Faculty contract negotiations have long posed struggles for universities statewide, but few schools of comparable size to Central Michigan University have experienced a faculty strike.

“It’s not unusual for any university that has faculty groups to have serious negotiations,” said Cindy Paavola, director of communications and marketing at Northern Michigan University.

“Our faculty unions have never gone on strike. There has only been one strike in the history of the university and that was with the technical office professionals in 1981,” she said.

NMU has two faculty unions, the American Association of University Professors, which covers the majority of instructors, and the NUMFA. The NUMFA just ratified a contract, she said, and the AAUP will begin negotiations for a contract this spring.

Paavola said it is hard to say which issues discussion will center on for the AAUP’s contract.

“It’s not unusual to have a period during negotiations where things don’t look rosy. Discussions can become heated, but that doesn’t mean they won’t come to a reasonable conclusion,” she said.

Saginaw Valley

The faculty and administration at Saginaw Valley State University just completed negotiations for a new contract last summer. The old faculty contract, which expired June 30, had to be extended until Aug.15 because of conflicts with negotiations.

An agreement in principle, which means both parties came to a mutual agreement on contract issues but had yet to finalize all paperwork, was not reached until Aug. 14, said SVSU communications director J.J. Boehm.

Boehm said SVSU faculty have always reached an agreement on contract issues without taking job action, although the process is never easy, he said.

Boehm said the Michigan economy has undoubtedly played a large role in the challenges many universities are facing right now to make ends meet efficiently.

“All state universities and state agencies are grappling with what is a very challenged state budget. There is no question the economic situation of the state affects collective bargaining,” he said.

SVSU has never fully gone through fact-finding to resolve contract issues, although the university began such a procedure in 2007.

Boehm said the university chose a fact-finder and scheduled a preliminary hearing, but the two parties were able to reach an agreement independently before the process got underway.

The support staff contract was eventually signed in November 2007, more than a year after the previous one expired.

Eastern Michigan

Faculty at Eastern Michigan University have struggled with contracts in the past and have implemented job action to convey the situation’s gravity.

In 2006, negotiations for a faculty contract overextended the contract’s expiration date of Sept. 1, 2006.

Bargaining teams from EMU and the American Association of University Professors had more than 20 bargaining sessions throughout summer 2006 but were unable to reach an agreement on several economic issues, according to an EMU press release.

The EMU chapter of the AAUP walked away from negotiations on Aug. 31, 2006 and cited a lack of progress. A strike was called for on Sept. 5, 2006.

Faculty members remained on strike until Sept. 12, 2006, although classes for student began as scheduled on Wednesday, Sept. 6 ,2006.

The job action affected 50 percent of classes for a six-day time period. Faculty agreed Sept. 13, 2006 to accept an offer EMU made Sept. 6, 2006 to go through fact-finding.

According to the Eastern Echo, a fact-finder was selected on Oct. 21, 2006 from a panel provided by the Michigan Employee Relations Commission. Preliminary hearings began on Nov. 21, 2006, nearly two months after the university originally petitioned to MERC for the process.

Hearings continued through March 2007, as the fact-finder found universities around the state which could be termed as comparable to EMU for parallel discussions.

Throughout the duration of the September strike, EMU maintained a strike information hotline for students to get up-to-date information on occurrences and to have questions answered, according to the press release.

Ward Mullens, associate director of communications at EMU, said the university did its best to be flexible during the faculty strike. He said most teachers, if not all, made up lost time during regular class periods, without having to tack any extra class meetings onto the semester.

“As I recall, we held as many classes as possible,” he said. “To my understanding, if a strike lasts any less than two weeks, time can be made up in class. But after two weeks, classes are rescheduled and tuition is a concern.”

Mullens said the faculty strike did not impact university athletics, but said only one to two faculty members serve in the athletic department, a number he explained is less broad-based than other schools.

“I guess it worked as well as it could have under extreme circumstances,” he said. “There were lots of mixed emotions. Anytime you have an event of that magnitude it disrupts students’ education . some understood, some did not.”

He described the fact-finding process, which eventually came about as a success, because the contract was approved and both sides were happy with the results.

“We were lucky to have an alternate (method) to pursue and lucky it worked out, though neither side wanted it to go that far. It was definitely a very serious level of negotiation,” Mullens said.

Ferris State

Ferris State University Faculty also resorted to job action, in 1997, as a means of handling sticky contract situations.

Leah Nixon, assistant director of news services at FSU, said in an e-mail to Central Michigan Life that classes that did not meet during the strike were made up during the school year without any extra time added to the end of the semester.

She said no classes were completely canceled during the strike; all students still reported to class as normal. In cases were faculty were still available to teach, instruction went on as scheduled. In other circumstances, an administrator took attendance and offered further instruction as to what students should do, she said.

Contract negotiations in 2002 and 2006 at FSU were resolved prior to the start of those academic years.

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E-mail the author: Heidi Fenton