Librarians in solidarity red gather around a laptop

FAM-L Bargaining, Day 15

Management’s compensation and benefits proposals dropped today. Their Compensation proposal provides a mere 1.25% annual salary increase (after an initial signing increase of 2%) and a flat rate for all promotion increases (a smaller increase than current practice). Our proposal, by contrast, would provide librarians with a substantial cost of living increase annually of 7% on average, plus merit pay. 

Try our nifty pay calculators to figure out how FAM’s compensation proposal would benefit your salary! 

On benefits, management offered subpar health insurance coverage terms, as well as minimal sick leave, vacation, and leaves. We asked why the university grants us vacation days but then requires us to take them on days when campus is closed — a situation that our proposal attempts to fix but management’s does not. 

In order to maintain Miami libraries’ stature and reputation, FAM proposed counters that would clearly define librarian ranks and protect our promotion process by retaining an elected Personnel Committee. We held to protections for our members in Scope of Duties and Working Conditions, an important proposal that determines each librarians’ job duties and workloads, including workload relief. 

We signed a Tentative Agreement today on Health, Safety, and Security that includes gender-inclusive restrooms and private lactation rooms for our members. You can read all proposals here

Help us show management that we won’t accept their dismal compensation and benefits language — come to FAM-L bargaining again on Friday! We’ll be at Demske in Oxford. And watch your email and our socials for info about upcoming post-bargaining happy hours this summer so you can drink and debrief with FAM!


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2 responses to “FAM-L Bargaining, Day 15”

  1. Ed Smith Avatar
    Ed Smith

    How about sharing faculty compensation and benefit comparisons to other universities in Ohio. It’s unclear what is driving your core issue of fair wages.

    1. Faculty Alliance of Miami Avatar
      Faculty Alliance of Miami

      Hi Ed, sorry we didn’t see your question earlier. This is a good point and we have certainly done this research and could share — it was part of our pay team’s considerations. A big issue, however, is that because of the large recent rise in cost of living, it would not be a helpful comparison. Faculty employees at other unions are still working through contracts established before the large increase in cost of living. Contracts are on a three-year cycle and we will be seeing cost of living increases reflected in future university contracts, but current ones are not a good point of comparison. A more appropriate comparison is raises unionized employees are getting in recent contracts in Ohio. We have to look further afield at other contracts as well, and we have been doing that. The latest data from Ohio SERB shows average raises of 6.05% in the first year of the contract, so our initial compensation proposal is within shouting distance of where other contracts are winding up, while Miami’s proposal is well out of step.

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