Speech to Miami University’s Board of Trustees at their meeting on February 23, 2024:
Hi, my name is John Schaefer. I am a tenured associate professor of anthropology, teaching primarily at the Middletown campus since 2012. Thank you for giving me this time. First, congrats to all my colleagues getting tenure and promotion! I know how much work you have done! Well done! Let’s make this the Miami you deserve.
Now, I would like to share four things that the Board of Trustees should know about FAM:
One, we are big. FAM was the largest higher ed union formed last year in AAUP-AFT. That means we successfully organized more people than any other effort in the largest higher ed union organization in the country.
“Unionbusting cost the university a ton. What a waste. And faculty and librarians still voted overwhelmingly to organize a union.”
Two, we are strong. We were the only higher ed union formed last year in a non-card-check state. Card check means that if you gather enough signed authorization cards, you automatically unionize, with no additional election forced on you. Unlike in states with card-check, we faced down over a year of well-funded unionbusting and a long legal effort to divide and delay us, in an anti-union state, with a fairly anti-union state higher ed board, in a conservative county, at what many people see as a conservative university. Unionbusting cost the university a ton. What a waste. And faculty and librarians still voted overwhelmingly to organize a union.
Three, we are not giving up. FAM has won big against every obstacle. We won our election by a supermajority, then achieved majority union membership well before the end of fall semester. We turned out over three hundred people to Faculty Assembly this fall — a feat we have now achieved three times. Against all odds, in coalition with other higher ed unions in Ohio, we’ve held back the onerous, outrageous anti-higher-ed, anti-union bill SB 83 for almost a year. FAM is actually famous across the country among unions for its media and communications, and for doing what experienced organizers thought was impossible: organizing faculty by phone and by zoom, during a pandemic. Other unions ask our advice!
FAM “successfully organized more people than any other effort in the largest higher ed union organization in the country.”
All the way, the president and vice presidents of this university have failed to come out of their well-appointed offices to talk to us and see what is in front of their noses:
- We are powerful
- Expensive outside lawyers just delay the inevitable and waste money
- This movement is not going to be stopped
- A union is what faculty and librarians want and need
- Efforts to push us back have just made us stronger
Four, we want to get to work. When will management learn this lesson? We are ready to work with Miami management and move this process along. We’ve been ready since the drive went public in 2020. Board of Trustees: will you take the lead, see the light, and tell your people it’s time to work with us, not against us?
Read more speeches to the Board.
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