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Monday, April 05, 2004

University of Michigan Lecturers Vote to Strike

The Michigan Daily reports:

Nearly 90 percent of the Lecturers’ Employee Organization voted yesterday in favor of authorizing a walkout on Thursday. The walkout would also include members of the Graduate Employees’ Organization and students and professors who support the LEO platform.

Members voted 331 to 43 to give the union’s bargaining council the authority to walk out if the council deems it necessary.

LEO, which serves 1,300 non-tenure-track faculty on the University’s three campuses, plans to walk out Thursday unless the University administration makes “sufficient movement toward satisfying the goals of the strike platform,” said LEO president Bonnie Halloran, a lecturer on the University’s Dearborn campus.

Negotiations have been in progress since August 19. The administration and LEO will return to the bargaining table today and Wednesday. “There are fundamental issues the University feels very strongly about,” University spokeswoman Julie Peterson said. “But we are very concerned about the idea of interrupting classes.”

Since the negotiations began, there have been 34 bargaining sessions, including four extended sessions over the past week. The teams have reached tentative agreement on 17 contract articles, Provost Paul Courant said in an e-mail to deans, directors and department chairs last Thursday. However, University administrators and LEO said they have no definitive plans if the walkout does occur.

LEO’s main demands involve wage compensation, health benefits and job security.

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LEO wants to eliminate lecturers temporary-worker status and use a hiring system based on clearer criteria. The union is asking that members be appointed indefinitely after a probationary period, with termination only for “cause.”

“This proposal would provide this one group of faculty with a level of job security beyond that afforded most other instructional employees of the University,” like those with tenure, Courant said. “The union’s proposal would represent a fundamental change in how the University appoints its faculty.”

However, LEO believes the administration is exaggerating its claim.“We do not want tenure. This is about workers who have been taken advantage of for years,” Halloran said.

Most lecturers are hired per term or annually according to variable student enrollment, budget and job openings. The University has proposed that lecturers would be eligible for multi-year contracts after four years of continuous service, Courant said.

LEO’s third major demand is a more comprehensive health benefits package. They want an “extension of health care benefits to year-round coverage, at no additional cost to the employee … (and) no erosion of benefits and no increase in the cost of benefits,” the LEO website states.

The University has proposed to provide benefits over spring and summer terms for returning instructors who have worked at least half the courses of full-time employees. In the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, a lecturer is deemed full-time after teaching three courses per semester.

The administration worries that LEO’s benefits proposals “would be significantly more generous than the benefits offered to other faculty or employee groups,” Courant said.

Along with GEO, activist groups like Students Organizing for Labor and Economic Equality have been rallying support for LEO and its platform.

“Students in SOLE are concerned that money given to lecturers is directly related to how much the University cares about our education,” said LSA junior and SOLE member Lauren Heidtke.

SOLE has organized education sessions in classes and outreach efforts. These include visits to classrooms, placement of banners, chalking and flyering.

¶ 2:46 PM

Smash Yale-[ comments.]

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