For Immediate Release: October 24, 2011
Contact: Ron Sundell, rsundell@nmu.edu
(906) 227-1602
On October 21, contingent faculty at Northern Michigan University voted to become a part of the existing AAUP collective bargaining chapter, which already represented tenured and tenure-track faculty.
The vote was 54-5 in favor of accreting (or adding onto the existing union), and this means that one hundred contingent faculty members will join the existing three-hundred-person bargaining unit. Those eligible are contingent faculty teaching at least eight credits a year. Michael Bailey, the executive director of the Michigan conference of the AAUP, witnessed the counting of the vote at the Michigan Employment Relations Commission Office in Detroit.
“This is an important day for our chapter. The overwhelmingly positive vote by the adjuncts shows that we are now poised to become a significant, unified force of almost four hundred AAUP members. We now need to work together to ensure that the needs of all faculty are realized in upcoming contract negotiations,” says Ron Sundell, president of the NMU chapter of the AAUP.
“This is a very important victory for the contingent faculty at Northern Michigan," adds Howard Bunsis, chair of the AAUP Collective Bargaining Congress. "At a time when contingent faculty members are being denied basic protections, it is critical that this group of workers will now have the right to bargain collectively. They will have a seat at the table and a voice in the process.”
The American Association of University Professors is a nonprofit charitable and educational organization that promotes academic freedom by supporting tenure, academic due process, and standards of quality in higher education. The AAUP has approximately 48,000 members at colleges and universities throughout the United States.