issues at hand. If your apparent assumption is true, why is it that fewer faculty teach (55% down from 70%) while tuition has gone up in recent years?

“Proselytizing?� I’m sure you have many experiences that are driving your other assumptions about student involvement. I just think you could give us a bit more credit for our ability to critically analyze and ability to act upon our desire for a more democratically run university where the faculty, students, full-time lecturers, part time adjuncts, maintenance all have a voice.

Respectfully –
Greg Pratt
EMU social work student

When I (as sitedad) first set this site up, one of the things that I thought should be “fair game” here are rumors.  Things people have heard second, third, or fourth hand, things that demonstrate fears or beliefs, things that have a ring of truth to them but that are rarely the actual truth.

Rumors are not to be believed.  Yet rumors are still interesting, and I think they are still part of the process of figuring out “what’s going on.”

So, with those qualifiers in mind, let me pass along three rumors I’ve heard recently.  I obviously cannot confirm or deny my sources nor can I say that they are accurate:

• Provost Don Loppnow (and a lot of the administrators in Welch, for that matter) are being eaten up physically and mentally by the whole strike issue.  I have heard folks say he “does not look good.”  You know, everyone I know says the Don is a “good guy,” and I’ve always thought that too.  I just wish he’d take the chance and try to be a hero here.  Of course, maybe he’s already doing what he can….
• When told that there might be a vote of “no confidence” by the faculty, President John Fallon said “well, I don’t have confidence in the faculty either.”
• I think this one is less rumor-ish than the other two (I really kind of doubt that one about Fallon, to tell the truth).  Apparently, the “fact finding” process advocated by the administration is expensive– I mean like REALLY expensive, so much so that they might even be willing to neogotiate again to avoid it.  That’d be kind of funny.

  I hope that someone does some kind of investigation about EMU’s legal fees on this one, because I have a feeling that, at the end of it all, the money the administration spent on lawyers and PR wonks was more than the 1 or 2 percent in salary increase the faculty union was asking.

Like I said, rumors.  Or, as Kathy Griffin (coming to the convo on October 20, btw) says a lot, allegedly.

Toward the end of the strike, the Detroit News ran a rather unflattering editorial about the faculty’s and union’s position on all this stuff.  Here’s a link to EMU-AAUP President Howard Bunsis’ reply.