Susan Titus: The Grey-Haired Warrior

by Marjorie Lynn

Holding the door open to the Paris Cafe in Detroit, Susan Titus, a wide-smiling, grey-haired woman in jeans and a hot pink sweater, greeted me warmly as she realized we had known each other in the past. In fact, Susan shared that I had been the first person years ago, in the early 90s, to make her aware of “freeway flyers” and “road scholars” when I belonged to the lecturers” organizing committee at Eastern Michigan University. Now, this self-proclaimed “Grey-Haired Warrior” has helped organize a new union at Wayne State University, the Union of Part-Time Faculty (UPTF), and serves on the bargaining team for their first contract. Almost all other faculty and staff on Wayne State’s campus are unionized, but the nearly 900 part-timers who teach half-time appointments or less had never been organized.

“I love organizing people and at this point in my life (early-60s), I have time to give to the efforts,” says Titus.
Susan was married, but had no children. She has an adopted a greyhound and has a couple of cats. Born in California and raised in a military family, Titus credits her mother with instilling in her a concern for injustice and inequity beginning as far back as elementary school. Titus’s family relocated frequently, and Susan graduated from the American High School in France. She came to Detroit for graduate school in 1968 and never left.

Organizing efforts at Wayne State, a large, public research university in downtown Detroit, began in earnest in 2005, (soon after neighboring University of Michigan settled its first contract with lecturers in 2004 and whose contract UPTF is using as a model.) Titus didn”t feel particularly mistreated; she thought she was reasonably well paid, and she loved her teaching, but when the two staff AFT organizers came to her after a class to “do the script,” she asked, “Are you talking about unions?” And said “Yes!” right away.

On its campus and extensions, Wayne State University offers about 350-degree programs, plus 32 special certification programs through 11 colleges and schools. This urban university commits itself to enhancing life in Detroit, and to training students in urban issues. The School of Social Work, in which Susan Titus teaches, has the stated mission of training social workers at the BSW, MSW, and Ph.D. levels to practice in urban environments and research urban issues. Of course the city of Detroit itself has a long history with labor movements, which may partly explain why most of the college’s administration and the Board of Governors have not stood in the way of the union’s efforts. Some of the department heads even spoke up saying they thought organizing was a good idea. But still, organizing part-timers at this large city university has been so tremendously difficult and time consuming that AFT assigned two full-time staff people to work on organizing during late 2005 and most of 2006.

“The first time I laid eyes on Susan, we jived because our energy levels are above the norm,” said Lynn Marie Smith, one of the AFT staff organizers assigned to the Wayne State effort. “She’s a natural!” She went on to call Susan brave, and to credit her with being dedicated and outspoken, for exuding leadership, and using skills developed from past experience with community organizing.

First, just getting the names of the almost 900 part-timers from the bureaucracy of the university was difficult. Then, the organizers, both staff and volunteer, some from neighboring AFT locals, had to find these people to get them to sign the membership cards required to petition the Michigan Employment Relations Commission to call an election. Susan and others spent hours on the phone, making office visits and house calls, “stalking” people by waiting outside classrooms for a class to end. And sometimes, especially with night classes, the organizing volunteer might get there to find that the class had been dismissed earlier.

“It’s hard, hard work!” Susan sighed, but without complaint. “Personal contact is a hugely important part of the union work.”

“The organizing committee is small, always in flux, and usually shrinking,” Titus laments. “Finding people, twisting their arms to move into leadership roles is one hard problem” as is getting people together for meetings.

For some, it takes a lot of personal contact to get them involved in any way. Says Lynn Marie Smith: “I could always count on Susan to help with the difficult decisions that needed to be made during our organizing meeting dilemmas.”

Eventually, the huge investment of time and energy paid off: enough people had signed the cards to certify the union to file for a collective bargaining election, which was held in April 2007. The Union of Part-Time Faculty (UPTF) was formed. Members held a victory party in July, adopted by-laws to establish terms and duties of officers and set dues. Officers were elected. Then came the next difficult task of contract negotiations, which began November 16, 2007.

“You”re taking on another unpaid job, Susan?” asked her sister when Susan announced she”d been elected president of the UPTF.

“It’s just for one year, to get us through contract negotiations,” says Susan. Articulate, self-confident, passionate about causes and knowledgeable about issues, Titus has had the chance to lead half a dozen organizations, and to serve on the boards of many more. Titus’s resume lists 27 professional and community activities, from the Veterans” Administration and FEMA, to the Consumer Coalition for Health Care and almost 40 years on both local and state boards with the ACLU. She helped organize WE (Women Executives), and is currently working with Michigan Consumer Voice, a new organization for consumer rights.

Although Susan studied English as an undergraduate, it has been social work, particularly consumer advocacy within the health care system, and advocacy on behalf of the elderly and chronically ill, that has filled her personal and professional life. She earned an MSW with a specialty in Social Group Work from Wayne State in 1968, and has earned specialized social worker certification and licenses from the State of Michigan.

She doesn”t see clients; she organizes people, her social work specialty. From developing programs for chronically mentally ill adults, administering camping for the Girl Scouts of Metropolitan Detroit, to consumer concerns about transportation. Susan Titus spent 22 years as the Executive Director of Citizens for Better Care. From there, she moved to Michigan Parkinson’s Foundation, and later to Transportation Riders United, an advocacy group to improve transportation in Detroit. She has been a consultant to the Detroit Area Agency on Aging.

In 2002, Phyllis Ivory Vroom, Dean of Wayne State University’s School of Social Work, invited Susan to join her staff to help plan for the 26th annual International Symposium of the Association for the Advancement of Social Work with Groups.

“I thought of asking Susan to help because our paths had been crossing for years” in a variety of shared activities and interests. “We were strong acquaintances” and she was well aware of Susan’s high energy and passion and her many roles and skills. Dean Vroom describes Susan Titus using a long string of positive adjectives, among them “informed,” and ending with, “She’s terrific!”

In 2003, Titus became a part-time faculty member at Wayne State once again (she”d taught introductory courses at the institution in 1978-80, before the time of adjunct activism). She was hired to teach both graduate and under graduate courses in community organizing and administration, analysis of social policy, and issues in social welfare in the School of Social Work.

For a time, Susan was both staff and teacher; her workload put her over the 50 percent limit that, at Wayne State, qualifies one for benefits. Titus says she waived her rights to these, not because she didn”t need or want them. It was, at the time, a forced choice: it was either waive rights to benefits, or lose her job. At Wayne State, all part-time faculty are hired to teach on less than half-time appointments (49 percent of a full-time appointment, or 8 contact hours or less). Titus hopes this situation will be discussed at the bargaining table when the new union hammers out its first contract.

Interestingly, however, before beginning negotiations, the Union conducted a survey of their members and found that desire for benefits came in third place, after a desire for increased pay and job security. Titus posits that benefits may not be a prime concern because about 52 percent of Wayne State’s part-time faculty teach at other colleges, and even more may have other jobs or spouses that provide benefits. Also up for negotiations will be improved working conditions.

“A hidden agenda in these contract negotiations is to give people a better sense of themselves,” Susan explains. “So many part-timers just feel a lack of respect from and connection with the University.”

Susan is on the bargaining team as the only representative from a professional school”the School of Social Work.
The union’s negotiations have received local publicity: Susan joined a panel of involved participants in a local public radio talk show. UPTF members, joined by colleagues from other AFT locals, rallied before Thanksgiving last year to raise awareness, and to kick off the bargaining. In an article published the day before November negotiations began, The Detroit News reported “both sides declare optimism about completing a contract quickly, perhaps by the end of this winter term, 2008.” The article quoted John Oliver, the lead negotiator for the University as saying that the administration understands the position of the part-timers. Titus hopes so. However, she is clear that a key organizing principle during this time has been to create a clear sense of the possibilities, even though, right now “our reputations may be bigger than our capabilities.”

As Bryan Pfeifer, the current AFT staff person whose job it is to help UPTF maintain momentum, outlines plans for the upcoming Winter semester–a rally on MLK Day, presentations to the Board of Governors, membership meetings, more calls and visits–he tells me how impressed he is with Susan’s self-sacrifice, her efforts to make sure the union is progressing as it should. “She’s always active and does what she says she’s gonna do,” he says.

“I have a great deal of respect for Susan, and think of her as a friend, even though I only met her in August,” wrote the UPTF’s chief negotiator, Tom Anderson, in answer to my email query about Susan.
This whole process has enriched and invigorated Wayne State’s Grey-Haired Warrior: she has added even more to her special set of community organizing skills. Her organizing work has given her stories to share with her students. She has met many new people in departments across her own campus.

“I believe profoundly in unions,” explains Titus. “Historically, unions have been demonized, but they give people a real chance to be involved in their own work life. So many part-timers creep in to the building, have no office, little to no contact with others, and so feel pretty much like [non-entities]. The union can change that. It’s a great cause. ”
And, as Susan Titus and I discovered over coffee at the Paris Cafe, we have much in common as union organizers. Unionists call it solidarity.

Titus calls her work a joy: “This opportunity [has given] me a chance to live out a long time dream of mine”to organize
[a group] from the ground up.”