Lecturer Bargaining Update: Bargaining Recap for 2/16/2024
Allies and members joined us in Dearborn for bargaining, screenprinting, and sharing our mutual support for lecturers!
LEO met with management last Friday in Dearborn for our first bargaining session open to allies. This week on Friday, February 23rd, we will bargain in Palmer Commons in the Great Lakes South/Central Room, starting at 9am. RSVP to support your bargaining team!
The morning session was open to allies and we were joined by students, staff, tenure-track colleagues, alumni, and union allies including members from United Michigan Medicine Allied Professionals (UMMAP), Graduate Employees Organization (GEO), University of Michigan Professional Nurse Council (MNA-UMPNC), Oakland AAUP, and AFT-Michigan. We heard from UM Dearborn professor Paul Draus who spoke in favor of LEO’s salary demands, parity across the 3 campuses, and shared the value that his lecturer colleagues bring to the University. Next was UM Ann Arbor undergraduate student and president of People’s Michigan, Zach Schimel, who spoke on the student support for LEO’s bargaining platform and specifically the salary and health & safety proposals. Finally, Penni Toney, UMMAP President, shared her experience as a UM employee struggling with housing costs and her support of LEO’s Housing Committee proposal, which was accompanied by LEO President Kirsten Herold delivering to management a letter on housing affordability signed by the union presidents of the UM All-Campus Labor Council.
It was a busy day with LEO presenting 15 proposals! We passed back our salary counter, which returned almost everything to our original proposal except for movement in the minimum salaries to Y1:58, Y2:61, Y3:62. We cost this to be $500,000 in movement. This move was meant to emphasize our commitment to maintaining parity and also our need to see big annual increases in this contract. We also passed back our appointments counter proposal, which we pushed back on the June 15th notification deadline from management stating this as priority for our membership.
LEO also passed proposals on:
Article XXII: Health and Safety
Article XLIII: Job Security
MoU I: Housing Committee
Article XII: Layoff, Reduction in Appointment Effort, and Recall
Article XXVI: Faculty Support
Article XVII: Benefit Eligibility
Article XVIII: Benefit Plan
Article XXVIII: Workload
Article XXXI: Leaves of Absence without Pay
MoU #8: Teaching Professor
MoU #12: Increased Diversity in Hiring
We reached a tentative agreement on the Sick Pay and Other Paid Leaves article and withdrew our Health Care Coalition proposal with our intention to pursue it through other avenues. The university shared proposals on Article XXV: Collegiate Lecturer Program and Appendix A: Definitions (which we think is near tentative agreement).
Be sure to follow our proposals on LEO’s Public Proposal Tracker.
If you join bargaining on Zoom, make sure to change your profile picture and Zoom background.
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!
We’re only as strong as our collective efforts! Learn about and join one of LEO’s many committees.
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