PrintTemple, a strong union, holds out for the best offer
Faculty and professional staff at Temple University last month voted 430-8 to ratify a four-year contract that is a sweet deal for all concerned. The administration wanted changes to the tenure and promotion process and merit pay to replace across-the-board wage increases. The union, the Temple Association of University Professionals/AFT, skillfully negotiated a new tenure and promotion process that keeps faculty in the driver’s seat. And TAUP managed to accept the merit pool the administration wanted, but keep it to 1 percent of the salary base. That, with bonuses and cost-of-living increases, will amount to a 15.22 percent increase over four years.
“It’s a win-win contract,” says William W. Cutler, president of TAUP, which represents 1,165 full-time faculty and other academic professionals at 13 of Temple’s schools and colleges and within its library system.
“We’ve never had a university tenure and promotion committee,” adds Art Hoch ner, TAUP’s chief negotiator. The committee will “be dominated by faculty selected by the faculty, rather than dominated by administrators and deans” who would select committee members.
TAUP members are pleased with other features of the contract: It gives incremental benefit improvements to nontenure-track, full-time teachers, increases in minimum salaries for librarians and all faculty, and full domestic partner benefits. And it provides a sliding scale of health and dental insurance premium payments, so that “those who are paid less, pay less,” says Hochner.
Temple’s reliance on nontenure-track, full-time faculty and adjuncts (who are not represented by a union) has grown in the five years since university president David Adamany took over Temple. In 1999, they made up 15.9 percent of the faculty. This year, they are 29.6 percent. The union would like to see this growth checked, but at the same time, wants to be sure that faculty are treated with dignity, Hochner explains. Thus, the new contract provides written standards for appointment, reappointment and promotion to higher ranks. Although they’ve had health benefits for a while, the new contract also provides nontenure-track faculty an opportunity to be part of the pension plan and full family access to tuition benefits.
Another valuable enhancement in the agreement is language on fair share. When the union boosts its membership to 70 percent, it will be able to collect agency fee from nonmembers.
Some felt that negotiations with Adamany would be daunting, given his history as a committed anti-unionist when he was president at Wayne State University and superintendent of the Detroit public schools. Yet, the obvious strength and support of TAUP members showed their willingness to bide their time and let their negotiators work out the best deal.
In December, with talks stalled, hundreds of TAUP faculty and staff rallied outside a board of trustees meeting to show their resolve. After that, says Hochner, the administration was suddenly very anxious to talk. “We were organized, we had a good communications network. They could see we were getting stronger.”
Graduate employees at the University of Michigan have taken to heart one of the basic tenets of union solidarity: An injustice to one is an injustice to all.
Thus, as their union, the Graduate Employees Organization/AFT, began preparing for contract negotiations a year ago, members were open to the idea of strengthening antidiscrimination language in the contract—especially protecting the rights of transgender graduate students.
At a Feb. 14 bargaining session between the union and university, male and female GEO members arrived wearing skirts and dresses to make the point. A few days later, the union and university signed off on the language. The next challenge, says GEO chief negotiator André Wilson, a transgender himself, is getting the transition costs of the treatment covered by the health insurance package.
“In the healthcare package, it’s an explicit exclusion,” says GEO president Dave Dobbie, and the negotiating team is working to get that removed. “The membership is so behind it because it just makes sense.”
Another measure in the contract the union is committed to saving is domestic partner benefits, which are threatened due to an antigay marriage initiative Michigan voters passed last November. “It’s apparent that the university will be sued soon” by those who oppose domestic partner benefits, says Dobbie. So the union is seeking more neutral language that guarantees coverage for designated beneficiaries.
GEO’s contract expired Feb. 24 and the union has conducted a strike vote of its 1,600 members by mail. As AFT On Campus went to press, the bigger issues of salary and healthcare were still pressing. “Healthcare is our toughest remaining issue,” says Dobbie. The administration “does not want to negotiate over plan design—the services we get and the amount of the copay—but making healthcare secure over the life of our contract is essential to members.”
