With just one week left before a faculty union vote, the American Association of University Professors is bringing its national leadership to bear on the University.
AAUP General Secretary Mary Burgan spoke to a press conference Monday on the perceived threat posed by tenure reform at the University and nationwide. The AAUP, a national coalition, has been campaigning with local faculty groups for the upcoming union election, which is scheduled for Feb. 11 and 12.
Burgan, who was joined by local AAUP officials at the Campus Club in Coffman Memorial Union, emphasized the association’s feeling that the faculty has already won a triumph of sorts in tenure negotiations with University administrators.
“We’ve stopped them in their tracks,” Burgan said, claiming a state cease-and-desist order as a faculty victory in the tenure debate. The order, which prevents any changes to, or discussion of, terms of employment until after a union election, was imposed by the state’s Bureau of Mediation Services last fall after faculty signed enough union cards to force an election.
The association, along with other faculty groups, is fighting Board of Regents tenure proposals that faculty representatives think impede professors’ academic freedom. The original regents proposal of last August included provisions that allowed faculty layoffs in the event of program termination or fiscal hardship. The current proposal, which has already been passed for the Law School and the Morris campus, is a compromise between regent and faculty plans. It doesn’t include some of the most controversial sections from the regents’ plan, but the AAUP and other faculty groups say professors’ academic freedom is still in limbo.
“We’re talking about the notion not only of freedom of speech but of protecting the jobs and careers of faculty,” Burgan said.
Steve Finner, director of Chapter and State Services, said the AAUP gets over 1,100 complaints each year from faculty nationwide concerning academic freedom.
The AAUP officials said that if the faculty votes for a union, the association, which isn’t on the ballot, will merge with faculty groups to become the collective-bargaining agent for the faculty.
V. Rama Murthy, president of the Twin Cities chapter of the AAUP, said that if the union drive fails, the association will continue as an outside lobbying agent for faculty interests.
Faculty on the Twin Cities campus, except those at the Law School and the Academic Health Center, will vote in the elections next week. A simple majority of those voting will determine whether the faculty will join a collective-bargaining unit.