BY THERESA A. KULBAGA
Members of the Faculty Alliance of Miami (FAM, AAUP-AFT) march at the Rally for Raises on September 20, 2024.
Standing in solidarity with colleagues for better wages and working conditions is what being a union means. It’s no surprise, then, that management’s first union-busting tactic is always to attempt to divide workers and turn us against each other.
At Miami University, we voted overwhelmingly to unionize faculty and librarians in 2023, and we did so despite management’s attempts to divide our units by rank. As I recently outlined in my piece for Academe, we’ve been in contract negotiations for more than a year now, negotiating as a single team for two first contracts (one covering our faculty unit and one covering librarians). During these negotiations, we’ve been subject to a different attempt to divide us: one focusing on job security.
Management has used these first contract negotiations to attempt to weaken job security for all three categories represented by the Faculty Alliance of Miami, AAUP-AFT (FAM): librarians, teaching/clinical (TCPL) faculty, and tenure-line/tenured faculty. This includes language proposing a new, unnecessary, and punitive post-tenure review process that could erode tenure at Miami.
Management’s post-tenure review language is unnecessary because they already have ways to hold tenured faculty accountable for doing our jobs—namely, the annual review and merit pay processes. Moreover, tenured faculty can already be fired for just cause (for example, if a faculty member is a threat to the safety of students) or in the case of financial exigency (if Miami formally declares a financial crisis threatening its survival).
Along with the proposed language eroding existing librarian and TCPL job security, it is clear that management’s proposals set out to create an easily controlled—and easily fireable—workforce. But it’s also clear that this is a divide and conquer tactic designed to turn our members against each other by making everyone fearful for our jobs. We can see this in management’s doublespeak at the table about academic freedom, which they grant to faculty but not librarians (as if our librarians do not teach or do research). They may be hoping that we trade away one group’s job security to preserve another’s. We can’t let them divide us.
The fact is, management’s proposed language on post-tenure review and their other proposals eroding job security at Miami would harm the university and its central educational mission by threatening tenure, academic freedom, and shared governance. It would threaten the high-quality undergraduate teaching that has earned Miami its number three ranking in undergraduate teaching at all public institutions across the country. And it can be weaponized against solidarity—if we let it.
Our response must be to stand together, fight together, and win together. We deserve job security and the right to fair treatment. If we band together arm-in-arm in solidarity, as we did during our union elections, we can achieve job security and more. Divided we beg; united we win.
Theresa A. Kulbaga is a lead negotiator for FAM and chair of FAM communications and social media.
I think post-tenure review proposals also divide faculty from community by putting faculty in a position where they seem opposed to post-tenure review. As a matter of public relations, faculty need to be clear that we already have post-tenure review in annual reviews, etc., as explained in this post. Adding an additional layer of review serves no useful purpose and requires substantial resources, including faculty and administrative time. This is good reason to oppose such proposals even before getting to the serious implications for academic freedom.