Op-ed: A better Miami, a stronger community … but when?
Leadership in the Faculty Alliance of Miami write in an op-ed that lengthy negotiations are a union-busting tactic. Negotiations on a first contract have now stretched more than 500 days.
This op-ed was submitted by members of the Faculty Alliance of Miami.
As of last week, Miami University’s faculty-librarian union, the Faculty Alliance of Miami (FAM, AAUP-AFT), has spent more than 500 days in negotiations. While the University claims in its defense that first contracts take 465 days on average to negotiate, including in a recent Oxford Free Press article, the source they cite for that claim is very clear that union-busting is the reason for this excessive length of time.
According to an Economic Policy Institute article that explores the same Bloomberg analysis, "the most salient reason for the long lags is that delays overwhelmingly benefit employers … Management has a strong incentive to play out the clock in the hope of never reaching an agreement."
Nor does Miami University appear ready, despite now being at day 506, to close the contract anytime soon. Their delays include:
- Refusing to put existing job protections for faculty into the contract;
- Refusing to offer annual wage increases even close to the cost of living;
- Trying to get post-tenure review into the contract to threaten tenure;
- Refusing to agree that librarians have academic freedom;
- Making repeated mathematical “errors” in their Compensation and Benefits proposals that take time to correct at the table;
- Changing lawyers twice now, once because their lead lawyer was criminally indicted;
- Trying to restrict who can represent FAM in leadership positions, a position that FAM believes is illegal, resulting in an Unfair Labor Practice filing last week;
- Not being prepared for the negotiation session, delaying work at the table for hours while they complete their homework;
- Refusing to meet more than twice monthly.
If President Crawford and the Board of Trustees cared to get this contract done, we could do it this month — we are down to our last few articles on key issues such as compensation and job security. But they continue to stall, delay and waste our time, all while denying us raises since 2022.
While FAM tries to reason with management at the table, insisting on existing job security and reasonable cost-of-living increases, President Crawford and the Board of Trustees have been paying for two union-busting law firms, planning to spend $200 million on a new basketball arena, and paying Bain, Inc., an outside consulting company, $7.29 million for error-riddled data and assumptions that it is now using to raise faculty workloads. According to the new workload evaluation metrics, faculty teaching loads could go up significantly, straining our capacity to provide the quality of undergraduate education that has earned Miami its ranking as number three in undergraduate teaching among all public institutions in the nation by U.S. News and World Report.
Miami University is the largest employer in Butler County. President Crawford and the Board of Trustees should pay librarians and faculty fairly and grant us reasonable job security for the good of Oxford, the county, the state and Miami itself. Why would they prefer to drive their employees away from the university, rather than cultivating a stronger public institution that will benefit the public good?
The university is stronger when the administration works to support its faculty and librarians, not against them. We are committed to maintaining Miami’s strong reputation with our best teaching and scholarship, and we call on President Crawford and the Trustees to come to the table willing to negotiate a fair contract in a timely fashion.
Signed,
The Faculty Alliance of Miami
