LEO-GLAM: Our Organizing Story
Our organizing effort began in earnest during the summer of 2020, while many librarians, archivists, and curators (LACs) were working remotely and concerned about the university’s reopening plans for the Fall 2020 semester. Our effort received an unexpected boost that summer when the Regents voted 6-1 to recognize new bargaining units by “card check” rather than requiring an election. In the card check process, you only need a majority of workers to sign written confirmation of their desire to be represented by a union and to bargain collectively.
As a result of the Regents’ resolution, it suddenly became easier to organize and form new unions on campus. A small group of us reached out to AFT Michigan, the parent organization of both LEO and GEO on our campuses. AFT Michigan quickly connected us with staff organizers and our colleagues in LEO, and we began to tackle some of the important questions that would need to be answered before we could move forward. What kind of workers could form a bargaining unit the University might deem “reasonable”? How were those workers distributed across the University’s three campuses and in what units did they live? How many of these workers might be considered “management”? Would we be best served by creating our own union from scratch, or by joining an existing union like LEO? And finally, did we have enough nascent interest and engagement to form the beginnings of an Organizing Committee and move forward? We spent the summer months in 2020 learning how to organize, talking to colleagues who we knew would be supportive of the effort, convincing others to join in organizing activities, gauging interest, learning about concerns, and answering many of those important questions. We had to do much of this work in “incognito mode,” as we wanted to protect colleagues who might be subject to retaliation, and to gather as much information as we could before going public.
After many detailed and thoughtful conversations—and in consultation with our colleagues from AFT Michigan and the leadership of LEO—the Organizing Committee for LACs decided to pursue joining LEO rather than starting our own union local from scratch. Over many conversations with lecturer colleagues, we learned that both LACs and lecs share quite a bit as fellow non-tenure-track faculty. Both groups are deeply invested in increasing equity and parity for our colleagues on the Flint and Dearborn campuses. Both groups have historically experienced salary compression and stagnation, as well as limited support to pursue scholarship and service activities. Both groups want more robust and equitable promotion processes, as well as greater participation in campus governance. While there are certainly differences between us, we have many common challenges, and we are both immensely proud of how we contribute to satisfying the institution’s mission. In deciding to join LEO, we were excited by the possibility of building solidarity and power for non-tenure-track faculty across all three campuses.
By February 2021, we had spoken to a majority of all librarians, archivists, and curators, and received an overwhelmingly positive response from our colleagues. With our lecturer colleagues in LEO preparing to hold a vote on whether to expand their membership, it was time to go public with our campaign. After the LEO membership voted in March 2021 to welcome us in (by a margin of 98% to 2%!), we began to refer to ourselves as LEO-GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) to reflect the cultural heritage and information environments in which most LACs work. We started the card-signing process shortly after that vote, and by May 2021 we had already reached (and passed!) the threshold for recognition. In early June, we held our first membership meeting, and the membership voted to endorse the proposed structure for our union. We expect to go to the bargaining table sometime in the Fall of 2021.