Response to the President’s Office statement regarding negotiations

From the perspective of the NMU-AAUP leadership, the recent statements from the NMU President’s Office (all-campus email, 8/26/21; Mining Journal, 8/27/21) contained multiple inaccuracies or were otherwise presented without context.

To be clear, we are in mediation with a state-appointed mediator, and we have not shared – nor will we share – specifics from the mediation in the public arena because details discussed with the mediator are confidential. However, to the extent that we are permitted to provide them, our point-by-point responses to the statements from the NMU President’s Office (green italics below) are provided within this document. 

Northern continues to bargain in good faith as we have throughout the negotiating period. We have been actively engaged throughout the summer, even during long periods of waiting for union counteroffers.

As contractually specified, negotiations commenced on 3/2/2021. Despite financial issues being a mandatory topic of bargaining, Administration refused to negotiate or even discuss financials for more than a month. This delayed the negotiating process, making it more difficult to come to an agreement before our 2020-21 contract expired on 6/30/2021. 

NMU-AAUP requested a contract extension before the expiration date in order to continue negotiations with the mutual benefit of a contract in place, but we were denied this extension. After the expiration of the 2020-21 contract, the AAUP requested that a state mediator be appointed. The process and timetable of mediation is substantially different from typical negotiations; nonetheless, the AAUP has continued to provide counterproposals in a timely manner. 

The statement has been made that Northern does not value and is not willing to invest in its faculty based on our contract proposals. However, we believe the proposal of up to $12 million in accumulative compensation increases, depending on the length of the contract, for the 340-plus AAUP faculty members is a strong and equitable investment in our faculty.

Large numbers completely removed from context may appear to be impressive, although when context is provided they may be less so. For instance, in 2020, a cost-saving program from Administration offered early retirement, and many senior faculty participated in this program without being replaced by new hires. The net savings from these buyouts is roughly equal to the accumulative compensation increases proposed by Administration. Put another way, Administration is essentially proposing to use money saved from retiring faculty to fund any increases in current faculty compensation. As the total University budget continues to grow year after year, this would result in a sharp decline in the portion of the budget dedicated to instruction, to levels lower than those seen at NMU in 20 years. Such a large reallocation of resources away from instruction in no way equates a “strong and equitable investment” in the faculty.

The current contract offer provides greater salary increases to our faculty than offered by any other bargained-for institution in the state this year or last. It also exceeds the 2019 levels mentioned by the AAUP.

We are not sure which contract offer Administration is referring to; moreover, Administration should not be publicly discussing any offer while parties are in mediation. Certainly other faculty unions across the state of Michigan are currently in negotiations with their administrations, but we are not privy to specifics. We support all our fellow union colleagues working for fair and equitable contracts. 

The AAUP maintains that any proposed contract that takes four years to return total compensation levels to those previously provided in 2019 is not something either side should be proud of, and will result in NMU faculty falling even further behind our peers at other institutions. 

There has been no comprehensive salary reduction for faculty. The only recent decrease was a negotiated contract agreement for less money to teach in the summer and overload assignments. Nearly all overloads and summer assignments are optional teaching assignments for faculty members.

This claim is incredibly misleading. Although base salaries remained flat in 2020, the average faculty member saw a decrease in total compensation of 4.4% when compared to 2019. This was planned and negotiated, and ultimately agreed to by the faculty, out of a sense of duty to the University. We were all concerned about the potential impacts of the pandemic the University may have had to face, and we believed the temporary cuts in compensation which we agreed to were our part to ensure NMU emerged from the pandemic as strong as it entered.   

In the seventeen months since the pandemic’s onset, the predicted financial devastation was fully prevented thanks to state and federal COVID-related relief funds. Enrollment, always a concern, remains strong at NMU, largely because of the extraordinary efforts by the faculty to continue teaching throughout the chaos of the past year and a half. 

As for “optional teaching assignments,” chronic understaffing across departments has led to a teaching shortage, resulting in nearly one-third of full-time faculty regularly teaching overloads. To state that these assignments are optional is disingenuous, at best. As teachers, we have an obligation to ensure that our students can take the courses they need to graduate in a timely fashion. Until the university hires more faculty to teach these courses, that mission is only accomplished through continued, widespread overload assignments. Similarly, there are an increasing number of programs at NMU with summer semesters built into them, where a standard progression to graduation requires courses which are offered in the summer.  If faculty refuse these “optional” assignments, our students cannot graduate on time.

The AAUP has put statistical information into the public discussion on where their wages and compensation rates rank when compared to salaries of statewide public higher education institutions. However, current higher education market data* indicates that Northern faculty are paid 8.5% above the national average when compared to institutions similar in size, scope and Carnegie classification. Additionally, when compared to the CUPA* peers, 85% of Northern’s AAUP members are receiving salaries that are above market with a range from 1% to 45% above market. The up to $12 million proposal continues to support this trend. (*data from CUPA-HR, College & University Professional Association for Human Resources)

Any party can selectively choose a set of other universities to compare themselves to in order to achieve a favorable outcome, which is what Administration is now attempting to do. However, when using the established CUPA-HR peer group, which was most recently mutually agreed to in our 2015-2021 contracts, and which the University has used for more than a decade to set and adjust faculty salaries, full-time NMU faculty are, on average, 6.2% below the national average, and three-quarters of all full-time NMU faculty have salaries which fall below their respective national averages.  

Initial salaries for new faculty hired at NMU, although not mentioned in the President’s Office memo, have also been a major topic of discussion during 2021 contract negotiations. A new Assistant Professor hired at NMU in 2020 could have expected to receive a salary averaging 7.2% below – and in some cases, nearly 20% below – the national average for their respective discipline, a fact which has made it increasingly difficult to attract the highest quality educators whom our students, alumni, and community have come to expect. This is also one of several factors contributing to NMU’s chronic understaffing.

The administration made a contract extension offer to AAUP union leadership in early August that did not receive a response. Despite working without a contract, the campus and public should know that the University continues to provide the AAUP faculty their wages and benefits.

The AAUP Negotiation Team never received such an offer. The union leadership also has no evidence that such an offer was made, although if an offer was made outside the negotiating table, it would constitute an unfair labor practice. Bargaining outside the negotiating table is not bargaining in good faith. If Administration chooses to stand by this claim, the burden falls upon them to demonstrate that it is not false and/or that the offer was not made outside the negotiating table.

Prior to the start of official negotiations in 2020, an offer was made to the AAUP to extend the contract with a 2% base salary increase and the AAUP declined the proposal. After the 2020-21 academic year, Northern recognized all employees’ extra effort during the COVID-19 pandemic with a 1.92% salary bonus (capped at $2,880), which also went to faculty.  And, unlike many institutions around the state and nation, Northern did not lay off any faculty, nor did faculty take any furlough days.

Official negotiations are the only negotiations. Again, bargaining outside the negotiating table is not bargaining in good faith and constitutes an unfair labor practice. The AAUP Negotiation Team, the only body officially recognized to bargain on behalf of the faculty, received no such offer to extend a contract in 2020. Therefore, the AAUP could neither accept nor reject any such unofficial offer. 

In the middle of the 2020-21 academic year, an Employee Appreciation COVID-19 Grant was distributed to all campus employees, a “thank you” from Administration for going “above and beyond when called upon,” according to a President’s Office email on 12/7/20. To call this grant a “salary bonus” implies that it was an extra that was added on top of an already complete compensation. Given the significant temporary cuts agreed to, and described above, by the AAUP in the 2020-21 contract, even with the grant included, the average full-time faculty member still experienced a 2.9% decrease in total compensation in the 2020-21 academic year, when compared to the previous year.

For those who have questioned why NMU has not paid salary or promotion increases, legal counsel has advised the University that it is prohibited from doing so under Michigan law; see Public Act 54 of 2011 (Section 15b-1).

It is true that wage step increases and increases in salary directly related to rank changes, or so-called “lane changes,” are prohibited under state law and related precedents. However, faculty and Administration are obligated to follow the recently expired contract until negotiations end. The expired contract specifies minimum salaries for each rank. Many of our newly promoted colleagues now have salaries that are, because of their promotions, below the status quo minimum salaries for their respective ranks. We believe that this constitutes an unfair labor practice.

During negotiations, Northern has provided the AAUP with all requested financial documents, including the projected 2021-22 budget that has not yet been finalized due to the Legislature still working on the state budget. NMU never requested the AAUP to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for university financial information. It is public information and, as such, most of it is posted in the Finance and Administration Division section of the University’s website.

Administration has not, in fact, given AAUP all requested financial documents. While it is true that the Administration never told the AAUP to file a FOIA request for budget information, we did file a request out of frustration because every time we asked for budget projections, we were told that they don’t create them before the state appropriations are finalized and the fall enrollment is known. We know this to be untrue because we have been supplied with such projections in past negotiations. When we asked for budget projections on 6/30/2021, we received a copy of the continuation budget that included the exact same numbers as the 2020-21 budget. On 7/2/2021, we filed a FOIA request asking for the 2021-22, 2022-23, and 2023-24 General Fund revenue and expenditure budgets, both summarized and in detail, and with descriptions of any assumptions made. We were subsequently directed to a public document that is a summary of the 2021-22 projected revenues and expenditures that does not include details or assumptions other than an obvious flat amount for state appropriations. We continue to be baffled by how an organization such as NMU can plan for the future without making specific budget projections.

A point of clarification regarding last weekend: Housing and Residence Life and the Center for Student Enrichment secured funding for the Welcome Weekend activities. The Ferris wheel was a one-time expense out of auxiliary funds. Having the Ferris wheel as part of our Welcome Weekend activities had no impact on faculty salaries.

The Ferris wheel issue is not related to our union’s negotiations, and the AAUP has never addressed it as such.

In sum, the NMU-AAUP faculty accepted significant cuts in compensation during the 2020-21 contract to help the University survive a pandemic. The thanks we have received for our sacrifice is an attempt by the Administration to extend these cuts indefinitely. Nevertheless, we remain focused on achieving a contract that allows us to continue providing the high level of education that students and the community have come to expect.