Negotiations turned sour when Admin struck completely our MoUs on Retiree Benefits and Governance. Both of these MoUs have been sitting in Admin’s court for 4 solid months.

Things went from bad to worse when Admin passed a new package of proposals that contained MoU: Felony Disclosure, Professional Development, and Salary. Packages of proposals means that if one side wants to accept one of the proposals within the package they would need to accept all of them within the package. However, no one in attendance expressed a desire to accept any of the proposals within this new package!

May 14th was our third Community Bargaining Day with almost 200 lecturers and allies in attendance! Allies joined Lunch with LEO to hear an update on Bargaining to this point, and engaged in a “Phone Zap” to the administrators on all 3 campuses calling for a fair contract. We concluded lunch by writing down what folks would like to see coming out of the contract to hold up during the Salary presentation.

We finally, finally, finally received a counter from Admin on Teaching Professor, and presented a salary proposal with a reduction in $5 million or so from our previous proposal.

Please join the Contract Action Team for an outdoor bargaining watch party on Wednesday, May 26th from 10 am-3pm in the Ingall's Mall canopy on the Ann Arbor Campus.

Currently, LEO is negotiating a few contract proposals related to ‘Workload’ that would make workload expectation within units available to all lecs. Clear expectations will help lecturers to have more agency over the work they are assigned to do or that they take on at some point. One goal of these proposals is to help create a ‘toolkit’ of sorts, within our contract, to address overwork and position classification problems as they are recognized by lecturers. Below, you can see some of our proposal language, subject to change via negotiations, and which will not be finalized until agreed to at the table.

The day started off well, with Tentative Agreements on Job Security & Layoffs, which extend recall rights for longer-serving lecturers and guarantee an interview for open positions in the bargaining unit to qualified lecturers on full layoff.

Management gave us counters on Layoff and Job Security for which we are close to reaching agreement. We did reach agreement in three areas: We are ready to TA (sign a tentative agreement) on Academic Calendar (acknowledging the August start date to the academic year), and we signed TAs on Articles XVII on Benefits Eligibility and XVIII on Benefits Plans.

The defining moment of the day was Management’s Salary counter at 1pm, which was underwhelming and insulting.

We are expecting management’s first counter proposal on Teaching Professor this Friday.

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.