Virtual Rally for Lecturer Bargaining Kickoff
LEO BARGAINING 2021 HAS KICKED-OFF!
We had a great turnout at the pre-bargaining LEO kickoff with over 120 LEO members, undergraduate students, union, and tenure-track allies. We had several LEO and ally speakers sharing their powerful stories.
Veronica Robinson (Nursing, UM-Flint).
UM-Flint Nursing lecturer Veronica Robinson shared how important the victories from the last campaign were to her. She noted the salary wins “brought lecturers out of poverty wages but we still have a ways to go to achieve comparable wages with other institutions.” Veronica stressed that Flint and Dearborn lecturers deserve parity with Ann Arbor lecturers as we are “one university.”
“All of our campuses are educating the next generation of leaders and professionals in the State of Michigan. U-M's job is to provide them with the resources needed for success once they complete their education here. This includes paying lecturers the salaries they deserve.” - Veronica Robinson, Nursing lecturer, UM-Flint
Central Student Government President and Vice President Saveri Nandigama and Amanda Kaplan make remarks during the kickoff rally.
The Central Student Government President and Vice President Saveri Nandigama and Amanda Kaplan, joined us to speak on the importance of collaborating across the university between students, lecturers, and all workers on all campuses. They shared their own experiences with collective advocacy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Saveri remarked, “LEO has been a guiding light for students and the rest of the campus both inside and outside the classroom.”
“At our decentralized institution, systems of oppression permeate all areas and our fight to promote dignity and equity (within the Ann Arbor campus and across all three campuses) can only be accomplished through allyship and collective action, and LEO has done an incredible job of creating this collaborative space for all of us.”- Amanda Kaplan, Central Student Government President, UM-Ann Arbor
Briana Cruga, president of 1U, offers remarks during the kickoff rally.
Briana Cruga is a UM-Dearborn undergraduate and President of One University Dearborn. She highlighted the importance of sustainable funding to Dearborn and Flint campuses through “breaking down the silos.” This important piece of the LEO platform would help address the “inequality in services and resources” in helping “the 1U Coalition achieve its goals of bringing the Go Blue Guarantee, medical and legal services, increased DEI initiatives.”
“UM-Dearborn and UM-Flint would not be the campuses they are without its lecturers, and it is essential that all lecturers are treated respectfully and equitably in order to establish an environment of inclusivity and growth for our community.” - Briana Cruga, One University- Dearborn President, UM-Dearborn
Stephen Ward (left) and Jason Kosnoski (right) offer remarks during the kickoff rally.
Stephen Ward, the Associate Director for Faculty of the Residential College at UM-Ann Arbor and Associate Professor for the Semester in Detroit program, challenged us to “affirm, attest, and agitate” during this contract fight. While UM-Flint Associate Professor of Political Science Jason Kosnoski reminded us that "tenure-track and non-tenure-track are being threatened by the same forces of neoliberalism and austerity and we are all in this together."
Aurora Harris (center) is pictured with her colleagues and fellow board members of We The People of Detroit.
We also wanted to spotlight UM-Dearborn lecturer Aurora Harris who spoke at the rally. An award-winning published poet and spoken word artist teaches Composition, Literature, Creative Writing, and African and African American and Studies. She advises students on the publication of their poetry and stories and developing writing portfolios for graduate school admissions. She is on the selection committee for the LEO Inclusive Teaching Fund and assisted with the facilitation of the University’s League of Extraordinary Poets, a student group of poets. She also serves as a Faculty Advisor to two student groups.
“My name is Aurora Harris. I have been employed mostly as a part-time or less than part-time lecturer at the Dearborn campus for over 8 years. I bring to the university and students diverse teaching, writing, editing, research experiences, and accomplishments such receiving a PEN-Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Multicultural Literature. In October 2020, I received a Covid-19 Community Hero Award from the Association of Chinese Americans for organizing volunteers to deliver water and PPE to victims of the water shut off crisis in Detroit, MI during the Covid-19 pandemic.
During winter and fall semesters, in addition to teaching, reading and grading, I spent many unpaid overtime hours referring students to counseling services, trying to contact missing students, providing plans of action for students to complete weeks of missed work; providing encouragement and counseling to stressed out students, and those who worked in hospitals at the height of the pandemic; students who were not mentally or emotionally equipped to face the assembly line of sick and dying bodies suffering from Covid-19; students who fell behind due to grief, severe depression, trauma, loss of jobs, attempted suicide, undiagnosed bi-polar disorder, panic and anxiety disorders, and taking care of family members with Covid-19.
The numerous extra hours I spent to assist and accommodate overwhelmed students, in addition to daily increased triple time on-line teaching, reading, grading, emailing, and emergency responding to students during the week and weekends were unpaid and underpaid labor.
As I approach my 9th year of teaching, I do not know from one semester to the next if I will have a job or not. I was laid off from one department and now work as a part time Lecturer, with a loss of wages and higher medical insurance rates. Yesterday, I could not get a prescription filled because someone reported I am teaching 1 course instead of 2, so the benefits office stopped my medical benefits on January 1. I did not receive notification that I no longer had medical benefits. This means I must pay the full rate for a doctor’s appointment I had this week because I had no medical insurance! Today, I am one of the 30% of Dearborn lecturers who experienced lay off with 40% of lecturers laid off at the Flint campus. To have job security, our platform concerning standardized workloads that promote equity, benefits, professional development, change of our titles to Teaching Professor, Diversity Equity and Inclusion, job security and governance should be accepted and approved.”
Kirsten Herold, LEO Vice President and Chief Grievance Officer, concluded the line-up with an introduction of the LEO Bargaining Team and an emphasis on the importance of members’ and allies’ engagement to support what is happening at the negotiating table.
Lecturers and allies exited the Bargaining Kickoff Virtual rally to the tune of an off-key and out of sync rendition of “Solidarity Forever.” We’re ready to continue the fight for dignity, parity, and respect together with our allies knowing that “the union makes us strong.”