Wayne State Part-Time Faculty Closer to Unionizing

The Wayne State University part-time faculty union organizing committee announced this week that more than 75 percent of the faculty members they’ve approached have signed membership cards — which is the first step towards becoming a recognized union.

In an e-mail announcement, the committee urged faculty members to attend a meeting this to voice their opinions and sign a union membership card.

The e-mail identified pay, health care and a voice in university policy as potential union platforms.

Part-time faculty members at WSU have never unionized. Full-time faculty is represented by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) unions. Part-time faculty members teach over 1,000 undergraduate classes at WSU, according to Alita Droba, WSU part-time philosophy professor and member of the part-time faculty union organizing committee.

“Many freshman- and sophomore-level courses are being taught by part-time faculty, whose ability to be fully engaged in the academic lives of their students, and in the broader mission of the university, are undermined by poor pay and the lack of health-care benefits,” committee member and part-time faculty member Thomas Trimble said.

According to Trimble, the committee has received enough membership cards to file a petition with the state of Michigan to recognize the union. He said they plan to file the petition in the next two weeks.

The next step of the process is to hold a consent meeting — a meeting between the union organizers and WSU to decide who is eligible to become a member of the union. This meeting is facilitated by the Michigan Employee Relations Commission Bureau of Employee Relations (MERC-BER).

MERC-BER, which handles labor disputes for the state, will conduct an election to determine whether members want to form the union. The MERC-BER will send ballots to those who are named in the consent meeting as future union members.

That ballot will be the final deciding factor in whether or not the union will be formed. All prospective members will be able to vote, said Trimble.

Once the union is officially recognized, it can hold election for offices within itself, and then negotiations with the university can begin. WSU officials were unavailable for comment.