Bargaining Update 8/18/22

Dear Colleagues:

As we informed you yesterday, the talks between EMU and EMU-AAUP have broken down. EMU has refused to continue negotiating, refused to counter our proposals, stormed away from the bargaining table, and requested mediation. Their behavior does not indicate any willingness to bargain in good faith.

Since their decision to abruptly terminate bilateral negotiations, EMU’s team has chosen to publicize the parties’ proposals. Unsurprisingly, they failed to include important details. We will provide them here. 

As EMU stated, its current (and to date only) proposal calls for a 2% wage increase each year for the next five years. As all of you are aware, inflation for this year is running at approximately 9% and for calendar year 2021 inflation was 7%. During that time, we have only received a roughly 2% bonus and no increase to base pay—meaning we have experienced an approximately 14% pay cut in real dollars. Moreover, the first year “raise” in EMU’s proposal will just return our compensation to what we made last year with the negotiated bonus. It thus incudes no increases at all in compensation until the second year.  And in order to receive that raise, EMU has demanded a five-year contract which would lock in these small raises no matter what happens with inflation or EMU’s budgetary situation.

EMU’s proposal also includes benefit cuts. EMU’s update disingenuously accuses the union of a: 

“Refusal to work with the university in containing escalating health care costs through the adoption of health care plans similar to those negotiated with other bargaining units in all recent new agreements;”

This “refusal to work with” EMU means a refusal to agree to deep, painful, and unnecessary benefit cuts. EMU wants to substantially increase insurance premiums for the majority of our members. 

Over the life of the contract, EMU’s plan would increase the amount paid by a single EMU employee who elects the PPO plan from $1,256 to $1,766 per year. It would increase the amount paid by a member on a two-person plan from to $2,516 to $5,650. It would increase the amount paid for a couple with two dependents from $2,782 to $7,062. It would increase the amount paid by a couple with more than two dependents from $3,341 to $10,152. These drastic increases will erase the entirety of the proposed wage increase for many of us. There is a reason EMU did not include this information in its public statement.

That is not all. We will not only be paying substantially more; we will be receiving inferior benefits. EMU has proposed changes to plan coverage, including doubling the annual deductibles and annual out-of-pocket maximums and increasing co-pays for office visits, ER visits, and prescription drugs. Fewer healthcare expenses for us and our families will be covered. EMU estimates that over a million dollars per year of our current healthcare expenses will not be covered on this plan. Yet EMU has refused to demonstrate how the current health care benefits are a burden on the university’s budgets

EMU also seeks to require us to pay nearly $300 a year for parking because of its ill-advised decision to privatize parking services.

Finally, EMU has also refused to engage in any type of meaningful discussions with our team regarding non-economic terms, including important provisions regarding diversity and inclusion, disability accommodations, shared governance, and workload. For each of these proposals, although we have presented detailed explanations of the current issues, EMU has not presented a single counter-proposal other than current contract language. On issue after issue where we have offered solutions, EMU has instead decided to kick the can down the road.

In sum, EMU ‘s current proposal does not address any of the issues faced by faculty and would involve substantial cuts to your total compensation in a period of historic inflation. The position is neither reasonable nor justified by current economic conditions. 

By contrast, EMU-AAUP’s proposal would merely keep pace with inflation and place our compensation in the middle of the pack with our peer institutions.  Our proposed raise is currently below the cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security recipients and is closer to average wage growth for all employees, which was 4.4% in 2021 and is averaging nearly 7% in 2022 per the Federal Reserve Board of Atlanta. Our proposed wage increase is also more in line with negotiated raises across the economy, which includes an immediate 14.1% wage increase for railway workers currently recommended by a presidential emergency board, and a 9.0% wage increase for Morgan State University employees in Maryland. 

Our proposal is also reasonable given EMU’s budget conditions. Over the past four years, EMU’s revenues have remained consistent ($310 million in 2019 v. $306 million today). During that time, EMU’s instructional budget has fallen from $75 million to $64 million (largely due to a reduction in faculty headcount) and will continue to fall in the upcoming academic year. During that time spending on administration has risen.  Our proposal would not even come close to returning EMU’s instructional budget to its 2019 levels. 

Although EMU is no doubt used to the modest wage increases of the past decades, the economic conditions and EMU’s budget situation has changed. Workers across the country are fighting back to improve their wages and working conditions after years of hard cuts. It is unfortunate that EMU has once again failed to recognize that the world is changing around them.

Indeed, it appears that EMU’s negotiating team actually thought that its strategic decision to publicly announce that—after weeks of negotiation—it offered its faculty a 2% pay increase with benefit cuts during a period of historic inflation would garner support in the public or our membership for their position. They must be more out of touch than even we thought.

Our team is deeply disappointed in EMU’s proposals and their behavior thus far at the table. They delayed negotiations for months before agreeing to our proposed modality and their refusal to counter or discuss what should be non-contentious language changes in non-economic terms has impeded progress on even the smallest of issues. 

Nonetheless, we remain committed to negotiating in good faith with the assistance of a MERC mediator, and we hope the process will allow EMU to recognize just how unacceptable their proposals are to our membership. We anticipate that mediation sessions will be scheduled for each day next week and we eagerly await hearing EMU’s response to our proposals. We will update you as significant events occur. Our team anticipates that we will know whether the mediation process will be successful by August 26, 2022.

If mediation fails, however, our team is committed to using every possible lever available to us to reach an equitable agreement. We will be reaching out soon regarding informational picketing and other actions that we plan to undertake, and we are conferring with our attorneys regarding our various options if we fail to reach an agreement by midnight August 31. 

However, given EMU’s position, we advise all members to be prepared for a lengthy contract fight and to plan accordingly. Our strength is in our unity, and we know we are united in this fight. 

In Solidarity,

The EMU-AAUP Negotiating Team