Category: EMU

Sorry, I wasn’t going to post again here before I left town, but I couldn’t resist after today’s email from EMU-AAUP president Howard Bunsis and the info on the web site they posted about the administration’s proposal for health care. The short version is the administration wants to offer two plans: a sort of “catostrophic” insurance policy that is free (well, with a lot of costs if you actually need a doctor), and the Blue Cross PPO, which would cost something like $750 a year for a single person, $1500 for a family of four or more.

There’s a pdf file on the site that compares the administration’s take with the union’s (though, of course, put together by the union). Here’s a link, but just to go through a few thoughts of my own about this:

• The administration and the union can’t even agree if health care is costing us more, which is just another example in my mind about the problem of not having an agreed-upon set of numbers to look at.
• I realize that $1500 a year for a family represents a significant increase over what faculty pay now, which is zero (though how much of an increase it actually is is hard to figure– see below). But the problem that the union is likely to have in my mind is one of PR. Frankly, $1500 a year, even with the other expenses, is peanuts. I was getting my teeth cleaned the other day, and the dental hygienist told me that she pays her husband’s insurance at a tune of $350 a month, and, in her words, it’s “crappy insurance.” I know– everyone knows– she is not alone. So I don’t know how a strike over having to pay for a reasonably priced and robust insurance program is going to go over in the press.
• Begin tangent:The real problem here, of course, is health care in this country across the board. When you have such “far out liberal” groups like General Motors saying that the federal government needs to do something about health care, not to mention all of the gazillion of other problems with health care in this country, it becomes clear that this is a much MUCH bigger problem than what’s going on in the contract talks. It turns out that when Clinton said in the early 90’s that there was a crisis coming in health care, he was right. /tangent
• The union’s argument against putting everyone into one health care plan (namely, the PPO) is, basically, this could give the administration at some future date to jack up the premiums, screw us over, etc. Personally, I think this is kind of paranoid and also not realistic since if the adminstration did try to screw over the faculty on the one insurance plan, we’d protest it in contract negotiations. I also personally think this is kind of an irrelevant because the overwhelming majority of faculty at EMU are in the PPO, and the PPO is very good insurance.
• There’s apparently some provision with the administration’s proposal for prescription drugs that you are required to order “maintenance” drugs (which I think is defined as anything you get for more than 90 days– for me, that’d be allergy medicine) through some sort of mail order scheme. On the one hand, if this is the administration’s position, this “mandatory” use of a mail order pharmacy, that’s kind of obnoxious. On the other hand, it probably would save everyone money.
• Another tangent: There are other things that the administration and the union might be able to agree on that would save money for everyone, things that ought to be either encouraged or required. For example, if there was a plan where you could set aside a certain amount of money pre-tax for medical expenses and if you could get any surplus back or carried over to the next year, that’d be a good deal. As it is, there’s a plan that my family ought to be involved in that pays for things pre-tax (but without getting the surplus or carry-over). /tangent
• The eye care plan isn’t great in the current insurance (I think that’s pretty common). Fortunately, the dental care is great and it doesn’t look like anyone wants to change that.

Also on this web site is an excel spreadsheet that Bunsis invites faculty to fill out to see how much the administration’s proposed changes will cost them. Fair enough, though the formula is in some ways very complicated/impossible to figure out collectively. Everyone has different circumstances. While the new plan might cost me, it wouldn’t cost my wife (also an EMU faculty member) since she’s covered by my insurance. If I were a single person in the reasonably good health I’m in, this plan wouldn’t cost me much at all; if I were older with health problems, this plan would cost me more. Of course, this is the case with pretty much any health care plan (which gets us back to the need for a federal plan).

So, for example, when I filled this out this spreadsheet, I came up with an estimated of 2.5% of my salary for the administration’s proposed plan. As a family though, we’d probably take a hit of less than 2% overall. I’m not sure. Oh, and keep in mind too that the hit depends entirely on one’s salary, and no one is talking about prorating this so that faculty who make less money are going to pay the same percentage of their salary as those who make more money.

Anyway, it seems to me that what this all means just depends on what else happens with the contract. The administration could offer the faculty enough money to cover the insurance with a modest raise– say 4.5% or so. They could offer faculty another percentage on TIAA-CREF, which would be a lot more money in the long-run than a percentage on this contract. They could sweeten the deal for promotions. And so forth.

We shall see– or rather, I am hoping that other folks at EMU will see and that this will be settled by the time I’m back from Europe. Somehow I doubt it.

The chief negotiator for the EMU-AAUP (aka the faculty union) is keeping a blog-like summary of meetings and events at this web site. I say “blog-like” because it’s really just a web site, it doesn’t feature most recent entries first, etc.

*For recreational purposes only.

The EMU faculty and administration are officially in the process of negotiating a new contract to replace the one that ends on August 31, 2006. Because I am procrastinating this morning and also because there’s a better chance of getting my opinions heard here than at one of the various meetings the union asks faculty to attend, I thought I’d post a few thoughts.

But first, the disclaimers:

• Given that what I’m commenting on here is widely known among the faculty and even available on the EMU-AAUP Web Site, I don’t think I’m telling tales out of school (so to speak).
• I was once much more active in the union than I am now. I was the web master for the web site the EMU-AAUP had during the strike way back when (1999? 2000?), I was on the Executive Committee at a particularly contentious time a few years ago, I used to go to meetings of various sorts, etc. However, I really have no unique knowledge or insight of what’s going on behind the union scenes right now. In other words, this is all relatively uninformed “gut feelings.”
• I have profoundly mixed feelings about our union and the way that EMU conducts “bargaining” with various unions (including the faculty) on this campus. I guess what it boils down to is this: the union is a really good thing for new faculty especially because it makes the tenure process crystal clear, which makes EMU a generally pretty good place to work. But the union is a bad thing because I think it promotes a level of mediocrity in that the union (and thus the faculty it represents) are constanly fighting for the absolute minimums (in terms of work load, in terms of scholarship, etc.), the union ends up having to defend some faculty who probably don’t deserve it, and the whole atmosphere of “us” versus “them” just is unpleasant.
• I think that the “us” versus “them” thing is largely about taking on what are the perceived roles of whatever side you are on, faculty or administrator. The reality of the situation is that there is a very porous border between these two sides. There are folks who are now faculty and on the union’s negotiation team who used to be administrators, and vice-versa. I know and have worked with people who will be on the different sides of the bargaining table, and I really do believe that the majority of these folks are “good people” and have the interests of the institution in mind. And yet both sides seem to take on this inflated rhetoric based entirely on their roles in the situation now: faculty have to think that administrators are out to screw us, and administrators think the faculty are greedy and lazy. I’m paraphrasing, of course.
• It’s not happening this year, but it’d be nice if, prior to some future negotiation, if the faculty and administration would agree to hire an outside accounting/consulting firm to produce some numbers about various things that everyone could agree that, for the sake of argument, were “correct.” Because what has and will continue to happen is the union produces one set of numbers that benefit its argument and the administration produces another set of numbers that benefits theirs. It’s kind of annoying.
• Finally, for those of you not at EMU and who are still reading this: the faculty at EMU have been in a “bargaining unit” (eg, the union) since 1974; we’re a chapter of the AAUP; we have been on strike in the past (eg, carrying around signs on picket lines, not showing up for work, etc.) and I am certain we would strike again if we had to.

Alrighty then: on to the “issues” that are going to be on the table this year (basically), in the same “non-particular order” as posted on the union’s web site:

(1) due process for all suspended faculty members I am not quite sure what this is about, but I will say this: Of the 685 or so faculty members at EMU, I’d guess about 675 of them won’t be effected by this. My guess is that what this is talking about is those few “problem” people who tend to occupy so much time for grievance officers and lawyers and such.

(2) voluntary phased retirement Basically, this would allow for some system of older and near retirement faculty to sort of “wind down” their workload instead of just stopping entirely. There’s been a kind of informal/unofficial policy on this; I hope this does actually come to be since it is one of those things that happens at a lot of other schools and it makes some sense, at least to me.

(3) TIAA-CREF contributions equal to those given administrators and health coverage incentives to those retiring before 65 This is probably in the mix to talk about overall insurance and bennie package stuff. Part of the problem though right now is that administrators get another point or two (I can’t remember the exact numbers) of their salary contributed to TIAA-CREF than faculty.

(4) strengthening faculty input and Faculty Council Having been on the FC recently, I can say that’s its own kettle of fish…. In any event, I’m not completely sure what this would be about since I think FC actually has a lot of input right now.

(5) work load issues, including equivalencies Boy, this is such a complicated issue that I just don’t see it being resolved at the negotiating table. Maybe they’ll be able to set up some committee to study what to do about, but I’m not expecting the status quo to change much on this one.

(6) improving funding for faculty research Two thoughts here: first, the administration is going to plead poverty. Second, the faculty will be unwilling to agree to any sort of “minimal standards” across the board for scholarship. Don’t expect a change here, either.

(7) correcting inequities in CE pay and improving accountability of CE operations I posted about this back in April; as I said then, I think this actually has a chance of coming to be, and I think it’s win-win since it would probably save money in the big picture of things and it is certainly ethical.

(8) addressing problems in lab, office, and classroom conditions This is a long-standing problem, and really, until the state gives EMU money to do some rebuilding of classroom buildings and the like, there’s nothing that’s going to happen about this.

(9) improving absolute and relative faculty compensation In other words, money. That’s interesting wording there though, “absolute and relative.” The problem, IMO, with the way that pay increases have been negotiated in the past is it’s a percentage across the board– in other words, everyone gets 3% or something. That might seem fair, but what ends up happening is that your salary is then forever tied to whatever salary you started with, and this results in what is commonly called “compression,” the phenomenon where the differences in pay for incoming faculty, offered relatively competitive salaries, and senior faculty are surprisingly small. And then there’s the whole issue that faculty in fields like, say, English, are a lot cheaper than faculty in business. In any event, I’d be surprised if there was anything other than an across the board percentage, but keep an eye on this as it relates to health insurance.

(10) rebuilding the faculty by increasing the number of searches and hires beyond the break-even level In other words, hiring more faculty. One of the things that happened during the disasterous reign of Sam Kirkpatrick was the number of faculty hired decreased sharply. Fortunately, I think that both the provost and the president are interested in turning that around. So while I suspect there will be some differences of opinion here, ultimately we’ll probably get some agreement to keep trying to hire more faculty.

Now, here’s the big one:

The EMU administration proposed that the faculty accept the same health care plan as the lecturers. A couple of thoughts here. First, it isn’t just the lecturers on this one; it’s also the administrators and anyone else on campus not in a union. Second, the plan (as it was explained to me by a friend of mine who used to be a faculty member but who is now an administrator while we were on the golf course) is basically this: if you don’t want to pay anything, you get a “bare bones” $500 deductible kind of health care policy. If you want what’s called “Comunity Blue PPO” (which we have and which I think is very good insurance), then you’d have to pay, though not a lot– my friend/colleague was claiming $1000 a year for a family of four. The other choices that people have right now– straight Blue Cross and another plan– I guess would be eliminated.

I think how people are going to feel about this will depend a lot on how it figures in with item #3 (in TIAA-CREF and insurance for early retirees) and on #9 (money). I have very mixed feelings about it all because while I realize that lots of people pay for their health care insurance and that these people pay a lot more than $1000 a year, part of the deal at EMU for faculty has always been the great benefits. In other words, while we don’t make as much money at EMU as faculty do at a lot of other schools, the benefits (insurance, etc.) are very good and make a big difference. And besides, just because everyone else is getting screwed out of health care doesn’t mean we should get screwed too.

Anyway, here’s my personal take: if the administraton offers a pay increase and/or TIAA-CREF contribution that would help offset the cost of the insurance, then I think most faculty will be okay with that. If the administration doesn’t do that, then we’ll strike.

But even if this is technically the same deal (or close to it) as the lecturers got in their contract, it really isn’t the same deal in practice because faculty make so much more money. For example, let’s say a lecturer makes $30K a year (and I think most of them make less than that in our department). Charging someone $1000 for insurance but only giving them a 3% pay-raise ($900 before taxes) is a net pay-cut. On the other hand, faculty get paid a lot more money. For simplicity’s sake, let’s say that the average faculty member makes $50K a year. If they give us a 3% raise and then charge us $1000 for insurance, then we’d still end up in the black, though just barely. Plus the fact of the matter is most people would do something to benefit their own situation: maybe go on to the insurance plan of a spouse, etc. And there’s a lot of other things that could happen to compensate for the insurance besides salary money– more TIAA-CREF, eliminating the paying for parking thing that is supposedly on the table, etc., etc.

Anyway, more of my opinons than you wanted to know. Right now, I would handicap our strike chances as 4 to 1; but as the rhetoric heats up over the summer, that could go to even money in a hurry….

There’s been an exchange of all-campus emails lately between the administration, faculty council, and the union. Long-story short: the faculty and the union are not happy with the way that the interim provost (who everyone likes, by the way) was made into a permanent provost, and the administration and the union are beginning to build their cases for contract negotiations. What case is that? Basically, the administration is saying a) we have no money, and b) we have plenty of faculty; predictably, the union is saying “do not!” to both of these things.

Ah yes, contract negotiation season….

My guess is that EMU really doesn’t have as much money to work with as the union wants to claim, but there’s no getting around the argument about the number of faculty. Simply put, EMU has fewer faculty now than it did 10 years ago, and the number of administrators on campus has risen in almost direct proportion to the losses in faculty. Even an English professor can do that math; all I’ve got to do is look around the halls and see the rising number of part-timers and of suits.

But my sense is that the biggest issues in this coming contract are going to be money (that’s always an issue) and health care. I don’t know enough to know how either of these things are going to play out, but there is plenty of opportunity for drama over the summer. This is simply speculation on my part, but I think that if the administration tries to offer the faculty a contract where we have to pay such a significant portion of our medical insurance out of pocket that we end up taking a pay cut (and, in the nutshell, this is the contract that the lecturers signed last year), then we will certainly strike. But I also think (again, just speculation) that both the union and the administration know this, so I think (hope, really) we will avoid this.

Of course, this faculty versus administration posturing will get much more hot ‘n heavy in August, which is when I (happily) will be out of the country.

Anyway, while I have my issues with the negotiating process and some of the positions both the union and the administration take on some of these matters, a big “thumbs up” to the EMU-AAUP and its president Howard Bunsis for his recent presentation before the Board of Regents on Continuing Education (warning– this is a PowerPoint presentation turned into a PDF).

Continuing Education at EMU exists in this sort of “in-between world,” more or less outside of the faculty contract for reasons I don’t entirely understand. Anyway, CE is charged with all instruction that takes place in non-traditional settings– weekends, off-campus, online, etc.– and, largely because of online classes, it’s been making money hand over fist. And they are really making money because CE teaches almost all of its classes with non-tenure-track faculty or tenure-track faculty teaching some sort of overload for extra money.

In the interest of full disclosure here: I’ve been working with CE more closely since I started teaching online in Fall 2005, and I have been quite happy with the sort of support I’ve gotten from them. This term, I’m teaching an online class as an overload for reasons that are complicated and only partly about extra money. (And for what it’s worth, I don’t think I’ll ever teach an overload like this again.) In Fall 2005, I taught online “in load”– that is, part of my regular teaching. This spring and summer, I’m also teaching online (again, through CE) and I guess it’s “extra,” but all spring and summer teaching at EMU is something faculty do voluntarily for extra money. It’s also worth mentioning– and you’ll see why in a moment– that I don’t take overloads into my online class, mostly for ethical reasons but also because teaching an advanced writing course online with more than 20 students would be way WAY too much work.

Part of what Howard is talking about in this presentation isn’t (IMO) that big of a deal, at least to me. For example, departments do have control over what courses can be offered through CE– at least in theory– right now. But there is one recommendation that the EMU-AAUP is making that is enormously significant: the elimination of the “grading stipend.”

Basically, if there are more than 25 students in a CE course, the instructor is paid $150 per student. So let’s say you’re teaching an online course and, instead of capping the course at 20 or 25 (my online course is capped at 20), you let in a total of 50 students. If you did that, then you would make $3750 above and beyond the pay for the course. Or let’s say you let in a total of 100 students; that’s 75 X 150, or $11,250.

The administration is happy about this situation because it allows them to maximize the student to instructor ratio. The instructors who engage in this process are happy about this because they make a lot of money. And obviously, this practice is a disservice to students. I suppose it depends on the particular course, and I think there is some truth to the argument that some of my colleagues make who engage in this practice: if we’re going to teach lecture hall classes of 200+ students, then there shouldn’t be anything wrong with teaching online classes with 50 or 75 or 100 students. But, as my momma taught me, two wrongs don’t make a right.

I think the majority of faculty at EMU would support a change where faculty get paid more than they do currently to teach overload courses through CE and the elimination of the grading stipend, which is what the union is proposing. But there will be a vocal minority of faculty (the ones who are making the money, of course) who will oppose this, and I think it’s hard to say what the administration is going to say. So it will be interesting to see how this plays out.