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.

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.

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.

We got our first “package” from admin on Friday, which included Salary, Professional Development, Felony Disclosure, and Child Care. A “package” is “to be considered a proposal in its entirety.” Agreement on any of the proposals is “predicated on the agreement to all proposals as written.” Of course, we do not have to accept the package or any of its parts. We have the option to repackage or deal with proposals individually in our counter.

It is obvious that UM is lagging behind peer institutions on many fronts: Salary, Child Care, Felony Disclosure, & Teaching Professor to name a few. The university has said they plan to be “more fiscally conservative” in the coming year due to the pandemic. The austerity narrative has been employed to defend their lack of movement, but we know that the university is still in strong financial shape and this is really a question of priorities.

LEO members turned their frustration with Admin’s package into action this Saturday! We had an incredible turnout of lecturers and allies for our yard sign action and march outside of President Schlissel’s residence. Students, staff, tenure-track faculty, GEO and UPAMM members, Michigan Medicine workers, and other community allies all came out to support the contract fight.

Not a lot happened this week, largely due to the number of proposals that remain in management’s court. Mostly we fielded questions. In the morning, many were able to watch the special Regents Meeting to consider censuring Regent Ron Weiser. See the Union Council's recent statement on the matter. We did receive counters on Computers, Layoff & Recall, and Job Security.

Lunch with LEO was filled with powerful stories from lecturers on their experiences with bias in evaluations. The Comms committee will be compiling the stories into a video to share and shed light on this important equity issue.

The Communications Cmte has made an interactive kanban board showing all of the proposals brought to the negotiations table, how many times they’ve been passed back-and-forth, and whose court they currently are in.

After an hour-long caucus session, our Bargaining Team delivered our first Salary counter-proposal, which signaled our commitment to parity, longevity, and central funds going to Dearborn and Flint. By the afternoon we were able to put together 6 member testimonials about the importance of “range of instruction” when considering whether or not a Lecturer I/II should be reclassified as a Lecturer III/IV.

We also gave our counter-proposal on MoU 10, DEI Related Initiatives for Lecturers, which includes an increase of Inclusive Teaching Professional Development fund and an Annual Lecturer Excellence in Inclusive Teaching Award. After deliberation in our respective caucuses, we were able to come to a tentative agreement by the end of the day! That now puts us up to 3 TA’s out of 34 total proposals.

Altogether 98 lectures attended bargaining throughout the day on Friday, which is only slightly below our average of 114. We will also have in-person actions next week! Join the Contract Action Team (CAT) at socially-distanced in-person actions on each campus at the start of April, where you can pick up custom-made LEO masks and yard signs. Attend whichever event is most convenient for you.

Last Friday gave us plenty of reason to celebrate. The bargaining team was excited to share that we are ready for our first Tentative Agreement on Sick Pay!

We were also able to “deliver” our Dignity, Parity, and Respect petition at the table with over 430 lecturer signatures. We presented those signatures through a video set to the tune of “Solidarity Forever'' performed by two lecturers' families. Thanks to the Goltz-Taylor & Ervamaa Kirschemann families for their performance! This incredible show of engagement from the membership and the ability to activate our structure lets us know that we are in a good position to increase the pressure to win a strong contract.

There will be several opportunities in the coming weeks to support the work at the table. We need to keep the member engagement high and turn up the heat for Dignity, Parity, and Respect in this contract.

At the last UM Regents Meeting, a number of LEOs and allies spoke about the need for UM admin to respect and invest in Lecturer faculty by supporting our contract proposals. Here are a few highlights, and you can click on the links to see videos of their whole statements.

The morning started with four moving member testimonies on Workload and our team’s counter-proposal. Danielle Harbin (Lec II of Flint Biology), Isaac Wingfield (Lec IV of the RC in Ann Arbor), Ryan Hendrickson (Lec IV in RLL Ann Arbor), and Laura Alford (Lec IV in College of Engineering Ann Arbor) shared their personal experiences and reiterated the need for workload transparency. We delivered two more counters, one on DEI (MOU 10) and one on the “Bridge to Lecturer III/IV” (MOU 7).

Management passed back counters on Sick Pay, Benefits, and Job Security. Overall we had some movement in a positive direction but still have a ways to go. Notably, we won an extension of long-term sick pay to put us in line with tenure-track faculty, as well as a guarantee of an interview for lecturers on layoff who apply for an open position within the bargaining unit on all 3 campuses. The Bargaining Team pushed back to include open staff positions, as well.

Although we made some gains this week, it is going to be essential to increase member engagement and elevate the pressure on management to make progress on the Child Care subsidy or our Salary proposals around Parity, Longevity, support to Flint and Dearborn, and Annual Raises.

Overall, we were disappointed with the counter-proposals from admin this week. Management gave us counters on salary, professional development, inclusive teaching, and childcare. A lot of our language was returned crossed out, but management signaled interest in some of our ideas. In essence, their proposals were disappointing and underwhelming but not discouraging.

They have completely struck out our Child Care proposal, which we modeled after GEO’s. They suggested instead to utilize the resources on their websites and the Care.com membership fee that the University covers for employees that is obviously inadequate. Members of the caucus felt like this just added insult to injury considering the many struggles our members are facing right now during the COVID-19 crisis to provide care.

Most hopeful, 185 members attended bargaining, our highest turnout yet. Also, 238 members have signed the contract action petition. Please show your support for the platform by signing, and ask your coworkers to do it too!

We had a great turnout at our Community Town Hall with over 130 LEOs and community members attending. This post recaps some of the highlights.

The day started with a response about how difficult it would be for payroll to do the pay advance for international lecs. One reason this proposal was put forward as an automatic enrollment for international lecturers was the huge amounts of paperwork they already need to fill out. There are additional issues with mailing and direct deposit for international lecturers without social security numbers or bank accounts. The international caucus will consider the issue further.

Amy Dittmar, Senior Vice Provost of Academic and Budgetary Affairs, gave a 45-minute presentation on the budget followed by 15 minutes of questions. It was fairly general and focused solely on Ann Arbor, but we plan to have similar presentations on Dearborn and Flint finances in the coming weeks and we’ll submit follow-up questions.

This Friday will be the last day for new proposals and we want as many lecturers in the room as possible (300) in case Admin tries to drop any last-minute surprises on us. We also expect to get a counter proposal on our Salary demands.

Finally, make sure you sign the petition for Dignity, Parity, & Respect! By signing you are advocating for yourself, your coworkers, and your students. Your signature will show the UM Administration that our bargaining proposals have broad support, and should be affirmed as part of our next contract.