Faculty members at Oakland University will likely begin the new year with expired contracts when classes start Thursday, Sept. 3.

Joel Russell, president of OU’s chapter of Association of American University Professors, the union that represents OU’s faculty, said AAUP members will decide what to do if the contract isn’t signed at a members-only meeting on Wednesday from 6 to 8 p.m.

According to an email sent to faculty Tuesday night, “there is an increasing probability that … the team will request authority to call for faculty to withhold their services” if necessary.

AAUP and the OU administration have been negotiating a new contract because the 2006-09 faculty contract expired this summer.

“We wish they would bargain with us,” he said, adding that the administration hasn’t budged from their viewpoints since the beginning of negotiations.

The OU administration does not comment on ongoing contract negotiations as a policy.

According to Russell and AAUP’s website www.oaklandaaup.org, the administration offered the faculty no raises for the next three years, a decrease in payment for teaching summer classes, less health care benefits than what is currently offered, no increases in money for research and travels to professional conferences, and from now on hiring fixed-term faculty instead of tenure-track faculty.

Russell said the last item is the worst.

“They can be terminated at the will of the administration at any time,” he said. “But the biggest downside to this is we can’t compete in the national market for [quality] faculty.”

From noon to 1 p.m. on Wednesday in 201 Dodge Hall, the AAUP is having a public event to show what they believe is the true state of the financial well being of OU. Russell said he and some other AAUP members believe the only reason the tuition is being increased and cuts are being made to faculty benefits is because the money will be used for the upcoming OU William Beaumont School of Medicine.

However, OU said the medical school is a private school and will not use taxpayer money from the state or the regular OU student tuition money.