Dear Colleagues:
In February 2020, all Lecturers and Senior Lecturers up for renewal appointments were issued notices of non-renewal by college administrators across campus. These notices were issued because Deans wanted to maximize their budget flexibility by putting Lecturers’ jobs on the line and as we explain below, were issued in bad faith. Lecturers make up 12% of all full-time faculty, and they are routinely used as pawns to leverage the changes Wayne State administrators want to see in academic programs and the workloads of tenured and tenure-track faculty. We’re asking that the administration treat Lecturers, Senior Lecturers, and all Clinical and Research faculty with the professionalism they deserve. We’re not raising the issue of contingent faculty to you just because we want your support for Lecturers and Clinical and Research faculty, but because the fate and material well-being of all Wayne State faculty are tied to the protections – or lack of protections – that these faculty have. Changing these conditions will require the actions and support of Tenured and Tenure-Track faculty.
The contingent status of Lecturers, Senior Lecturers, Clinical faculty, and Research faculty is a threat to the working conditions of both tenured and non-tenure-track full-time faculty on this campus. The problem at Wayne State is similar to many institutions across the country: the increased use of contingent full-time faculty has come at the cost of an erosion of tenure-track positions, which allows administrators to maximize their power at the expense of shared governance. What this means in practice is that the administration is attempting to use contingent full-time faculty, including Lecturers, Senior Lecturers, and Clinical and Research professors, as pawns to undermine shared governance and force structural changes on departments and programs, whether or not faculty in those departments agree that the changes are necessary or beneficial to their core educational mission.
We saw this happen in CLAS a couple of years ago when Lecturers were fired from one department to manipulate the tenured faculty in that department to teach higher enrolling courses. We see this happening now as CLAS is putting Lecturers’ jobs on the chopping block again with one-year contracts to force two departments to change course offerings and teaching practices. And earlier this month, the new Dean of the Medical School has proposed firing all Clinician-Educator faculty from their WSU positions in a move that would make them little more than staff physicians working for the University Physicians Group. Most of these academic physicians have been on faculty at WSU for many years and have dedicated their careers to improving the health of vulnerable populations living in Detroit. Our University’s research-intensive status depends in large part on the Medical School’s well being. What happens to these faculty will affect us all. Meanwhile, some WSU administrators have made statements telling Lecturers to go elsewhere if they want job security even while they manufacture the conditions of vulnerability. The actions and statements of administrators make it clear: Wayne State does not value contingent faculty.
In the last year, the Lecturer Steering Committee (LSC) – which was formed in 2018 to advocate for the full-time Lecturer faculty who are a part of our AAUP-AFT, Local 6075 Union – took several steps to address the problems related to job security. First, we launched an online petition that gathered 1,000 signatures in just over one week. Second, we met privately with high-level members of the administration to discuss our concerns related to contingent full- time faculty. Third, we published an issue of the Newsbriefs, analyzing Lecturers at Wayne State. Fourth, we held a peaceful protest and rally to deliver our petition to President Wilson, only to be rebuffed by campus police in a cowardly refusal to face the faculty, staff, and students that constitute this University. Finally, and in response to Wayne State University administration’s bad faith use of notices of non-renewal to maximize their budget flexibility at the expense of Lecturers and Senior Lecturers, your Union filed a group grievance in March 2020. Our argument in the grievance was that the administration turned these notices of non-renewal into notices of conditional renewal in which faculty wouldn’t find out if they were being renewed until it was far too late to find alternative academic employment. The grievance has been denied by the administration (see attached).
The only path forward now is to ensure all faculty have meaningful job security through contract negotiations. Without meaningful job security, the administration will continue to use contingent faculty in order to align all faculty as cogs in their machine.
To our tenured colleagues: contingent faculty, like Lecturers, Senior Lecturers, and the School of Medicine Clinical Professors are canaries in the coal mine. The working conditions of tenure-stream faculty are going to get worse in terms of teaching assignments, teaching loads, and class sizes until all faculty have job security. Protecting contingent faculty by demanding that they have job and economic security is about protecting your own material interests! Thus, while Union leadership considers whether to pursue this case to arbitration, please remember that contract negotiations will take place this year, so let’s work together to make Wayne State a national leader in faculty rights! We will need your time, attention, and action to realize this goal.
Yours in Solidarity,
The Lecturer Steering Committee
AAUP-AFT, Local 6075
Wayne State University Chapter
Clay Walker, Chair
Christine Knapp, Vice Chair
