Dear colleagues,
It was great to see so many of you join the General Membership meeting earlier this month. It’s been a big year for the union, and a big learning curve for me coming into this role as president. I set a few personal goals this past year:
1) Implement the new contract and keep systems running smoothly (i.e., don’t let the wheels fall off during the transition to new leadership).
2) Prevent administration from cutting the salaries of tenured faculty in the School of Medicine.
3) Start to get structures in place to make our union more transparent, more democratic, more member-driven and member-engaged.
We achieved the first goal: Last fall we got five different 2N admin/union committees in place. These were agreed upon during contract negotiations, and made up of half union appointees and half admin appointees. The committees are looking at the Flexible Work Arrangement policy, the way we use the Student Evaluation of Teaching (SETs), promotion factors for Teaching Faculty, and online teaching.
Most of those committees are getting close to making recommendations. A few highlights: The group making recommendations regarding the Flexible Work Arrangement policy is engaged in debate over who approves requests, whether that decision should come solely from an employee’s direct supervisor, and clarity around who that direct supervisor is. We’re hoping to get some kind of appeal process in place so decisions are not solely dependent on one person. We raised the possibility of implementing a remote 2-day a week minimum, but the full committee did not reach consensus on this. Antoinette Cunningham, Academic Advisor in Biological Sciences, and the whole union team have been doing phenomenal work trying to get an equitable system in place.
The Teaching Faculty committee has finalized its recommendations for university-level factors for promotion to Associate or Full Professor of Teaching. We were frustrated because it became clear in early March that the earliest that Teaching Faculty will be able to submit packets to go up for promotion will be next Spring 2023, for promotions going into effect in 2024. That is because faculty will be evaluated at the university, college, and department levels, and, although we have made great progress toward establishing university-level factors, factors still need to be developed at the college and department levels. Those will need to be developed in the fall. We tried hard to find a way for faculty to go up for promotion this year, but we could not make it happen. On the plus side, the union side of the committee did a lot of work looking at other institutions and coming up with guidelines that make sense for the Teaching Faculty, and there has been agreement on most of the proposed recommendations. Christine Knapp, from French/CMLLC, has been leading that effort with a very engaged committee.
One of the groups working on the SET is also getting close to making recommendations for changing the SET. They recognized that the SET is a flawed mechanism for accurately gauging quality of instruction, and explored other options such as peer reviews of teaching. But, after discussing the reality of implementing other evaluation methods, they returned to the SET with a proposal to drastically revise the questions. The committee is proposing to replace the three global questions with five questions that specifically focus on teaching outcomes, and hopefully counter biases that disproportionately impact faculty of color in SET evaluations. Sean Hickey from Chemistry has been the lead on that. These proposals will need to be reviewed by Academic Senate before they will be ready to be implemented. Patricia McCormick (Communications) is chairing another committee on SETs that will pick up other aspects of this work. Pramod Khosla (Nutrition and Food Science) is chairing the online teaching committee, where they’re getting close to making recommendations about intellectual property rights, workload, and enhanced professional development opportunities.
While this has been going on, the union Contract Enforcement Team (CET) has been meeting every week to talk about issues that individual faculty and academic staff members are facing. This group includes:
• Charlie Parrish, Grievance Coordinator for Faculty;
• Ricardo Villarosa, Grievance Coordinator for Academic Staff;
• Michelle Fecteau, the union Executive Director;
• Barbara Jones, Contract Implementation Officer for Academic Staff;
• Pramod Khosla, Contract Implementation Officer for Faculty;
• Christine Knapp and Kristen Chinery, who are assisting with faculty and academic staff issues, respectively;
• Mark Dilley and Michael Williams, Director of Organizing and Executive Assistant for the union, respectively.
When someone says you should “go to the union,” this is who you’re going to. CET members dedicate hours of their time week after week talking to members, hearing what problems may be going on, figuring out if and when there might be a contract violation, and how to help members resolve a situation. Most of the time, there is not a contract violation, in which case they talk about other ways to address issues. In any given week, this group is handling dozens of member concerns across the university. You should always feel welcome to email or call any member of the CET team with questions or concerns.
Last fall, we hired a new Executive Assistant for the union, Michael Williams, who worked with Michelle Fecteau to implement the childcare subsidy program. Also last fall we worked with the university administration to agree to commit $100k toward salary equity adjustments this year, $200k next year, and $200k the following year. These funds are meant to go to raise salaries for faculty and academic staff that are out of sync with others in comparable positions.
Overall, after a lot of changes last fall, systems are settling down and we are finishing the academic year with a strong union infrastructure.
My second big goal of the year was to prevent attempts to cut the salaries of tenured faculty in the School of Medicine. Last November we were faced with the possibility that a proposal from the Dean of the SoM could cut faculty salaries by as much as 50%. After an uproar from faculty, some union organizing, and the release of a survey that showed the Dean had an abysmal rate of support among faculty and academic staff, he has been replaced, and the administration has agreed to a one year moratorium on any discussion of “restructuring” (cutting) salaries. This took a lot of time and energy by a dedicated group of faculty and academic staff from across the SoM, solidarity from colleagues all across campus, and proved why a strong and vibrant union is so vital.
The third goal of the year, perhaps less exciting, but crucial for building a more engaged, democratic and transparent union, was to address some of our internal processes, policies and structures. In order to open up our union more, we need to establish or codify certain procedures and agree on how we want to run things. A group from the Executive Board and the Council of Representatives, chaired by Reuther archivist Kristen Chinery, met weekly for the better part of five months to review the union’s bylaws, which we have not looked at in a comprehensive way since 2003. We went through each article with a fine tooth comb to regularize a lot of processes, and make explicit things that were implicit. One of the big changes we’re proposing is to make all four Member-at-Large seats elected by the general membership (right now, two of the four seats are elected). All the changes to the bylaws can be seen here.
You should have received an election ballot on April 18 from ballots@ballotsonline.org for three union officer positions (Vice-President, Treasurer, Member-at-Large), and you will also have the opportunity to vote on the bylaws changes. Please vote YES on the bylaws! We need these to pass with 2/3s support by those who vote.
My goal for the next 6–12 months is to get us to orient toward the next contract campaign. Our contract will be up for renegotiation in 2024. Many of us are going to want to look at salaries and benefits. I hope to set up working groups to prepare us to go into the 2024 negotiations with clear “asks” around raises, equity adjustments and other kinds of benefits. The other issue that a lot of us are concerned with is increased workloads caused by understaffing, and I would like to pull together a working group to think about how that can be addressed within the contract. And a third big issue that affects a lot of us are building and facilities issues — this year faculty in Art and Art History have come together collectively to bring attention to the extensive damage to the Art building caused by last summer’s catastrophic floods. But there are facilities issues across campus, from Scott Hall to the College of Education. We’ve seen the new Provost, Mark Kornbluh, the new CFO Dave Massaron, and the Director of Facilities Rob Davenport more engaged in this very significant problem of late, but we should look at how we can, as a union, focus on building issues. These affect us, the students, and all campus workers.
It’s been a busy year, but I’m optimistic about the power of our union. We have engaged members on Council, on the 2N committees, in the LSC, the ASSC, the Social Justice Committee, and serving as representatives on Academic Senate committees. We are seeing groups come together collectively around issues — such as African-American faculty in the School of Medicine, and faculty and staff in Art & Art History — and we are supporting one another and our students.
I look forward to continuing to build with all of you so we’re in the best shape we can be going into 2024.
In solidarity,
Danielle
PS: I hope to see many of you either at the LSC study break on Gullen Mall on Tuesday, April 26, 3–5 pm, or at Tony V’s, April 28, 4–7 pm. Come, and bring your colleagues! RSVP to office@aaupaft.org if you can so we can get a head count for pizza.
