Lecturer Bargaining Update: Bargaining Recap for 12/8/2023
We met in Palmer Commons again on Friday for our second to last bargaining session of the semester. Our last session of the semester is this Friday, at the Michigan League in the Ballroom (2nd floor). Be sure to register and support your bargaining team!
LEO received the following counters from management on Friday:
Harassment: management understands our need to prohibit harassment by individuals beyond students and other employees, so their counter included a reference to the definition of Third Party in the SPG. A subsequent small group conversation affirmed that they understand this needs to include family members of students as well as patients. Good progress was made on this article.
Supervisor Feedback: This proposal was returned entirely struck, which was frustrating and disappointing for our team. In caucus, we identified several units in which there is no formal or informal feedback channel or mechanism from lecturers to supervisors of lecturers. We hope to have a small group discussion to make management aware of our concerns and show them why we need our contract to ensure formal and open lines of communication.
Governance: This proposal was also struck in its entirety, which was particularly frustrating given lecturers’ recent inclusion on the faculty senate. Management asserts that unit governance is subject to unit discretion, and they were more focused on voting rights than what many lecturers said they wanted in caucus: a voice in unit-level decision making surrounding classes and curriculum, given lecturers roles and expertise in these areas. We had a productive discussion in caucus about how to propose new language to better reflect this nuance.
Union-Employer Conferences: In this counter, management struck our proposal to ensure that special conferences are attended by people who have the authority to resolve the issue at hand. Management indicated that they cannot ensure that any particular administrator will attend a special conference and that HR’s job is to act as representatives of administration. Our caucus discussion included a lot of suggestions for how to revise the language to ensure that the right people are coming to special conferences and make sure that the focus is on resolving the issue.
Posting, Hiring, and Notification: In this article, management made some important concessions on appointment letters, including %FTE, FTR, specifics on service and administrative responsibilities, notification of the pay advance form for newly hired lecturers, and information about the international centers as a resource and for orientation.
Scheduling & Reduction in Appointments for Union Representatives: Management proposed a few changes, such as moving back the date for notification from what we initially proposed.
LEO sent the following counters back to management on Friday:
Support for International lecturers: In caucus we heard from international lecturers who find the guidance and resources provided by the International Center to be insufficient. Some international lecturers were never invited to the contractually guaranteed orientation while others indicated the international center staff were unhelpful or refused to answer their questions. We believe UM needs to recognize how overwhelming and unintelligible things like healthcare and retirement are for individuals who are living in the US for the first time, and do a better job supporting international lecturers. We delivered a counter proposal that returned to our original language on details about the orientation and specifically indicated that the topics of health insurance, retirement, and legal services need to be included in the orientation.
Pay advance for first time lecturers: We believe we have reached agreement with management on this MOU and our counter proposal will be accepted.
We had 2 really productive small group sessions:
Course-banking in Dearborn
Leapfrogging: we made progress in finding a shared understanding of the definition of leapfrogging through a clear example we used to illustrate the problem. Our next steps are for each side to work on understanding the scope of the problem and costing out some potential solutions.
Please join us next week on Friday, December 15th for our last session of the semester! We’ll be at the Michigan League in the Ballroom at 9 A.M., and you are welcome to show up in person or on Zoom. Remember to RSVP so we can order enough food and drinks for attendees. Let’s finish out this semester strong with high turnout and support for our Bargaining Team!
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