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Dear faculty, There is something interesting happening at UVM. Labor solidarity is stronger now than it has ever been. We have a strong, almost 21-year-old faculty union, a brand new staff union, and additional staff and graduate student groups organizing. When 150 people show up in support at the staff town hall organizing meeting, it’s a show of collective power. This collective power is, of course, terrifying to an administration whose corporate and haphazard management style includes chopping programs, closing the Campus Children’s Center, repeatedly violating our CBA, paying poverty wages to staff, and still manages to dumbfound us through poor judgment and lack of concern for the human beings who make up our campus community. As labor rises to fill the leadership void, this administration will try to maintain power through divide-and-conquer tactics. As UA’s David Feurzeig said at the town hall meeting, it’s important that faculty, staff, and students stand together, because “Our solidarity is the only counterweight to a misguided administration whose interests no longer align with UVM’s.” And it’s important we keep letting the Board of Trustees and legislators know: true leadership and accountability is only possible when there is real representation at the board table. In solidarity,
Ellie and Katlyn
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