The Difference a Union Makes

shared governance
CURRENTLY AT MIAMI: You and your colleagues devote significant time to participating in shared governance structures, but those structures offer limited opportunities for voicing your views on issues that affect your working lives.
  • Neither University Senate nor Faculty Assembly meets national norms as agencies “for expressing the views of the entire faculty.” The president sets Faculty Assembly’s agenda; Miami has a University Senate chaired by the provost, not a Faculty Senate.
  • Most standing committee chairs are appointed, not elected, at Miami. Our primary elected standing committee, Faculty Rights and Responsibilities, has little practical power to influence the promotion and employment decisions it reviews. 
  • Together, VAPs, instructors, and part-time faculty represent 39% of Miami faculty (excluding graduate students)—but none of them has a voice in Miami’s governance structures.
  • Important Senate recommendations (on furlough policy, for instance) can be dismissed by our Board, which has full power to amend or ignore Senate’s decisions. 
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THE UNION DIFFERENCE: Shared governance becomes a reality when faculty have genuine influence on decisions affecting the campus community. Unionization gives you and your colleagues the legal power to seek the conditions you need to become the teachers, librarians, and scholars you want to be.
  • With a union, you and your colleagues decide priorities for negotiation together. The administration must then negotiate a contract with you in good faith. Once your contract is agreed upon and ratified by both the faculty and the Board of Trustees, it is legally binding.
  • Union contracts can strengthen existing shared governance policies. For example, the University of Oregon's contract allows all university policies adopted by its senate or by units/departments to be enforced through the union’s grievance procedure. BGSU’s agreement codifies faculty influence in the selection and evaluation of administrators, including the President, Vice President, and Deans. 

Shared governance

Equity and Job Security for
​Non-Tenure-Track Faculty

CURRENTLY AT MIAMI: More than a quarter of full-time faculty (and over half of total faculty) are non-tenure-track. Equity and job security for our valuable non-tenure track faculty is an ongoing problem at Miami.
  • Non-tenure-track precarity has cost the Miami community dearly. In 2020, 43% of full-time faculty on one-year contracts were not renewed, meaning that at least 150 full-time colleagues lost their jobs and insurance during the pandemic. Including part-timers, over 300 faculty jobs were slashed — while enrollment increased. (See Fact Book for 2019, 2020.)
  • 16% of full-time faculty are TCPLs, colleagues who, like VAPs, have similar qualifications to tenure-line faculty. Alongside high teaching loads, TCPLs perform important and demanding service duties. TCPLs can be promoted into renewable multi-year contracts; however, TCPL may be “non-renewed” without cause at the end of a contract and are paid less than tenure-line faculty. 
  • Only 38% of total faculty at Miami are tenured or tenure-track (total comprises T/TT, TCPL, VAPs, instructors, graduate assistants, and per-credit-hour faculty). 
  • Over half of total faculty are precarious part-timers (including graduate assistants). Unfortunately, these faculty cannot legally unionize in Ohio. The good news is that the rest of you can, giving you and your colleagues the opportunity to advocate more powerfully for all faculty. 
  • Of the 47% of Miami faculty who are full time (and thus have the legal right to improve their situation by unionizing), more than a fifth—over one hundred colleagues—are on precarious one-year contracts. While these faculty—visiting assistant professors, instructors—teach many of the classes at the heart of our curriculum, salaries (especially for instructors) can be untenably low. Although service is not part of the job description, many VAPs and instructors feel pressure to do it, whether to try to keep the job or to enhance the slim chances of moving into a more secure one. 
  • Teaching loads have risen for most TCPL and VAP colleagues in Oxford since the pandemic started.
  • VAP and Instructor colleagues, like part-time faculty, are not members of Faculty Assembly and thus have no formal voice or vote on faculty matters. Self-advocacy tends to be riskier for precarious faculty.
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THE UNION DIFFERENCE: As part of the same collective bargaining unit, all full-time faculty (including VAPs, instructors, tenure-line, and TCPL) and librarians would have an equal voice in the union.

​Together with all your full-time colleagues, you have significant power to improve your working lives. You and your colleagues could negotiate raises, establish pathways for longer-term contracts, codify processes for conversions into more secure positions, clarify responsibilities and terms of promotion, and open up opportunities currently only available to tenure-line faculty. Some examples:
  • BGSU’s faculty union includes non-tenure track (NTT) faculty on the negotiations teams to ensure representation. As a result of their most recent contract, NTT faculty are eligible for faculty improvement awards (leaves). At Kent State, the union can purchase workload hours to enable release time for NTT faculty. 
  • In 2020, BGSU negotiated an MOU providing severance pay and reinstatement rights for NTT faculty who lost their jobs during the pandemic.
  • Wright State’s contract includes language about timely notification of non-renewal and establishes continuing appointments for lecturers beginning in the seventh year as a member of the faculty.

Workload

CURRENTLY AT MIAMI: In AAUP one-on-one conversations, workload increases have emerged as a primary concern for faculty. 
  • Prior to the COVID pandemic and change in workloads, a 2019 Faculty Survey of Student Engagement, found that Miami-Oxford faculty spent an average of 18.5 hours per week on teaching activities, 9.6 hours per week on research or other scholarly activities, 7.8 hours per week on service activities, and 5.1 hours per week advising students. Since the “non-renewal” of visiting positions over the summer of 2020,  these numbers have likely increased. 
  • A fall 2020 survey by AAUP found that 75% of faculty reported an increase of course hours taught and approximately half reported increased service responsibilities.
  • APEIP-related revisions to department workload governance documents are ongoing, and while faculty have been made responsible for articulating the details, the changes have amounted to a top-down mandate raising expectations for faculty labor.
  • Miami has no university-wide workload policy. While this provides colleges and departments with discipline- and context-specific flexibility, it can also serve as a barrier to transparency. 
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THE UNION DIFFERENCE: A union contract can clarify workload expectations and prevent exploitation by enforcing existing workload policy. While Ohio labor law prohibits unions from bargaining directly over workload, faculty unions in Ohio have negotiated aspects of workload through both contracts and MOUs.
  • Wright State’s contract ensures that workload issues are grievable and outlines specific teaching and service criteria for use in annual evaluations. The union also negotiated an MOU clarifying workload expectations for non-tenure-track faculty.
  • Cincinnati State’s contract discusses workload in relation to contact hours, office hours, and administrative duties. 
  • Kent State’s contract establishes clear procedures for determining, communicating and reviewing what counts as part of faculty workload.

Compensation

CURRENTLY AT MIAMI: Results from a 2017 Miami campus climate survey indicate that 54% of faculty and administrators had considered leaving Miami; over half of those who considered leaving did so because of low compensation. In the same survey, only 17% of faculty and administrators agreed that non-tenure-track salaries at Miami were competitive.
  • Miami’s full-time instructors at the Oxford campus are paid less, on average, than instructors at University of Toledo and University of Akron. 
  • While average salaries for tenure-line faculty appear at first glance to be on par with peer institutions in Ohio, the average does not tell the full story, because Miami salaries are unusually high in some disciplines. 
  • Average salaries for full-time instructors at Miami’s regional campuses are among the lowest in the state for public universities (see AAUP Compensation Survey).
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THE UNION DIFFERENCE: At unionized universities in Ohio, faculty and librarians receive merit raises in addition to across-the-board raises, lifting the floor for everyone while maintaining flexibility to reward excellence. Union contracts can also address inequities such as racial and gender wage gaps and salary compression. 
  • University of Cincinnati’s most recent contract included across-the-board percentage increases and benchmark increases of over 8.25% over 3 years for all full-time faculty — including NTT. The contract notably extends the same raises to part-time faculty, benefiting them though they are not part of the bargaining unit. 
  • To address pay inequities, UC’s union also negotiated an additional .75% annual raise for Regionals faculty.
  • Many Ohio faculty contracts include minimum base salaries for all bargaining unit members. Wright State’s contract creates wage floors while enabling individual wage advancement to address inequities, recognize excellence, and respond to market pressures. BGSU’s current contract includes merit raises on top of guaranteed cost-of-living increases for each of the five years covered by the contract. 
  • Contracts negotiate promotion “bump” amounts and minimum compensation for supervision of students doing laboratory research and for overload teaching. 
  • Contracts at UC, Kent State, and elsewhere protect faculty from receiving unreasonably low pay for teaching enrollment-contingent, pro-rated summer/winter courses.
  • Unions have also negotiated for more expansive and flexible family leave. 
  • The faculty union at Rutgers negotiated for a salary equity program that allows faculty members who identify inequities based on one or more of four categories (one of the categories is race/ethnic/gender/protected status) to request an equity adjustment to their salary.

Promotion and tenure

CURRENTLY AT MIAMI: Lack of clarity and mentorship around promotion and tenure is a concern often expressed by our colleagues in one-on-one interviews. Miami’s Board of Trustees decided last year to add a sentence to Miami policy stating that they control decisions about tenure policy, specifically electing not to align with national norms under which policy decisions about promotion and tenure are delegated to faculty
  • Promotion and tenure expectations are, in practice, inconsistent across units and tend to shift over time in ways not represented by policy. 
  • Faculty’s chances of receiving effective mentorship and fair treatment depend more than they should on the knowledge, experience, and good will of individual chairs and administrators. 
  • According to guidelines, the case for instructional excellence must be built on “multiple measures,” but in practice, student evaluations remain a primary metric. That is concerning, given that research indicates there are significant and common ethnic, racial, and gender biases in student evaluations.
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THE UNION DIFFERENCE: Collective bargaining contracts protect faculty by codifying transparent procedures and expectations (while allowing for differences across disciplines and units) so that faculty and librarians seeking promotion know how to succeed.
  • UC’s contract clarifies faculty’s primary role in establishing P&T expectations and sets a regular timeline for review of P&T policies. The faculty union reviews all changes to P&T policy.
  • As a result of their collective bargaining, BGSU focuses less on student evaluations of teaching and has instead moved towards a model of peer evaluation.

Quality of Education

CURRENTLY AT MIAMI: Miami’s strong reputation for commitment to undergraduate teaching is declining. Total full-time faculty numbers were down by 10% in 2020. Meanwhile, enrollments increased, leading to more sections, larger classes, and a higher overall workload that prevented faculty from serving students as well as we would like. Faculty shortages and workload increases have negatively affected our students
  • Along with increases in class sizes due to large faculty cuts, current budget priorities are reducing opportunities for Miami students to engage with faculty in the ways that made Miami a top teaching institution. For instance, Miami reduced funding for both faculty and students in the Undergraduate Summer Scholars Program, decreasing participation in an important pathway for “student-centered learning.” 
  • Cuts to graduate assistant lines and funding are straining programs that depend on them for faculty research as well as undergraduate teaching.
  • Increased teaching loads, unclear promotion and tenure expectations, and inadequate compensation all affect Miami’s ability to recruit and retain top faculty. 
  • To build and sustain an inclusive and diverse student community prepared to take on future challenges, recruitment and retention of faculty from underrepresented groups is essential—but between 2017 and 2020, the number of racially and/or ethnically diverse full-time faculty at Miami decreased from 221 to 184.
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​THE UNION DIFFERENCE: Union contracts can negotiate specific types of support that faculty need to provide high-quality instruction. More broadly, as discussed above, contracts can include measures to promote job security, address compensation inequities and protect against bias to create a workplace where teaching can thrive.
 Contracts and MOUs can clarify and enforce workload expectations, protecting Miami’s most valuable resource—faculty time—to enable engaged and enthusiastic teaching and learning.