Photo courtesy of Jeff Thomas

Hello, my name is Jeff Thomas. I graduated from OU in spring 2022. In my senior year as an undergrad, I served as editor-in-chief of Volume 47 of The Oakland Post. During the 2021-22 school year, as a journalist I covered extensively the events and subsequent fallout of what was at the time deemed “The worst faculty contract negotiations in OU’s history.” I’m writing this letter now as an OU alumnus who is deeply concerned about how this year’s faculty contract negotiations are unfolding.

I was privileged as EIC of The Post to have access to people and information that allowed me to experience a deeper understanding of the inner workings of OU than the vast majority of students who have attended this university. My experiences made it so that I graduated with a profound reverence for my professors, my peers in class, my colleagues at The Post and OUSC, and the largely underpaid staff members who work tirelessly making sure the campus experience at OU is as rich and fulfilling as it is. I want more people to be able to have the experiences and opportunities that I had. More than anything, I am sharing my perspective now because I believe the upper administration’s greed and short-sightedness is jeopardizing OU’s future.

Similar to 2021’s brutal round of bargaining, what we’re witnessing in these negotiations is another thinly veiled attempt at a power grab by OU’s upper administration, one that comes at the expense of hundreds of skilled educators and tens of thousands of current and prospective students. One that betrays OU’s mission statement, as well as the state of Michigan, which entrusts OU with the education and professional training of our citizens. The university’s bargaining team is once again behaving less like representatives of an institution negotiating with valued employees, and more like movie villains leveraging hostages in order to accomplish their schemes. So what exactly is being leveraged and what are their goals?

Their goals generally are to break the faculty union. That is always the long game for these business people. When people who believe an institution of higher learning would function better under the same rules of operation as a meat processing plant seize power at a college or university they always run the same playbook — attack the faculty union at all costs. This is not a problem unique to OU, it’s part of a larger trend in American education. This country outsourced its manufacturing, but never stopped turning out MBAs. Now people that should be managing factories are instead in the public sector influencing the operations of our schools, hospitals and governments. And so teachers, doctors, nurses and workers at all different levels of our public institutions are being forced to do more with less while our tax dollars are swallowed up by parasitic middle men and wasteful administrative bloat.

The phrase “flexible workforce” is often thrown around by these business people. What they mean when they use that phrase is that they want the employer/employee relationship in higher education to be similar to what we see in the gig economy. They want to abandon the ideals of shared governance, in which faculty and students have a say in university operations. They want to eliminate tenure track for faculty, removing faculty’s ability to remain rooted in their campus community for decades, so that they can have more control of operations and less accountability for their actions. The ideal business model for these people is similar to Uber or DoorDash where employees are paid as little as possible and have virtually no workplace protections, while management has no binding obligation to act in the best interests of its consumers or employees.

Based on what has occurred in these last two rounds of faculty contract negotiations, it appears the OU upper administration’s plan of attack against the faculty union has been to limit faculty compensation to well below market value, while working to steal away the workplace agency professors currently have to educate their students in the way that they know works best. In order to achieve these goals, OU’s bargaining team leverages OU AAUP faculty’s compensation package against their workplace autonomy and protections for special lecturers. If professors at OU want to earn anywhere near what their colleagues at similar institutions are paid, then the administration demands that they sellout their colleagues (special lecturers) and that professors give up their freedom to establish and follow teaching methods that best serve their students.

To put this in the most charitable way possible — the changes to workload policy and merit pay that OU’s bargaining team proposed would be a disaster. The notion that the quality of education at OU would be improved by taking agency away from expert educators while placing more authority over classroom procedures in the hands of administrators is absolutely asinine. Logistically speaking, it’s nonsensical and its implementation would be a nightmare for the campus community. The reality is if what OU’s bargaining team proposed were to come to fruition, administrators who are not trained educators would stand directly between students and their professors. Administrative red tape would be rolled across the threshold of every classroom door on campus. An already top-heavy administration would become more top-heavy as middle management administrative babysitters with bloated salaries and sweet benefit packages would be hired in for no other purpose than to micro manage, disrupt and enforce arbitrary rules/restrictions on faculty. 

As OU AAUP has pointed out, this path that OU’s leadership has proposed, in which instruction across all departments is dictated by a uniform workload policy and professor income is tied to ineffectual merit pay systems, is both inefficient and counterproductive to OU’s mission statement. It is not a responsible use of the millions upon millions of dollars in public funds that the university is granted every year via our government and the tuition dollars of students. The fact that OU’s bargaining team is pushing so hard for disastrous policies is enough to undermine public confidence in the upper administration’s leadership. And guess what, even they know that their bargaining proposals don’t hold up to informed public scrutiny. That’s why they’re backtracking and spreading misinformation in their bargaining diary and social media posts. 

The short term ramifications of their proposals would be worse working conditions for professors and a lower quality of education for paying students. Additional ramifications long term would be the erosion of OU’s academic standing, as the university will be unable to recruit and retain highly skilled educators. Simply put, professors are the lifeblood of every university. They are experts who have dedicated decades of their lives to their field of expertise. They are the most essential asset for any institution of higher learning. When they leave for greener pastures, professors take their singular wealth of knowledge and experience with them. Without top-notch faculty, OU’s capacity for research and scholarship will deteriorate, less students will attend the university, and the value of degrees earned by our alumni will diminish as the university’s academic standing declines. This is the big picture that OU’s bargaining team is willfully ignorant to.

In these negotiations, OU AAUP faculty are once again charged with not only defending themselves and their colleagues’ right to fair compensation and workplace autonomy, but also the future of OU as an academic institution. As educators, they’ve got much more invested into the well-being of this university than their counterparts across the bargaining table, and the professors’ actions prove it. I have far greater trust in OU AAUP faculty to advocate for the best interests of students and this university than I do in an upper administration that treats the vast funds in OU’s bank account not as resources they’ve been given to fuel public education, but rather as numbers indicative of a new high score in the game they’re playing. I’m using my voice to support OU AAUP’s fight for a fair and equitable contract because I know their demands are reasonable and in the best interest of the university going forward.

I wrote a letter three years ago in support of my professors during that brutal round of negotiations. In that letter I said that I wouldn’t have found a voice in this world if it wasn’t for my professors. That’s the truth. From my start at OU they always treated me with kindness and respect. Many nights after a long shift, I’d show up to class in the old South Foundation Hall covered in sweat, concrete or drywall dust, my body aching with fatigue and then have my spirit rejuvenated by the magic those professors created during their lessons. In the early days of the pandemic, when it seemed like our world had fallen apart, I witnessed those professors make difficult changes and sacrifices to do what was best for their students. 

Let us never forget how OU AAUP faculty bent over backwards serving this university only to arrive at the bargaining table in 2021 and be faced with devious union busting schemes from OU’s leadership. Those contract negotiations were a hit job. They were an appalling example of leadership at a public institution attempting to use a once-in-a-century public health crisis as an excuse to break a union and avoid having to adequately compensate their employees. Once the public realized what the deal was and started speaking out, the university’s tactics turned dirt cheap. They tried to pit employees against employees and students against their professors. It was a disgrace then and it is a disgrace now to see history repeating itself.

The reality is that time and time again OU’s bargaining teams fail to negotiate with faculty in good faith. Time after time they fail to get deals done in time so that fall semesters can start without delay and thousands of paying students can begin their academic year without disruption. The upper administration now expects the campus community to abide by their bargaining team’s notion that giving them more power and authority over instruction while investing as little money as possible into compensating professors is the best way forward for this university. That’s a joke. It’s a perverse fantasy born out of their arrogance, cruelty and delusion. I am sick and tired of having my intelligence insulted by the upper administration of my alma mater. I’m tired of seeing OU flaunt its wealth and strong financial status only to then play dirty games at the bargaining table and cry poverty whenever it comes time to pay employees. It’s an embarrassment to this campus community that our upper administration conducts business in such a shamelessly underhanded way. It is time for this university to reconcile its ugly behavior. Employees that commit their lives to OU deserve fair compensation and respect from its upper administration. Change is long overdue. 

Every person reading this has a voice. We have a right to speak up and advocate for the world we want to live in. The fight OU AAUP is fighting for a fair and equitable contract is part of the larger ongoing class war in which oligarchs at the top use their influence to hoard wealth, while working people everywhere struggle to afford the most basic necessities of survival. I lend my voice and support to the faculty union in their fight because I know that their fight is our fight. I know the forces of poverty that inflict terrible violence on so many people in this country must be resisted and their harm must be remedied. We cannot allow the ruling class to stripmine all of our wealth and steal away the joy from our lives. We cannot allow our public institutions to be operated as if they were corporations or private equity funds. We must correct course. We must work toward a future where our people have opportunities to lead dignified fulfilling lives. We must fight so that more children are not born into this hell on earth in which the wealthy and powerful smother the rest of us to death.

Make no mistake, the campus community and broader public are closely following these contract negotiations. OU’s upper administration and bargaining team now have an opportunity. They can bargain in good faith, get a fair deal done that addresses OU AAUP concerns, make sure the fall semester starts on time and restore some of the confidence that has been lost in their leadership. It’s an excellent opportunity for them to protect OU’s immediate interests and future. 

Alternatively they can keep playing games with people’s lives. I know if they choose to lean on us, they will find out just how broad our shoulders are. They will see us on the picket lines and they will hear our many voices asserting our rights to dignity and respect.

Sincerely,

Jeff Thomas

Bachelor of Arts

Editor-in-Chief, Volume 47, The Oakland Post

Solidarity to workers everywhere.

Letters to the editor can be submitted to [email protected].