Ruling deals blow to faculty union drive at U’s Twin Cities campus

September 6, 2017 by

A Minnesota Court of Appeals ruling issued yesterday dealt a setback to faculty members organizing a union at the University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities campus, who are now weighing an appeal to the state’s Supreme Court.

The ruling overturned a decision by the Bureau of Mediation Services, which oversees public employee labor disputes in Minnesota, to allow contingent and tenure-track faculty members to form a united front in bargaining with the U of M, should they vote to form a union.

The faculty union, Minnesota Academics United, released a statement from its steering committee in response to the decision:

“We are disappointed that the Court of Appeals overruled the Bureau of Mediation Services (BMS). We believe that the Commissioner’s decision was the more accurate assessment of faculty labor on our campus, a decision reached based on a thorough and thoughtful process including meetings of the parties, lengthy hearings, and extensive legal arguments. We stand firm in our belief that contingent faculty and tenure-track faculty necessarily share a community of interest.

“The university administration’s position is driven by backwards priorities that value administrative prerogatives over intellectual excellence and student learning. The University’s position is a deliberate misinterpretation of what campus faculty do, explicitly intended to divide us in order to limit our power to protect and improve our working conditions, which are also our students’ learning conditions.

“Further, it relies on a fundamental disavowal of the value of our contingent colleagues’ teaching, research, and service to our campus community. This approach to university education is anachronistic and unacceptable. In spite of this unfavorable outcome in the Court of Appeals, we will continue to advocate for our students and colleagues through a variety of channels including a possible appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court.”

Faculty members at the U of M filed their petition for a union election in January 2016.

Minnesota Academics United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union, has 30 days to appeal the Court of Appeals ruling.

 

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MCAD faculty members unionize; Augsburg adjuncts on track to vote soon

October 19, 2016 by

mcad_thumbnailFaculty at Minneapolis College of Art and Design have voted overwhelmingly to unionize after an organizing drive sponsored by Local 284 of the Service Employees International Union.

The election results were announced this afternoon, just days after adjunct faculty at Augsburg College filed for a union election of their own.

MCAD’s part- and full-time instructors voted separately to form distinct bargaining units, with 64 percent of faculty members voting “yes.”

Negotiations on first contracts for MCAD faculty could begin before year’s end. Faculty members said they looked forward to using their collective voice to advocate for themselves and their students.

“I am thrilled to see such a resounding vote for forming our union amongst both part-time and full-time faculty,” adjunct media instructor Daniel Dean said. “Now, we can work together towards changes that will improve our working conditions as well as our students’ experience.

“As part-time adjunct faculty, we need to know that we will be able to be there for our students when they need us.”

For Augsburg adjuncts, the timeline of their organizing election has yet to be determined, but faculty requested an election by mail ballot in November.

“I want to form an adjunct faculty union at Augsburg because I love teaching here – so much so that I am teaching this semester at a financial loss, as I did over the summer,” adjunct physics instructor Jessica Ennis said. “I have two small children, and I pay more in child care than I make from teaching. This is not sustainable in the long term for my family and me, for my students, or for the Augsburg administration.”

Over 11,000 faculty members nationwide have formed unions with SEIU in the last three years, including adjunct faculty at Hamline University in St. Paul, who voted to join Local 284 in June 2014.

Augsburg adjuncts aren’t the only local faculty poised to vote in an organizing election. Tenure-track and contingent faculty at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities campus have filed for an election, but the university’s administration has bogged down the process with legal appeals.

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MCAD faculty members voting in union election this month

October 5, 2016 by
mcad_thumbnail

photo: Minnesota Private College Council

Like thousands of faculty members on campuses across the country, faculty at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design are seeking a stronger voice to advocate for themselves and their students – and they’re organizing a union in order to get it.

MCAD’s part- and full-time faculty members will vote by mail in separate organizing elections this month, deciding whether to form bargaining units represented by Local 284 of the Service Employees International Union. The National Labor Relations Board will count ballots Oct. 19.

Before petitioning for an NLRB election, a majority of MCAD’s 100-plus faculty members signed cards in support of forming a union. Collective bargaining, union supporters said, would give faculty members a seat at the table in decisions that affect their teaching conditions and their students’ learning conditions.

Full- and part-time faculty members agreed their organizing drive is part of a broader effort to push back against some troubling trends in higher education – a “corporatizing” effect, full-time MCAD Professor Frenchy Lunning said, that makes top scholars less likely to enter the field.

“For me, this is about the future of higher education,” part-time MCAD faculty member Dawn Pankonien, a political economist, said. “It is about ensuring pay rates and job security that will allow not only secondary but also primary household earners to assume positions as educators without needing to arrive at their morning lectures after working night shifts in other industries.”

If they vote to unionize, MCAD faculty would join over 11,000 faculty nationwide who have formed unions with SEIU in the last three years.

That includes adjunct faculty at Hamline University in St. Paul, who voted to join Local 284 in June 2014. Since then, more than half of faculty members on campus have seen their base pay increase by 20 percent – the first pay increase in more than a decade for many instructors.

Tenure-track and contingent faculty at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities campus are on track to vote in a union election after an organizing drive with Local 284 as well.

Hamline adjunct professor David Weiss said he looks forward to welcoming MCAD and U of M faculty into the local soon.

“Together with faculty at other colleges and universities across the Twin Cities, we can raise standards for our students and stop the race to the bottom in higher education,” Weiss said.

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Faculty blast U’s attempt to delay union vote with legal appeal

March 31, 2016 by

10390206_1380042375657915_7758383538287175658_nThe University of Minnesota is asking the state Court of Appeals to slow down a historic union-organizing effort among faculty at the Twin Cities campus. Union supporters today branded the university’s decision as divisive and wasteful.

“We are forming a union so we can gain a stronger voice in university governance, and this is a perfect example of why,” Associate Professor Irene Duranczyk said in a media release issued by MN Academics United, the SEIU-backed union supporting faculty members’ organizing drive.

The university’s appeal seeks to divide tenure-track and contract faculty members, who successfully petitioned the state Bureau of Mediation Service to be united in one bargaining unit earlier this year. That set the stage for approximately 2,500 faculty members to vote in a union election.

Professor Jerry Cohen said faculty rejected the idea of separating tenure-track and contract faculty because they saw a common need for a greater voice at the U. “While we have different roles at the university, we are all responsible for teaching our students and making the U a great place to learn,” Cohen said.

As part of its appeal, the university will request a stay of pre-election hearings to determine who is eligible to vote in the union election. If granted, it could delay a vote by up to a year.

Resorting to time-consuming, costly delay tactics is a move straight out of the corporate anti-union playbook, and faculty members, students and lawmakers were not shy in expressing their disappointment.

“We are dismayed by the University’s decision to spend months of administrative time and untold sums of taxpayer and tuition dollars on costly outside counsel to fight us, their own faculty, rather than just letting us choose for ourselves whether or not we want a union,” said Meredith Gill, a senior lecturer in cultural studies and comparative literature.

Alex Peeper, an undergraduate studying history and political science, blasted university administrators for “spending their time and our tuition dollars fighting our faculty instead of fighting for us.”

Sen. Patricia Torres-Ray, a DFLer from Minneapolis, warned: “The university can’t afford to waste its limited resources fighting against their own faculty.”

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Trumka at U of M: ‘There’s a way for workers to win, and it’s together’

November 19, 2015 by
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka speaks at the U of M's Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka speaks at the U of M’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

In a policy address at the University of Minnesota yesterday, the nation’s highest-ranking labor leader pointed to “thousands of little groundswells” from across the country, including in the Twin Cities, as signs of a renaissance for collective action in American culture.

“Right now workers are standing together and asking for a better life – and standing together to get that better life,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said. “There’s a way for workers to win, and it’s together.”

Trumka offered his remarks, entitled “The Right Deal for America, and the Political Path to Get There,” to students, faculty, labor leaders and other dignitaries, including former Vice President Walter Mondale, at the U of M’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

The labor leader’s visit came a day after frontline workers at the university, members of AFSCME and the Teamsters, escalated their campaign for a fair contract with informational picketing on campus.

But Trumka did not shy away from standing in solidarity with their campaign for raises and respect. And he praised U of M faculty – his “soon to be brothers and sisters” – for taking steps to organize a union with SEIU Local 284 and gain a voice in shared governance at the university.

U of M workers, Trumka said, are among 5 million union members bargaining contracts this year, the most in recent history. It’s an opportunity, he said, for workers to get their “fair share” of an economic recovery built on their productivity and sacrifice.

“Raising wages will kick start the greatest engine of economic growth the world has ever seen: a well-paid American workforce,” Trumka said.

The address touched on public policies and political issues that affect U.S. workers, including rising income inequality, legal challenges to collective bargaining, and trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership that put corporate profits before middle-class jobs.

Those and other challenges, Trumka said, reflect the overwhelming influence of corporate money and the so-called “1 percent” on U.S. policymaking.

“The 1 percent have used every political and economic tool to drive down wages and divide working people … and they aren’t finished,” Trumka said. But he also likened corporate power to “a dinosaur that’s lived past its time” – big, vicious and “about to be pushed into extinction.”

Trumka poses for a photo with St. Paul Regional Labor Federation President Bobby Kasper (L) and Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bill McCarthy.

Trumka poses for a photo with St. Paul Regional Labor Federation President Bobby Kasper (L) and Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bill McCarthy.

How? Trumka pointed to the AFL-CIO’s Raising Wages Agenda, which “we’re pursuing right here in Minneapolis and St. Paul with a real vigor.”

The federation has come out strongly in favor of policies like a $15 minimum wage, fair scheduling and earned sick and safe time, and it’s given allies from outside the labor movement – worker centers and other groups advocating for gender equity, racial justice and immigrant rights – a real voice in the AFL-CIO’s power structure.

Trumka acknowledged flexibility and openness haven’t always been characteristics of the 60-year-old labor federation.

“There are a million little fires out there,” Trumka said. “It used to be if we couldn’t control them, then we didn’t want anything to do with them.”

After his address, Trumka answered questions in an informal exchange with Morris Kleiner, professor and AFL-CIO Chair in Labor Policy at the Humphrey School. The U of M established the position after receiving a contribution from the AFL-CIO in 1985, and it remains the only public affairs school in the U.S. with a dedicated AFL-CIO chair.

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Ellison to U of M researchers: Use collective action to reverse dwindling federal support

November 13, 2015 by
U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison meets with researchers at the U of M - Twin Cities.

U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison meets with researchers at the U of M – Twin Cities.

 

Frontline researchers alerted U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison to the impacts of dwindling federal and institutional support for their work in a meeting at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities yesterday.

Ellison, a DFLer whose 5th District includes the Twin Cities campus, pledged to continue supporting research funding in Congress, and he praised U of M faculty, who are in the process of organizing a union, for taking collective action to raise awareness of the issue.

Rep. Keith Ellison pledges to share with his colleagues in the state's congressional delegation an open letter from U of M researchers.

Rep. Keith Ellison pledges to share with his colleagues in the state’s congressional delegation an open letter from U of M researchers.

“Your perspective is unique,” Ellison told faculty. “Your process is hands-on. And you’ve got to be able to handle that process in a way that is meaningful for people making policy decisions.”

Ellison met with academics on the same day they released results of a recent survey of U of M researchers, “The State of Research Funding and Support at the University of Minnesota.” Distributed over the summer, the survey drew 342 responses, which revealed several common threads.

• As federal support for research decreases, U of M researchers are spending more time chasing funding, and their research suffers as a result.

Overall spending on university-based research across federal agencies fell $21 billion, or 13 percent, from 2005 to 2015. The share of the federal budget dedicated to research, at 12 percent in 1965, is less than 4 percent today.

Jerry Cohen, a professor of horticultural science, pointed to a national survey that found academic researchers spend, on average, 43 percent of their day navigating the bureaucracy of federal grant funding.

“We are throwing good ideas away,” Cohen said. “It challenges our ability as a nation to remain a premier scientific-research country on the planet.”

• Lack of federal funding and institutional support is driving talented researchers out of the academic field.

“I personally know of faculty who have left academia because of the giant pressure put on them to find funding,” post-doctoral associate Geoffrey Rojas said.

• The U of M is failing to provide adequate support for researchers competing for federal funds, and the U is not being transparent when it comes to administrative costs taken out of research grants.

Just 40 percent of survey respondents said they feel the university “adequately supports and values their research,” the same amount that feel they are given “adequate time in the workweek” to meet the demands of their positions.

Meanwhile, just 1 in 7 researchers at the U feel their employer is being transparent about how it uses “overhead rates” taken out of federal grants to cover facility and administrative costs, according to the survey.

“One of the reasons we’re organizing a union is precisely because of these issues,” geography professor Bruce Braun said. A union, he added, would give U of M faculty a better voice in shared governance at the U, and it would empower researchers to “advocate for the kind of federal funding we need at the university and that the public deserves.”

Tenure-line and contingent faculty at the Twin Cities campus are organizing with MN Academics United, an affiliate of Service Employees International Union Local 284.

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