Hamline puts posturing before progress in contract talks, adjuncts say

January 29, 2019 by

Imagine paying $40,000 per year to attend a university, asking a faculty member for a letter of recommendation, and finding out the letter will come not from a “.edu” address associated with the school, but from an AOL account the professor maintains to write restaurant reviews and buy vintage concert posters online.

It’s just one example, adjunct faculty members say, of the retrograde positions Hamline University and its high-priced lawyers have staked out in negotiations that, despite 14 meetings since last June, have made no progress toward a new union contract.

“All we are trying to do is make reasonable improvements to the contract that help us be better teachers,” said Richard Wiebe, an adjunct instructor of creative writing and digital arts. “We haven’t even gotten to the point of (discussing) economics yet, and every ask we’ve made has been denied by administration on the other end of the table.

“These are things that don’t cost the university anything, so we’re kind of at a loss.”

The frustration boiled over in a press release issued last week by Minnesota Academics United, the SEIU-backed union that represents faculty members at Hamline, Augsburg and other local campuses.

The release blasted Hamline’s approach to bargaining a new contract, accusing school administrators of trying to weaken adjunct faculty members’ union and marginalize their status on campus.

They also blasted university leaders for bringing attorneys from the law firm Dorsey and Whitney into negotiations. The legal fees “almost certainly” have cost Hamline more “than the total cost of the first year of the union’s proposals,” the release said.

David Weiss, a co-steward of the faculty members’ bargaining unit, said union members had hoped talks would be collaborative and positive.

“We were sorely mistaken,” Weiss said. “Far from working with us in a collaborative spirit, Hamline is choosing to become a ‘gated’ academic community, trying to weaken our contract and union – as well as our relationships with students and fulltime faculty colleagues.”

Hamline relies on adjunct faculty to fill roughly half its teaching positions. Adjunct instructors’ workloads fluctuate at the school’s discretion, with few guarantees beyond the end of a given semester.

The intermittent nature of adjunct employment would become even more pronounced under contract language proposed by the university, union members said. One proposal would eliminate standing arrangements that protect adjunct instructors from having to reapply for teaching jobs each semester. Another would block their access to university email accounts, library services and online records in between teaching assignments.

The changes, faculty members warn, would impede their own scholarship and cut them off from students, who often look to instructors for academic assistance or networking support after a semester ends.

The school also rejected the union’s proposal that adjunct faculty members be allowed to carry over earned sick and safe time from one academic year to the next, Wiebe said. Some instructors have been teaching at Hamline for 17 years without accruing a single day of sick leave.

“It’s something we thought it would be reasonable to ask for,” Wiebe said. “We’re trying to work with an unconventional model, being on the academic calendar, but nevertheless ensure some continuity and security for ourselves and our families.”

Hamline’s previous contract with adjunct faculty members, finalized in Feburary 2016 after a first-of-its-kind organizing drive in Minnesota, expired in September. Anthropology instructor Marcia Regan, who has been teaching at Hamline since 2004, said progress on a new agreement won’t come until administrators put posturing aside.

“We know, as dedicated professionals who teach because we believe in the Hamline students, that our long-term connection to Hamline makes us better teachers and deepens our ties to the Hamline community,” Regan said. “The administration refuses to recognize that value, and this has really undercut our best efforts to reach an agreement.”

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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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Teamsters say U of M policy punishes dining workers who use earned sick time

November 3, 2016 by
Brian Aldes, Local 320's principal officer, leads a rally at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

Brian Aldes, Local 320’s principal officer, leads a rally at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

 

On the steps of Morrill Hall Tuesday, front-line staff at the University of Minnesota rallied with other U of M workers, including faculty members seeking a union vote, to protest an attendance policy that, workers say, unfairly disciplines them for getting sick.

Teamsters Local 320, which organized the rally, represents food-service workers at the university who, according to the union, face automatic discipline for exceeding a threshold of three unscheduled “occurrences,” the university’s term for unforeseen uses of sick leave.

The local has filed 30 grievances seeking to rescind disciplinary actions, including one against a dining-hall worker sent home after vomiting.

Brian Aldes, Local 320’s principal officer, said no worker should face discipline for using their earned sick time. “We’re not going away,” he said at the rally. “We’re going to keep the heat up on the U of M.”

Students, researchers and members of other unions joined the rally in solidarity with Local 320 members. Minnesota Nurses Association President Mary Turner called food-service workers’ access to sick leave “a public health issue,” and Geoffrey Rojas, president of the U’s Postdoctoral Association, said sick time is essential for workers with disabilities or chronic health issues “in order to be productive at work.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Debra Hillstrom (DFL-Brooklyn Center), a U of M graduate, took the opportunity to show her support for another of Local 320’s campaigns. “I would be proud to have a university that paid everyone a $15 minimum wage,” she said.

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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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Ruling sets stage for 2,500 Twin Cities faculty to take union vote

September 20, 2016 by

cs0bau0ueaaidznThe historic organizing drive among faculty at the University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities campus cleared a major hurdle today, when a state agency ruled contingent and tenure-track faculty could join together in one potential bargaining unit.

The Minnesota Bureau of Mediation Services’ decision clears the way for about 1,000 contingent and 1,500 tenure-track faculty members to vote in an organizing election as soon as this fall. If successful, the vote would create one of the largest single-campus faculty unions in the U.S.

Supporters of the organizing effort, sponsored by MN Academics United and SEIU Local 284, said the ruling confirms faculty members’ shared stake in a strong, unified voice at the university.

“As the university’s administration has increased the number and ratio of non-tenure-line positions, the fates of all faculty are increasingly intertwined,” Irene Duranczyk, an associate professor in the College of Education and Human Development, said. “We believe that the precarious working conditions under which contingent faculty labor are not only bad for them but also bad for students and bad for us, the remaining tenure-line faculty.”

How soon Duranczyk and other U of M faculty get to vote depends on whether the school appeals the BMS ruling.

An appeal seems likely, as university administrators have made every attempt to derail the union-organizing election since faculty filed for representation in January – efforts that have focused mostly on dividing tenure and contingent faculty.

Last week the nonpartisan Minnesota Public Interest Research Group revealed documents obtained from the U of M showing over $500,000 of spending on outside legal counsel between January and June for services related to the organizing drive.

Even more egregious, faculty members, students and state lawmakers said, are annotations indicating the payments came out of funds the university collected from tuition-paying students and the Minnesota Legislature.

“I’m sure no one in the legislature – Democrat or Republican – intended for … taxpayer dollars we appropriated to the University of Minnesota’s general fund to be used for attorney’s fees fighting the University’s own employees in exercising their right to form a union,” Rep. Jim Davnie said.

U of M sophomore Jada Brown pointed out that Minnesotans, on average, have the 5th-highest student debt in the country, urging administrators “to spend money on our education, not on fighting the people who teach us every day.”

Paying high-priced attorneys to run out the clock on an organizing drive is a move straight out of the corporate anti-union playbook and, lecturer Jason Stahl said, yet another reason for faculty to seek a more powerful voice in university governance.

“We are building this union together to strengthen the voice of faculty on our campus for ourselves and our students,” Stahl said. “And we are confident that we will win our vote.”

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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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Students, teachers, unions urge lawmakers to invest state budget surplus

December 3, 2015 by
U of M grad student Courtney Gildersleeve speaks at a town hall meeting on how to use the state's $1.2 billion budget surplus.

U of M grad student Courtney Gildersleeve speaks at a town hall meeting on how to use the state’s $1.2 billion budget surplus.

 

The projected $1.2 billion state budget surplus, announced by state officials today, creates an opportunity for lawmakers to strengthen communities and continue growing Minnesota’s middle class in the 2016 legislative session, union members and allies said.

And the first place lawmakers should look to invest is education.

That’s the message three Metro-area legislators heard from students, teachers, academics and religious leaders during a town hall meeting in Dinkytown today, as stakeholders from across the education spectrum offered a united front in support of investing surplus funds in education “from cradle to career.”

Sen. Greg Clausen talks with participants in a town hall forum on the state budget surplus in Dinkytown.

Sen. Greg Clausen talks with participants in a town hall forum on the state budget surplus in Dinkytown.

“The Legislature is listening,” Sen. Greg Clausen (DFL-Apple Valley) assured participants in the meeting at University Baptist Church. “We need to invest in education. There’s no question about it.”

Rep. Carlos Mariani, a DFLer from St. Paul, said the healthy surplus is a positive indicator for Minnesota’s economy. “It means our state is working,” he said. “It means our tax structure makes sense.

But lawmakers and labor leaders, including Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bill McCarthy, warned against the inevitable calls to squander the surplus on election-year tax cuts.

“Instead of giveaways to corporate CEOs and employers who choose to pay low wages, lawmakers should embrace policies and investments that support working people,” McCarthy said. “We can ensure all Minnesotans are paid fairly for the work they do and have time for family. We can invest in schools so that every child can attend pre-K. We can improve our state’s infrastructure, boost our job creation tools, and strengthen the public services that vulnerable Minnesotans depend on.”

Eliot Seide, director of AFSCME Council 5, added: “The Legislature shouldn’t raid workers’ wallets to give unneeded tax breaks to billionaires and big businesses.  Those tax giveaways create income inequality, budget deficits and government shutdowns.”

At the town hall meeting, educators urged investments in pre-kindergarten and per-pupil funding for public school districts, as well as targeted investments to address the achievement gap between white students and students of color.

“A lot of people are losing hope because they don’t have a decent education, because they don’t have a decent job,” said Chase Elliott, a parent and a member of the Minneapolis-based community group Neighborhoods Organizing for Change.

The need for investment extends into suburban communities, too. Farmington fourth-grade teacher Jennifer York, a member of Education Minnesota, said cutbacks in recent years have forced her school district and others to lay off support staff, like school counselors, nurses and family-support workers.

Farmington teacher Jennifer York urges lawmakers to invest "every dollar" of the surplus in education.

Farmington teacher Jennifer York urges lawmakers to invest “every dollar” of the surplus in education.

Pre-kindergarten teacher Amanda Reineck, meanwhile, said professionals in her field remain among the lowest-paid in the country. “Many excellent teachers have left the profession because the pay was not enough for them to support their families,” she said.

Local 284 of the Service Employees International Union organized the town hall meeting with its affiliate group MN Academics United, which represents faculty at the U of M’s Twin Cities campus who are working to form a union.

Academics and graduate students supportive of the organizing drive called for investments in higher education that would lower tuition, provide relief from student debt and guarantee living wages for faculty, teaching assistants and frontline workers at the U.

“The working conditions of instructors are the learning conditions of students,” physics grad student Jarrett Brown said.

Speakers acknowledged their priorities are likely to be pit against each other at the Capitol next year, but remained hopeful that listening to each other was a first step toward winning together in 2016.

“I hope we’ll be holding these town hall meetings in other parts of the state,” said Rep. Phyllis Kahn (DFL-Minneapolis).

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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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