MU faculty looking to form educators' union
Published Nov. 10, 2006
Members of the MU faculty and staff have been exploring the option of forming a union associated with the Missouri National Education Association, an organization that has set up unions at other universities in Missouri.
MNEA held an informational meeting on Wednesday and Thursday in Memorial Union to encourage discussion among faculty about forming a union. Speaking at the meeting were two faculty members from the University of Central Missouri, which already has an MNEA-affiliated union in place.
MNEA Organizing Director and former state Rep. Steve McLuckie was present at the meeting.
"We were called by some faculty last spring, expressing interest in forming a union," McLuckie said. "They had some issues that they wanted to see us work together on."
One of the major concerns faced by MU employees is the lack of the right to bargain. Other issues raised both during and outside of the meeting varied from involvement in decision-making on campus to pay raises and promotions, McLuckie said.
At the meeting, the MU faculty members present declined to comment about a possible union.
UCM professor Mike Sawyer, one of the two speakers from that university present at the meeting, said that the reasons for the creation of a union at MU aren't different from the issues present before the creation of the union at his university.
"In 2001, we underwent retrenchment, and so a lot of decisions were made without much or any faculty input at all, so that was the trigger," Sawyer said. "We only became affiliated with MNEA in 2003."
During the meeting, the perks of MNEA-affiliated union formation were a topic of discussion.
"We looked at some different options and thought MNEA was the best affiliation because they seemed to be the only organization that got it — that politics and education are inseparable and that tackling things in Jefferson City is essential to getting anything done on campus," Sawyer said.
According to Missouri state law, employees of public universities do not have the right to bargain with administrations.
Employees of private universities in Missouri do.
MNEA is involved in a legal case that is scheduled to appear before the Supreme Court sometime next year, McLuckie said.
If MNEA wins the case, public employees in Missouri will have the right to bargain. Currently, the only way they can set up a bargaining discussion is if the university's administration agrees to it.
Most of the time, administrations are not eager to sit down with employees with the intent of bargaining, McLuckie said.
Although the right to bargain isn't a current benefit of affiliating a union with MNEA, there are many others, Sawyer said.
"Since unions aren't an officially sanctioned body of the university, we have more leeway to express and ask for certain things," he said.
Those things have included everything from better insurance to better wages and compensation for employees.
"The benefits to being a member begin the moment that you join, simply by joining as an individual," UCM professor Bill Vaughn said.
There has been no definite decision to form a union at MU. The administration has made no effort to halt or abet the formation of a faculty union, McLuckie said.
"They have to be aware of it, though," he said. "We've had fliers and e-mails everywhere, and we've been on TV."