LEO and Michigan Reach Agreement
After six months of negotiations to amend the Lecturers’ Employee Organization’s (LEO) 2004 contract, the LEO Union and the University of Michigan administration have settled.
The three-year contact was voted in with a 318-10 majority vote and will remain effective until May 15, 2010. It took six months of negotiations and an informational picket to finalize the union’s grievances with the administration.
Some of the gains include the ability for lecturers who work under 80 percent of the semester to be omitted from the Conflict of Commitment Agreement, full health coverage throughout the summer months, and a three percent salary raise for the Dearborn and Flint campus faculty.
When the contract negotiations first began in January, LEO members were asking for a decent living, respect, job security, equal access to health care and privacy.
Under the new contract, all LEO faculty members are given the title of “lecturer,” but still remain as faculty on the university’s non tenure-track with limited job security.
“We also strengthened our grievance procedure, improved language on layoff and recall, as well as created a new professional development fund for lecturers who had not previously had access to these types of funds,” LEO President Bonnie Halloran said on their Web site, leounion.org. “We also consider these significant long term wins for the lecturers at the university.”
