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Non-tenured CMU faculty looking to unionize

By on November 20, 2009 6:00 am in University / 6 comments

 
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The Michigan Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers Michigan are seeking to organize with Central Michigan University’s non-tenured faculty.

The hope is, at the end, one will represent the group in collective bargaining with the administration.

“(Non-tenured faculty) need to determine what will be the best course of action for them,” said Tim Brannan, Faculty Association president. “We support them fully in any attempt to organize.”

Brannan said the suggestion was made by the FA to look at the MEA but, in the end, it is ultimately their choice on which one they choose.

“This is a very important step,” he said. “If they organize, it will put them in a better place.”

There are 220 full-time non-tenured faculty and 208 part-time non-tenured faculty at CMU, said Ann Miller, director of Faculty Employment and Compensation, in a previous interview.

CMU: No problem

Steve Smith, director of public relations, said the administration is aware of the non-tenured faculty’s attempt to organize.
However, since there has been no contact by any representative, he could not comment directly on the issue, but said working with them should not be a problem.

“We have several collective bargaining units on campus,” Smith said. “We always worked with them in good faith, and I wouldn’t see that to be any different with the temporary faculty.”

The MEA has members volunteering during the afternoons and evenings on campus for the next three weeks to bring awareness of what the MEA has to offer for non-tenured faculty, said MEA Statewide Organizing Consultant Nancy Knight. The MEA, she said, will put the needs of CMU’s non-tenured faculty first.

“We already represent two large unions on CMU,” Knight said. “The MEA is the largest representative of higher education in Michigan.”

The MEA has been at CMU for more than 40 years, she said. Knight wants the non-tenured faculty to know they have a choice in which organization to choose. Her desire is to have a vote in early December.

Organization

Elizabeth Richard, a communications and dramatic arts instructor, said the focus should be about the issues for non-tenured faculty and nothing else. Richard, a member with the Union of Teaching Faculty, is working with the AFT to organize.

“They talked to us and wanted to know what we wanted as non-tenured faculty at CMU,” she said. “They want to know what we are looking for in a union.”

There are a lot of different needs and departments at CMU, Richard said.

“My perspective here is to stay focused on the issues for non-tenured faculty,” Richard said. “Our goal is to make CMU a much better place for everybody and to address those issues that affect non-tenured faculty.”

Job security, wages and a lot of issues need to be addressed with the administration, Richard said.

“I feel AFT Michigan has a lot of experience with non-tenured faculty in the collective bargaining process,” she said.

Richard said she is confident they will be able to vote on the union next semester.

 

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  • Cathy

    One clarification: the non-tenure *track* faculty are looking to unionize. Tenure-track faculty members who have not gotten tenure yet are also “non-tenured faculty” and are members of the Faculty Association.

  • steve

    Bottom line is part-time and non union faculty are a big part of a university. Being represented by union could keep quality education for students as a central focus. It is good to bring this into public discussion.

  • Oh Boy

    Yup steve, just like unions build up our great Public Schools and domestic automakers. Its purely job protection, not quality.

  • Frank

    Yeah Oh Boy, lets keep wages low and working conditions poor for those non-tenure track faculty. Nothing like a little lesson in the free market to keep them in relative poverty and struggling to help you earn a quality education. You’d think that someone with a PhD and 60k in debt should count themselves lucky earning 5 dollars an hour. Sigh. Perhaps you’d like to “get what you pay for?”

    Protect workers, protect education. Just because someone has an MA or PhD, doesn’t mean they cannot be exploited. I support their efforts to organize – though I am surprised that Steve Smith was so quick to welcome them to the bargaining table, whereas the Graduate Student Union had to fight for nearly two years (still, relatively short considering other union struggles) in order to be finally recognized.

  • AnAdjunct

    Brannan states, “the suggestion was made by the FA [for adjuncts] to look at the MEA.” Is Brannan stating that the Faculty Association, as an organized group, voted to formally suggest that non-tenure faculty “to look” at the FA’s own union, the MEA, rather than the other union, the AFT? This is puzzling as not one FA member whom I’ve spoken with was aware that that the their union was endorsing, at any point, one union over another for non-tenure-track faculty. A few of these same regular faculty members astutely noted that this “recommendation” is a conflict of interest, i.e. FA members, who may be encouraging adjuncts to choose the MEA, are direct supervisors of these same adjuncts, and responsible for their rehiring and/or reviews. Furthermore, Brannan’s “suggestion” seems a bit more than that as a non-tenure-track faculty member sent out an email to fellow adjuncts on behalf of the MEA after this article was published that stated that the FA was in full support of, and encouraged, the “decision” of non-tenure-track faculty members to join the MEA. As an adjunct, I find the FA’s position (or at least its executive board) to be shady, in an ethical sense. The administration is not supposed to pressure faculty/staff to join a certain union or not join union, period, so why is the FA engaging in the same, seemingly prohibited, conduct? I find it unacceptable that a chairperson or personnel committee member could ostensibly pressure non-tenure-track faculty to join the FA’s own union.

  • steve

    I hope there will be more about this topic. The situation with adjuncts is worth paying attention to.