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Collective Bargaining Achievements
By Gwendolyn Bradley and Craig Flanery
Faculty at Eastern Michigan University reached a contract agreement with the administration in April. The agreement followed seven months of negotiations,
a state fact-finding process, and a twelve-day strike that took place in September 2006. Salary increases and health insurance premiums had been major sticking points in the negotiations between the administration and the local AAUP chapter, which represents EMU faculty in collective bargaining. At the urging of the chapter, the administration eventually agreed to accept the recommendations of an independent fact finder, who was commissioned to study each side's contract proposal and offer what he believed to be a fair settlement. The fact-finding report recommended that the administration meet professors' proposed salary increases over the next four years and implement a modest increase in retirement-plan contributions; it recommended that faculty agree to pay a portion of their health insurance premiums for the first time.
"We have been working to get our members a fair contract for quite some time and we are happy that we are able to present them with an agreement that includes reasonable compensation increases comparable with other universities," says Howard Bunsis, president of the AAUP chapter.
More problematic was the issue of domestic partner benefits. Because of a change in state law, EMU was required to remove from the contract provisions granting benefits to same-sex domestic partners of employees. The administration agreed to establish a benefits committee, with four members of its choice and four picked by the AAUP chapter, to educate the university community about and issue yearly reports to the AAUP chapter and the administration on the impact of the new law. However, the administration rejected a number of proposals from the chapter that would have given more direction to the committee's work, including adding to its charter the stipulations that it should seek input from affected parties, collaborate with other public higher education institutions in Michigan to find ways to replace domestic partnership benefits or mitigate the harm caused by their loss, and estimate the cost of providing benefits to all domestic partners, regardless of sexual orientation.
"We're worried that the administration did not display the commitment to these benefits that we believe is warranted," says Bunsis. An AAUP affiliate, the California Faculty Association, reached a new collective bargaining agreement this spring after the union membership authorized a strike. The threat created the pressure needed to obtain a new collective bargaining agreement with the California State University administration after two years of contentious negotiations. In March, the union announced a 94 percent support vote for a systemwide strike involving 23,000 faculty; it would have been the largest in the history of U.S. higher education. A week before the strike would have begun, the CSU administration met nearly all of the faculty's demands and the two sides reached an agreement, which was ratified in early May. The accord was reached using the recommendations of a neutral fact-finder.
"We have an agreement that will be good for the CSU, good for our students, and good for the faculty," says California Faculty Association president John Travis. "Through this agreement faculty will make real progress toward closing the pay gap between us and our colleagues in other states." Travis expressed appreciation for the numerous resolutions of support that the CFA received from unions and faculty associations around the country, including a resolution passed by the AAUP's Collective Bargaining Congress and one passed by the California conference of the AAUP. For more information about the agreement, go to http://calfac.org/settlement.html.
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