Michigan State University’s tenured faculty and those on tenure track plan to attend this week’s Board of Trustees meeting to urge the school to recognize their union.
In November, 54% of MSU tenure and tenure-track faculty signed cards in favor of forming the Union of Tenure Stream Faculty (USTF). Since then, union members said university officials have stalled progress and cancelled arbitration talks.
“They come to these meetings unprepared, constantly throwing in new barriers to us being able to move forward and they keep canceling meetings back-to-back-to-back,” said union organizer and MSU professor NiCole Buchanan.
The university has hired South Carolina-based labor law firm, Ogletree Deakins, to represent them in the contract negotiations with USTF.
Some tenured faculty accuse the university of hiring a firm to stall efforts further.
“We've seen a variety of classic union busting behaviors, including the hiring of a law firm that is internationally renowned for their union busting priorities,” Buchanan added.
Ogletree Deakins was hired by Duke University in 2021 shortly after workers at the university’s press announced they would be organizing to create a union.
MSU union leaders say negotiation delays began almost as soon as the USTF was formed, when university officials failed to provide union members a list of faculty members it considers parts of the bargaining unit.
“Now the university would like to ensure that all of the new faculty are included, which we have been interested in doing, but they still can't provide this new list of faculty and we're only talking a few dozen new faculty members,” said Buchanan.
According to union members, the union and the university have not yet reached an agreement on which positions should be included in the union.
“They are saying that, even though they've dragged their feet on a recognition for close to a year, that they now should include any faculty that are new from this year and exclude anyone that has retired,” Buchanan said.
Members have also said the university has argued over whether to include librarians as part of UTSF.
“They don’t think that they are system faculty even though they are defined as tenure system faculty in MSU bylaws,” said Anna Pegler-Gordon, member of the union’s organizing committee and professor at MSU’s James Madison College.
Michigan State University spokesperson Emily Guerrant did not respond to our request for comment on the concerns raised by the union.
UTSF Organizing Committee members plan to speak at the MSU Board of Trustees meeting on Friday about the administration’s refusal to recognize the union
