Lecturer Bargaining Update: Bargaining Recap for 4/16/21
“We’re simply asking for dignity”
Our second Community Bargaining Day was filled with powerful testimony and an overwhelming feeling that we weren’t willing to settle for management’s proposals. Around 200 lecturers and allies attended throughout the day, many for the first time. We provided these tools to help people understand the process: “How Did We Get Here?”, “How Do Negotiations Occur?”, a LEO Glossary for Bargaining, & a kanban board of proposals.
In the morning our side presented counter proposals on Job Security, Layoffs, Benefits, and MoU #2 (on moving part-time lecturers to full-time). Then we heard budget presentations from Flint’s Vice-Chancellor of Business and Finance Michael Hague and Dearborn’s Chief Financial Officer Bryan Dadey that emphasized the financial hardship of those two campuses due to declining enrollment. As one lecturer remarked in caucus, their presentation “strengthened our case for funds to be shifted from central administration to Dearborn and Flint.”
The One University presentation during Lunch with LEO and the subsequent Salary presentation from LEO President Ian Robinson made a compelling and comprehensive argument with data that UM is not providing a livable wage for its lecturers, especially in Dearborn and Flint. Contrary to the austerity narrative we heard before lunch, Robinson showed that UM remains in a strong financial position and has greatly increased admin salaries in the past 20 years relative to lecturers who are core instructional faculty on all three campuses bringing in hundreds of millions in tuition revenue each year. You can watch the full version of Ian’s presentation here: https://youtu.be/qn-yx36Cb7M
Fan art of Ian Robinson, LEO President and Ann Arbor lecturer in the Residential College who gave LEO's Salary Presentation at Friday's Bargaining, by AndyT (Lecturer, Stamps School of Art & Design, Ann Arbor campus).
We heard testimony from Ann Arbor lecturers Kathy Meyer and Alex Poniatowski and one Dearborn student Cierra Murphy, on the need for pay parity. Then the salary team passed back our counter, which maintained a commitment to parity, increasing the minimums, and pay increases to long-serving lecturers. Moreover, we made a comparable movement to admin’s last counter by lowering the annual increases from 4% to 3% in Year 2 and 5% to 4% in Year 3.
We passed back our Child Care proposal with the language reinstated and heard from 3 lecturer parents on the challenges and need for support: Samantha Saad, Nina White, and Garrett Schumann. Next, we heard testimony from Dearborn’s Lise Urbaczewski, Flint’s Veronica Robinson, and Ann Arbor’s Cindee Giffen and Yuri Popov about the past year of working during COVID, which underscored the need for lecturers to have “a seat at the table.” The Bargaining Day concluded with some pointed questions of management from the Felony Disclosure working group that highlighted the many objections to the policy.
After bargaining, LEO's Contract Action Team held a special meeting to introduce the next step we will take as a union to escalate pressure on administration before the June budget vote.