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UA protects and fights for faculty rights

Special Union Wins Update

Dear members and friends,

If a colleague ever asks you why we need a faculty union at UVM, forward them this message.

While we’re focused on our contract negotiations, United Academics leaders continue to protect and fight for you on a daily basis. Today we celebrate two important wins that couldn’t happen without a union: in both cases, the administration mismanaged or delayed money that belongs to faculty. Your union found, fought for, and got back that money. Some individual faculty members received five figure payments.

Win 1: Recoup Pay for Underpaid CNHS Faculty

This spring, UA Treasurer Joe Kudrle noticed five faculty in CNHS were incorrectly being paid as 9-month faculty instead of as 12-month faculty. Another faculty member had not received a promotion payment. UA notified the affected faculty members and advocated on their behalf.

Outcome: Members have received the lump payments they were owed. A total of $87,157 was returned.
Total, by member:
 $ 14,850.31
 $ 3,625.33
 $ 16,234.00
 $ 32,479.00
 $ 17,468.65
$ 2,500 

Even after admitting this massive error, the administration was initially unwilling to add interest to each of these owed payments. We brought this to the Vermont Labor Relations Board, which indicated they would side with UA. Then the administration agreed to include 12% interest on all the owed pay, including the retroactive retirement contributions.

Win 2: Act 183 payments to Nursing faculty members and staff

In 2020, the legislature passed Act 183, which directed state funds to Vermont nursing educators. As of December 2023, after countless UA inquiries, money had not yet been disbursed to UVM Nursing faculty. Nursing department UA members Tara Burnham and Dan Weise, along with Contract Administration Committee members and Executive Council members, joined UA’s impact bargaining team, and collaborated with impacted Staff United members, to come up with a fair formula to allocate the funds.

The information provided by the administration during impact bargaining was so flawed and delayed that UA filed a grievance in February, 2024.

Outcome: This summer, 134 Nursing faculty and staff finally received their payments (average payment: $4,500). $670,000 total were disbursed; a greater amount than was originally projected.

Remember these two things:

First, we can not take our rights for granted under this UVM administration. There is no rest for any campus union.

Second, you belong to a group that is strong, engaged, diverse, and committed to justice. Union work is justice work. Your participation makes our union stronger, and that makes our campus stronger, our fellow unions stronger, and our community stronger.

Belonging to UA is bigger than even just our membership. It’s about our students and our university. Ultimately, we are here not just to defend our rights as faculty members, but to protect academic excellence, academic freedom, and to act in solidarity with union workers everywhere.

Together, we have power. That benefits the individual—your colleagues who just received the pay they deserved—and the collective, as we bargain for an equitable contract for all full-time faculty. For those of us at the bargaining table, standing strong for your rights, we draw so much strength when we look up and see hundreds of our faculty members observing.

Thank you for your commitment to your union and to justice. In a few weeks, United Academics is returning strong to our contract campaign. We’ll see you there.

Sincerely,

Suzy and Katlyn

ICYMI: Bargaining Updates

In Case You Missed It: The Latest Bargaining Updates

This July and August, the bargaining teams of UA and the UVM administration held 3 full-day bargaining sessions. In these three most recent bargaining sessions, we were assisted by a federal mediator, Annie Rutsky, to try to reach agreement on a number of the open articles.

See the Mediation Report here

We plan to reconvene as a team later in August, and then again with the mediator in early September to continue bargaining. We may be reaching official impasse at some point soon, which will correspond with a ramping up of our member and community contract campaign.

Stay tuned and mark your calendar for the following upcoming dates:

September 9, 2:30pm on Zoom - Members contract updates meeting

September 16, 1-4pm in person and on Zoom - Next mediation session

September 30, 1-4pm in person and on Zoom - Tentative mediation session

Faculty Benefits Chart

UA’s Benefits Chart is a resource to help all faculty know their rights. The chart also shows how inequitable the system is for Lecturers. One of our bargaining priorities is to change that.

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