Chapters and Affiliates Settle Contracts

Five AAUP-affiliated collective bargaining units have recently reached agreement on new contracts.

The California Faculty Association (CFA), which represents more than twenty thousand teachers and professional employees across the California State University system, reached agreement on a four-year contract. The union was able to prevent salary and benefit cuts, stop a plan that would have made it easier for administrations to prevent faculty sabbaticals, and resist an effort to make faculty members pay more for their health benefits. The university also agreed to consider reopening the issue of salary in the 2012–13 and 2013–14 academic years. Lillian Taiz, president of the CFA, says that the new contract is “a fair agreement in the context of hard times.”

The Eastern Michigan University chapter of the AAUP, EMU-AAUP, has approved an agreement with the EMU administration for a three-year contract that includes a 2 percent raise in salary and greater support for faculty research. Susan Moeller, president of the chapter, praised both sides in the negotiations, saying that they “were conducted in an atmosphere of mutual respect, with both sides committed to doing what was best for the university. The fact that we completed negotiations two weeks before the expiration of the contract is indicative of the cooperation that was present throughout the bargaining process.” EMU-AAUP represents all full-time tenured and probationary faculty members at EMU.

After months of difficult negotiations, the AAUP faculty union at the San Francisco Art Institute, the AAUP’s sole collective bargaining chapter at a private institution west of the Mississippi, ratified a new five-year contract in August. It includes much-needed salary increases and preserves key components of shared governance that were at risk of elimination.

At Kent State University, the AAUP union for tenure-track faculty members settled its contract, achieving pay raises and some success in protecting shared governance rights. The negotiations were protracted, taking more than a year to complete against the backdrop of Senate Bill 5 in Ohio. Another AAUP bargaining unit, consisting of full-time non-tenure-track faculty members, is still negotiating.

At Oakland University in Michigan, the AAUP chapter has finally reached an agreement after five extensions of the existing agreement’s expiration date. The chapter successfully resisted some troubling shared governance proposals from the administration and won raises that more than offset increases in health-care costs.

This article has been revised to correct an error. The original article incorrectly stated that Kent State University has two AAUP unions, one representing “full-time faculty members” and another representing “part-time faculty members.” In fact, Kent State has one AAUP chapter and two AAUP bargaining units: one for tenure-track faculty members and the other for full-time non-tenure-track faculty members. We apologize for the error.