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Administration Must Bargain
By Gwendolyn Bradley
A Michigan judge ruled in March that the administration at Michigan Tech University engaged in an unfair labor practice when it unilaterally allocated selective salary increases to faculty in 2005–06 rather than bargain over these increases with the campus AAUP chapter, which is the collective bargaining agent for tenured and tenure-track faculty at MTU.
She said that the university’s decision to provide salary increases while the two parties were in the middle of negotiations undermined the union with its members, and she ordered the administration to return to the bargaining table and to post a notice to employees announcing the return. The AAUP chapter had filed a charge with the Michigan Employment Relations Commission in October 2005.
“We were only eight months into negotiations for our first contract when negotiations ceased, and we are very pleased to get back to the table after a seventeen-month hiatus,” notes Marilyn Cooper, professor of humanities at Michigan Tech and president of the AAUP chapter.
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