LEO-GLAM Bargaining Recap for 4/2/2025
At our April 2nd bargaining session, we were once again bargaining in-person, this time at the Dearborn campus. It was wonderful to have so many of our allies in the room with us despite the rainy weather, including a fantastic lineup of faculty members offering glowing testimony about the importance and value of LACs. Special thanks to our speakers during the morning open bargaining session, Dearborn faculty members Patrick Beauchesne, Amy Brainer, Arlo Clark-Foos, Camron Michael Amin, and Dearborn librarian Natalie Hagopian. We heard from them about the work of LACs to support students and faculty members on the Dearborn campus in myriad and impactful ways. Thanks also to Ann Arbor librarian Mark MacEachern for facilitating our lunch discussion including both GLAM members and community allies.
In our afternoon members-only bargaining session, we received several counters from the Employer, most notably (surprise!) counters on Salary and Professional Development. Admin presented a disappointing first sally on Salary, with zero increases to minimum salaries and a paltry 1.5% annual increase each year. They also proposed new language to withhold this annual increase from LACs for performance reasons. Meanwhile, they struck out equity adjustments based on years of service as a LAC, and made no change to the percentage for promotion increase or allocations for Professional Development from our current contract. Needless to say, we found these counters disappointing, and hope that despite the portrait of a dire and uncertain federal landscape painted by Administration at the table, they will recognize our value to this institution and compensate us accordingly.
We also received a counter on Article XII: Promotion. Admin continues to push for a tiered approach to promotion by rank at 3/4/5 years before dossier submission respectively, and clings onto language permitting them to grant early promotion with unit approval without defining any process for said approval. We continue to have serious concerns about the time between promotions, especially at the lower ranks, and the implications for allowing appointing units to permit earlier promotions without a defined or transparent process in place. We had productive and substantive conversations at the table about how to populate Promotion Review Committees using non-LAC faculty members who would have voting rather than advisory rights.
Highlights of the bargaining session included:
Received our first counters from the employer on Article XIII: Salary and Article XIX: Professional Development.
Presented a counter on Article XI: Appointments and Annual Reviews, quoting findings from reports from CLIR and SAA.
Reached a (second) Tentative Agreement on Article XXXI: Accessibility and Accommodations, due to a recent Executive Order that required a change to an underlying SPG. (No change to our current TA count, which stands at 14.)
Received counters from the employer on Articles XII: Promotion of LACs, XXIV: Unpaid Leaves of Absence, XXVII: Holidays/Season Days/Emergency Closure, and XXXV: Term of Agreement.
Next Wednesday, we’ll be back to Zoom bargaining, but the following week (April 16) we are gearing up for our third and final installment of in-person bargaining, this time on our Ann Arbor campus. We invite GLAM members and community allies to register to join us, and we hope to pack the room! The schedule of the day is TBA but we are planning a lunch time action from noon-1pm. Please let us know if you’d like to attend by April 15th at 4pm so that we can send you all the logistical details.