Thank you for all of your support during our recent strike at Wright State. I am writing to ask for some further support. Please bear with me on this somewhat lengthy message.
The faculty strike at Wright State ended on February 11, after 20 days. It ended up being the second longest faculty strike at a public university in U.S. history.
The administration and Board’s obvious intention was to break our union because we have been the most prominent voice in criticizing the reckless and wasteful spending that led to an almost entirely self-created financial crisis and the most insistent voice in asserting that academics need to become, again, the primary institutional priority.
Largely the same Board approved five years of deficit spending that erased more than $130 million in reserves. That spending was almost entirely on non-academic initiatives and enterprises—schemes often driven by cronyism—none of which produced any of the additional revenue streams that were promised. In fact, some of the affiliated entities created to facilitate those schemes are each still costing the university several million dollars every year.
In the contract that the administration and Board imposed on January 4, they eliminated our right to bargain over benefits and thus our ability to bargain meaningfully over compensation. They eliminated our MOU on workload, our right of first refusal on summer teaching opportunities, and objective standards for merit increases. They effectively eliminated the possibility of continuing contracts and job security for most of our non-tenure-eligible full-time faculty, and they allowed for unlimited furlough days while asserting that teaching and service would not be disrupted by the furloughs. Worse than all of that was a retrenchment proposal that would have made tenure meaningless, a proposal that they had presented to the fact-finder but left out of the imposed contract. We were certain, however, that if we failed to strike over the imposed contract, that proposal would be on the table when negotiations on the next contract began in spring 2020.
In the successor agreement that we reached to end the strike, we rolled back all of these things. We did not get the sort of healthcare plan that we wanted, with more emphasis on premiums than on deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums, and we made significant, if contract-limited concessions on summer teaching compensation. We will receive raises in the last two years of the five-year deal, but we will have paid for them several times over by the time we receive them. We said all along that the strike was not about money, and we are, indeed, taking a significant financial hit in the new contract. That said, the accepting the imposed contract would have meant accepting even larger and very open-ended losses in pay.
I am writing because our members are taking a further financial hit that we did not anticipate.
About two-thirds of our members remained on strike until the strike was ended, and it was very clear that the university was not covering a third to half of the scheduled class sections. On just about every day, there was some announcement about cancelled, suspended, or rescheduled classes, with the creation of a spring B-term supposedly being necessitated by the extended strike. So, when the strike entered the third week, we assumed that the university would need to make up the lost class time and that we would be compensated for a significant part of the pay lost due to the strike.
But within a week of the end of the strike, all class sections had simply been put back on the original spring schedule. We do not think that the administration can have it both ways: either a large percentage of our students are not receiving 20% of what they paid for (with all of the obvious implications related to accreditation, professional certifications, and financial aid), or we are being asked to make up the lost time and work without compensation.
I am currently collecting documentation of how the lost time and work are being made up, and we plan to file a grievance than will almost certainly go to arbitration.
In the meantime, our members are being docked for about 7.5% of their base pay, all of which is being deducted from their last four spring checks.
It is extremely important that faculty not be dissuaded from striking out of concern over the financial consequences and that no precedent be set that this is an effective strategy for breaking a strike or a union.
So, while we are pursuing the case that will end up in arbitration, we are shifting our Solidarity Fund to a Strike Fund so that we can offset at least some of the lost pay. As the monies are distributed, everyone will receive the same amount, and so our lowest paid members will receive a higher percentage of their lost pay.
We have established a GoFundMe account for individual donations, and we are asking that you distribute the link to your members and allied groups. Here is the message on our Facebook page, with the link, which might be used in a communication to your members:
On January 22nd, the majority of Bargaining Unit Faculty represented by AAUP-WSU made the choice to go on strike. Not for higher wages but for the protection of the academic mission of the university and our right to negotiate over our terms and conditions of employment. We stood strong for 20 days as the administration drug their feet to the bargaining table. Our #solidarity prevailed.
The end result? A much stronger contract than the one the administration imposed on January 4th with restored protections and the preservation of our legal rights. We call this a win, but it comes at a price.
Collectively it cost our striking members over 7% of our annual salary and many will experience financial hardships due to the loss in pay for being on strike.
MANY, MANY people {friends, family, and colleagues, both affiliated with Wright State and from afar} have asked how they can help. Therefore, we have created a GoFundMe page to help striking members financially in the wake of #fighting4Wright.
Thank you for your support and encouragement. It has never ceased to amaze us!
https://www.gofundme.com/aaupwsu-strike-fund?teamInvite=XrKsR8c1pnknynyIbjLAiLah6mA3qH8B3sGy5OcKrTmq9YUkKavAa6u7n9KmF6Tr&fbclid=IwAR1xQVGNUcNcDu4C2Oe-8j7vXB8jW-XK1uUhvPppMkKn5xh-JQBwBaZ3rNc
We are hoping that even modest contributions from individual members, as well as from chapters and conferences, will add up. And, when we get a more precise sense of what the strike has cost our chapter, we plan to supplement the contributions that we receive with funding from our own accounts.
If your chapter has already sent us a check during the strike, thank you again on behalf of our leadership and our membership.
If you have not and wish to send a check instead of contributing to the GoFundMe account, please make the check out to AAUP-WSU and send it to: Tom Rooney, Treasurer, AAUP-WSU; 113 Medical Sciences Building; Wright State University; Dayton, Ohio 45435.
Following this blog post are three documents: a chart comparing the imposed contract to the successor agreement, as well as a letter from CBC Chair Paul Davis and John McNay’s article for Plunderbund, both of which highlight the significance of our strike. Please feel free to post them or to distribute them in any way that you think will be effective.
Thanks so much for all of your solidarity and your support,
Marty Kich
President, AAUP-WSU
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