MTU-AAUP votes to decertify

After three and a half years of negotiation, unfair labor practice lawsuit battles and internal struggle, the MTU chapter of the American Association of University Professors voted Thursday to decertify its right to represent the MTU faculty in collective bargaining. The vote was prompted by an Oct. 31, 2007 petition for decertification filed with the Michigan Employment Relations Commission by members of the union.

The university administration and AAUP chapter spent approx. 13 months out of three and a half years in active negotiations. The remainder of the time was spent between the courtrooms of the MERC and antechambers of the Michigan judicial system battling for what the MTU-AAUP claimed was a breach of fair practice. The first summer of contract negotiations in 2005, the administration followed a previously-established practice of giving selective salary bonuses and raises. The issue challenged was the fact that, as of January 2005, the MTU-AAUP was the collective bargaining representative of MTU faculty. The union, therefore, should have been the communication channel through which the administration dealt its raises and bonuses. A legal suit ensued, paralleled by the first decertification petition raised by a set of members represented by the union.

Over the following 17 months the two parties quarreled in Michigan courts over the ULP. A decision was made, finally, in April 2007 which allowed negotiations to reopen. As part of this decision, the 2005 decertification petition was nullified and the membership of the MTU-AAUP was banned from refilling a petition for five months, to allow for progress to be made in contract negotiations.

With half of the faculty contract’s articles tentatively agreed upon, the two bargaining parties were approaching a final contract.

“We were very close,” offered Marilyn Cooper, president of the MTU-AAUP. “We had tentative agreements on half of the articles, and had discussed to exhaustion the others.”
Talks were halted again when another petition for decertification was filed on Oct. 31, 2007. Proffered by a set of faculty containing many of the same members of the first decertification petition, the document was filed in the MERC courts and prompted an immediate cessation of negotiations.
“We could have challenged this petition as well,” said Cooper, “but we thought that we’d defeat it.”

The MERC administered a vote to determine if the faculty body of MTU wished to continue to use the MTU-AAUP as their collective bargaining representative. Of the 312 tenured and tenure-track faculty at Tech, 287 voted. Of those there were three spoiled ballots (where the individual voted both “yes” and “no”), four votes challenged (the individuals who voted were argued to be ineligible to vote by the MTU-AAUP) and one vote by a confirmed non-member.

Of the remaining 279 votes, the decertification passed 143 to maintain the decertification and 136 to re-certify.
The AAUP remains positive in the face of this set-back. “We are disappointed, but are glad we have such close support,” said Cooper. “I don’t think it all went to waste.”

Decertification does not mean the university will lose its MTU-AAUP chapter. The chapter at Tech has existed for approx. 30 years, supporting academic freedom and grievances with faculty. The organization will meet this week to determine what steps to take forward. They must wait a year before they can conduct another card drive to unionize faculty once again under the organization’s association. Until then, they plan to continue to support faculty rights and serve as a watchdog of university policy.

Finally, the MTU-AAUP “wants to ameliorate” their perception on campus.

“We hope to change people’s notion that we’re working against the university. We really have the same goals: to make this a great place to work, a productive place for learning, and a world-class university,” said Cooper.