Lecturer Bargaining Update: Bargaining Recap for 2/9/2024
LEO met with management last Friday at the Palmer Commons. This week on Friday, February 9th, we will bargain in Dearborn in the University Center in Kochoff Hall, starting at 9am. Allies will join us at 10am-1pm. RSVP to show our strength as we issue a salary counterproposal! You can also sign up to carpool or if you need child care assistance.
Many proposals were exchanged, and a couple of Tentative Agreements were reached), but the BIG NEWS is that we FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY received our first salary counter. LEO had opened bargaining back in October with our first pass, proposing raising the current minimums of 51K to 60K for fulltime work (and raising minimums for first and second major review accordingly), longevity raises of $2000 every five years starting in year 11 (to address leapfrogging/ compression caused by the increases to starting pay), and annual raises of $8K, $7K, and $6K per year for the next three years.
Now, three and a half months later, admin brought salary to the table as a package, with some other proposals including benefits. Normally a package is used for a trade-off – one party gives up on something in one area and in return gets something else they really want in another. Well, this was no package! Instead they asked us to abandon our proposals on expanded retirement eligibility for LIs/ Intermittents, tuition support, and leapfrogging (catching up the pay of more senior hires to newer hires). Additionally, they opened with a reminder that they would urge us to drop proposals on “permissive subjects,” like a healthcare coalition (to bargain benefits together with other unions) and housing committee (to come up with sustainable solution to the increased cost of housing in our area).
So the salary offer we received is easy to summarize: A four-year contract with 3% annual raises in Ann Arbor, and 1.5% annual raises in Flint and Dearborn. No other changes! No additional longevity raises, and no increase in starting pay – this means that in Ann Arbor starting pay will have remained unchanged from 2020 to 2028, in Flint and Dearborn from 2023 to 2028! We are already hearing from Department administrators that they too are unhappy with this proposal, as they have trouble recruiting good candidates with such a low starting salary.
Peer Institution Minimum Salaries:
● UM-all campuses $51,000
● U of Massachusetts (system-wide) $57,000/$61,000
● U of Chicago $64,487
● Harvard U (History and Literature) $67,600
● Rutgers U (system-wide) $67,947
● Fordham U $68,890
● U of California (system-wide) $66,258
While annual raises of 3% is quite solid for an opening offer, there are numerous problems with this proposal. Most notably, after our hard-fought struggle in 2021 to gain equity in starting pay and annual raises for all three campuses, we are now being asked to abandon that principle, with the usual argument that Flint and Dearborn are too broke.
Source: UM December 9, 2022 Salary Disclosure Report as of 11/1/2022
*Gathered from the December 9, 2022 Salary Disclosure Report as of 11/1/2022 and reflects the individual’s status effective on November 1, 2022 does not include administrative bonuses or any raises that may have been earned since Nov 1, 2022.
In addition to the items they asked us to drop, the package included some language in the layoff article around reduction of appointment and a pushing back of layoff notification dates to June 15th. They rejected our changes to increase the percentage paid to adjunct faculty for late notification of course cancellation. They also rejected our language to include an appointment averaging for lecturers who may have gone out of retirement eligibility due to loss of courses and our language around capping benefit premium increases and copays.
In the morning they pass proposals on leaves, rejecting our changes to include 8 weeks of time to take care of family member and the addition of partial reduction of appointment to the article. They once again axed our proposal for childcare subsidies and they have no interest in changing our expanding Teaching Professor titles.
There was some movement of the proposal for Principal Investigator, which they said couldn’t be done! Their proposal would require lecturers to go through Office of Research and Sponsored Projects, get approval from their Dean or designee, and then have an additional classification or appointment to do the work under. And we are getting closer on our proposals for Job Security and Health and Safety. In the morning we TAed the moving of the academic calendar into the appendix and then sent across a proposal on the appendix, which is close to agreement.
This week (Friday, Feb. 16), we have open bargaining in Dearborn, Kochoff Hall in the University Center, from 10am-1pm. Please register so we will have enough food. Bring your partner, your kid, your friends, your ex(es), and let’s pack the room. We will deliver a salary counter-proposal at the table as a good faith effort to meet the April 20 contract expiration deadline. We need to show Admin that we are serious about maintaining equity across all three campuses, and we need substantial raises to counteract recent inflation that reflect the critical role lecturers play in delivering on the University’s educational mission.
Be sure to follow our proposals on LEO’s Public Proposal Tracker.
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Dues paying members have access to our Lecturer Slack Workspace where they can get live bargaining updates as well as participate in a myriad of different group conversations where questions get asked and answered and fun is had. Email your steward or LEO staff to join!
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