Contract Settlement at Monmouth

Last fall the Faculty Association of Monmouth University (FAMCO), an AAUP collective bargaining chapter, reached an agreement with the administration and ratified a new three-year contract. The chapter won significant across-the-board and salary-floor increases, a one-year freeze on health-care premiums, an agreement to conduct a third-party salary-equity study, faculty intellectual-property protections, and protections against the imposition of a “HyFlex” modality, which would have required faculty to simultaneously teach in-person and online versions of each course. The contract settlement follows sustained member organizing that started two years earlier, when the chapter initiated a health-care issue campaign centered on regular labor-management committee meetings to discuss the health-care needs of faculty members and their families. For the first time in recent history, FAMCO has successfully engaged a majority of its faculty in member-led organizing. This member engagement continues in the current term as the clinical faculty caucus negotiates a memorandum of understanding addressing work-load issues.

For an in-depth discussion of the chapter’s approach to organizing, see the article by Johanna Foster and Marina Vujnovic in this issue.