Roars From Inside the Pride: LEO
by P.D. Lesko
In the Land of Titles and Distinctions that is the University of Michigan (and higher education in general), the titles of Painter and Custodian bring more riches to their holders than the title of Lecturer. It’s a through-the-looking-glass scenario worthy of Lewis
Caroll, and it’s why lecturers on the University of Michigan’s three campuses unionized last year. The 1,400 non tenure-track faculty hope their Lecturers’ Employee Organization (LEO) will pull them back through the mirror and into a world where the people who teach in college classrooms earn as much as the people who paint and clean them.
LEO President Bonnie Halloran and the other 13 members of LEO’s bargaining team have their work cut out for them. LEO leaders are fielding throws from President Mary Sue Coleman’s best knuckleballer-negotiators. In addition, there’s friction among the membership, as well.
During 2003, lecturers generated an estimated $282 million dollars in tuition revenue for the U, according to union officials. According to the University of Michigan’s own salary spreadsheet for 2003, out of 34,416 employees 1,000 of the 1,500 lowest paid employees were lecturers. They earned, on average, $21,000 per year. Conversely, the institution paid its painters $51,084.80. Custodians and parking attendants took home $26,395.20.
“When will a lecturer earn as much as a campus painter?” The question has a certain Talmudic ring to it. In non-Talmudic fashion, Bonnie Halloran replies that she has no idea. When pressed she says: “Of course we want to bring the University to the point where the true value of the employee is recognized through salary, job security and benefits.”
John Martin teaches Social Work on the Ann Arbor campus, and has been involved with LEO for the past three years. He is currently the organization’s treasurer. When asked the same question he replies tersely, “Of course lecturers should be valued as highly as the trades people.”
Of course.
But within the kingdom that is higher education, where jokes like “God Save the Dean” get big laughs, part-time faculty are seen as foot soldiers—terribly useful, and utterly expendable. The pay, perks and prerogatives are for those of higher standing, the full professors, and the tenure-line faculty.
It is a bitter truth that Bonnie Halloran is a foot soldier. Along with her paid position as LEO’s President, she teaches social sciences part-time on the Dearborn campus. It is also true that she is a halberdier whose colleagues promoted her overnight to the rank of general. One can only imagine the arched eyebrows in the University of Michigan’s Fleming Administration Building when the news of her election broke. Halloran, John Martin and several of the members of the bargaining team are among those part-time lecturers who earn lower annualized salaries than the University’s parking lot attendants and custodians.
Can foot soldiers like Halloran, Martin and the other LEO bargaining team members eventually claim an additional $45 million dollars from President Mary Sue Coleman’s multi-billion dollar budget for LEO’s membership? Judging from how well LEO’s bargaining team did negotiating its first contract, there is every indication that U of M’s lecturers will step out of Wonderland sooner rather than later.
Bonnie Halloran is proud of the accomplishments of LEO on behalf of its membership. She has a warm, ready laugh, and when discussing the new lecturers’ union she is precise and direct. She doesn’t hesitate when asked about conflicts within the organization. Although the union’s first contract scored some impressive gains with respect to pay, job security and benefits for all lecturers, there have been grumbles from those members who, as Halloran puts it, “like to pit themselves against each other.” The Lecturer IIIs and IVs (full-time temporary faculty who teach 3-4 courses per semester, and earn full-time salaries), some of the highest paid full-time temporary lecturers are unhappy.
“There are always going to be individuals in a union that wished the union had negotiated something different with respect to them,” says LEO Treasurer John Martin, choosing his words carefully.
In gambling terms, Lecturer IIIs and IVs are the whales—the big rollers, whose high salaries mean they’ll generate healthy yearly dues payments to the new affiliate. But this isn’t Las Vegas; it’s a labor union, and LEO’s bargaining team negotiated the heftiest pay hikes for their members who were paid the least, the part-time temporary lecturers.
“The union agreed to correct the most egregious pay situations. Thus, the people making the least would benefit from the biggest raises,” explains Halloran.
John Martin agrees. “We made a conscious effort to raise the pay of those who made the least, [and] the contract was approved by an overwhelming majority.”
According to the contract agreement summary posted to LEO’s Web site, the negotiated salary hikes represent “raises of almost 50 percent for the lowest paid 300 or so NTT [non tenure-track] faculty.”
Lecturer Is & IIs (part-time temporary faculty who teach 1-3 courses per semester, and who are paid based on annualized full-time salaries) will see their pay jump between 29 and 50 percent. In addition, all lecturers are slated to receive yearly cost of living adjustments equal to those paid by the University to its tenure-line and tenured faculty.
In 2003, Lecturer IIIs and IVs received a modest 1.5 to 3 percent cost of living adjustment; they also became eligible for a seven percent raise based on mandatory evaluation. Thus, Lecturer IIIs and IVs, some of whom already earn well above the union’s negotiated salary minimums, will end up with the lowest raises under the auspices of the new contract.
“I earn $32,000 per year,” says a lecturer on the Dearborn campus, who asked that her name not be used. “The union negotiated a salary minimum of $30,000, which doesn’t raise my salary. Then the union set dues at 1.6 percent of members’ salaries. The University cost of living adjustment to which I am now entitled thanks to the new contract was set at 1.5 percent in September. I’m losing money. Not a lot, but I’m losing money.”
This lecturer had not yet gone through the new mandatory review.
Bonnie Halloran stresses that by the end of the union’s three-year pact, all Lecturer IIIs and IVs will have been evaluated. When asked if she has fielded complaints from Lecturer IIIs and IVs about the negotiated salary minimums and raises Halloran thinks for a moment and then replies that “some Lecturer IIIs and IVs have talked to their union stewards raising these issues, and I’ve talked to a couple of folks at Dearborn.”
For Lecturer IIIs and IVs, then, their pay hikes are predicated on the assumption that all of them will pass their mandatory evaluations.
When asked about the likelihood of all of the upper-level lecturers passing their evaluations, John Martin replies that his “assumption is that the majority of the members would pass.”
Of course, there are well-known adages about assumptions and best made plans.
To whit, the union recently filed a grievance on behalf of three long-time lecturers in the English Department on the Ann Arbor campus who lost their jobs at the end of the Fall semester. When asked about the grievance, Bonnie Halloran stressed that the dismissals and subsequent union intervention had more to do with the natural bumps in the road during the first year of a union contract than anything else.
“It has to do with the interpretation of the contract language,” explains Halloran.
There could be a darker interpretation of the situation, as well. The dismissals could be an attempt on the part of the employer to avoid the evaluation process and, thus, avoid raising the salaries of the full-time Lecturer IIIs and IVs.
However, the grievances have yet to be settled, and the end-of-semester layoffs certainly do not qualify as a pattern of behavior on the part of university officials.
Other rumblings within LEO have had to do with the composition of the bargaining team, and the fact that a part-time lecturer heads LEO.
Marjorie Lynn is a full-time visiting lecturer who teaches writing on the Dearborn campus. She wrote this in an e-mail message in response to the question of the bargaining team’s composition:
“Participation in the bargaining committee was open to anyone who wanted to make the commitment, and I just think that the complainers have no basis for that complaint at all. The call went out far and wide for people to participate. I was on the bargaining team myself and had a full-time ‘visiting lecturer’ appointment at the time.”
John Martin concurs. “The bargaining team was formed by sending out a call to the membership.”
Be that as it may, Bonnie Halloran is, in fact, one of only a handful of part-time lecturers in the United States and Canada who head faculty union locals. So why the full-time lecturer grumblers?
If part-time faculty are the foot soldiers, full-time lecturers are the cavalry, sent in to battle the undergraduate teaching load along with the part-time faculty. Though the two groups tackle the same sorts of courses, and often have the same academic qualifications, full-time lecturers are higher up the command chain than part-time lecturers. This is an absolutely crucial point in the land of Titles and Distinctions.
Thus, grumbling by full-time lecturers about the fact that a part-time lecturer leads LEO is not surprising. Work someplace long enough, and you start to believe the myths and fables, like the one that says God should save the Dean.
So what’s next for LEO? With job security in place, lecturer health benefits now paid by the University over the summer and guaranteed cost of living raises each year, LEO bargaining team members accomplished in a single contract what long-time lecturer unions at other colleges still haven’t secured.
“Increased salaries will be a major focus in the next contract,” says Halloran.
John Martin adds that “this year we’re focusing on implementation of the contract. In future years we’ll focus on salary.”
As for the grumbling, Bonnie Halloran is confident about the “spirit of the membership.”
One thing is certain, given the bargaining team’s excellent start, and President Coleman’s obvious desire to work with the union, LEO will have every opportunity to create a campus environment where the faculty are valued as highly as the trades people.
