Michigan Lecturers Agree to New Contract

A union of lecturers and adjunct faculty reached an agreement with the University of Michigan on higher salaries and new guarantees on job security.

“We didn’t get everything we were looking for, but we think we got a very good first contract in a very difficult budget year,” Bonnie Halloran, president of the Lecturers Employee Organization, said Monday.

The university could not immediately say how much these provisions would cost.

U-M is the only school in the Big Ten to have its 1,500 nontenure-track faculty form a union and negotiate a contract. Eastern Michigan University’s nontenure-track faculty formed a union, however, and faculty at other schools, such as the University of California at Berkeley, fought for similar contracts, the union says.

The U-M deal was reached in talks that ended at 3 a.m. Sunday, and union leaders spent Monday selling it to members at the school’s three campuses. Members informally supported the pact by a 128-10 vote.

The deal would raise minimum full-time salaries to $31,000 a year at Ann Arbor, $25,000 at Dearborn and $23,000 at Flint. More experienced lecturers would earn more. That’s several thousand dollars higher than U-M’s initial offer, and less than the $40,000-across-the-board minimum proposed by the union.

In addition, the deal would establish a way for lecturers to obtain longer contracts, provided they pass a review after several years of continuous employment. A series of raises also would be spelled out. Promotional raises of 5 to 7 percent would be given out after three or four years of work, depending on the job. Additional yearly cost-of-living raises would be tied to the raises awarded tenured faculty in the College of Literature, Sciences and the Arts.

Previously, there were no minimum salaries, while some lecturers complained that they had worked for 10 years without a raise. Many work from semester-to-semester without long-term contracts.

“Both sides of the bargaining process are pleased with this outcome,” said U-M spokeswoman Julie Peterson. “I think we all agree this is a good outcome, and it will be the foundation for a good contract. It does improve the circumstances of our lecturers, both financially and in terms of job security. And it does give the university the flexibility it needs.”

The lowest-paid lecturers would gain the most from the deal, Halloran said, using herself as an example. She has worked at the Dearborn campus for 10 years, with a contract that has been renewed each semester. She teaches part-time, but makes the equivalent of $19,680 in full-time wages.

Over the next three years, she said, the deal would raise her pay by 43 percent.

Other details still need to be ironed out with the administration before the union can send ballots to its members, formally asking them to sign a contract. But the most contentious issues have been decided. And, after a month in which a frustrated union held a one-day strike and picketed major buildings to call attention to its demands, both sides are sounding conciliatory notes.

“We could not have done this without their willingness to bring us to this point,” Halloran said of the administration.