The newest contract for Wayne State University faculty and academic staff brings about something the union has been waiting a short lifetime for--a fair share agreement. Formed as a chapter of the American Association of University Professors 28 years ago, the union of 1,580 faculty and 260 academic staff affiliated with the AFT in 1999 to strengthen their resources and political operating base.

The three-year contract, ratified Sept. 6, achieves this goal. It also provides an overall 10.25 percent salary increase, at a time when the cash-strapped state is talking no increase in university funding.

Michigan Federation of Teachers and School Related Personnel president David Hecker attributes the breakthroughs both to the union's becoming more politically active and to its joining the state labor movement. Wayne State's eight-member board of governors is elected, and political action is the lifeblood of the MFT&SRP. Today, says Hecker, "the board has more people who understand the role of employees on campus, who respect what they contribute, and understand they deserve fair and just compensation and rights and benefits."

The union was able to stave off the university's push for a punitive post-tenure review system. Instead it was able to negotiate resources for a constructive process of peer review and professional development.

The union and university also came to an agreement on how to address rising health insurance costs, with a labor management committee that will oversee changes in the next year.

Finally, the union won a battle at the bargaining table to preserve the status of the academic staff within the union, which the university has been attempting to undermine--especially in the area of professional duty assignments. Administrators "don't understand academic staff," explains Jan Thompson, executive director of the Wayne State AAUP-AFT. They think of people who hold positions such as academic counselors, librarians, archivists, financial aid advisers and so on, as being "glorified clericals." The union held firm that they are professionals appropriately represented in a union of faculty and staff.   [Barbara McKenna / AFT On Campus]

[November 15, 2002]