FAM Demands Fair Contract at Miami Board of Trustees Meeting
December 13, 2024
FAM took dramatic action at today’s Board of Trustees meeting.
More than 100 faculty and librarians showed up to hand out holiday cards to Miami’s trustees while marching and chanting, demanding fair raises and a “FAIR CONTRACT NOW!” on our 471st day of negotiations — and the same afternoon, management made major concessions at the librarian bargaining table. There is much more to achieve, but it’s clear that when faculty and librarians turn out in force, we win.
Watch the launch of our action below (also check out the climax in parts 2 and 3):
Five FAM speakers spoke to the board about the value of the work faculty and librarians do for Miami’s central educational mission. Speakers pointed out that the University’s current spending priorities hurt students by diverting large sums from academics to outside consultants, new sports arenas, and outside legal counsel.
The University spent $7.29 million paying Bain and Company, Inc., an outside consulting firm, while denying faculty and librarians raises every year since 2022. (The cost of those raises would have been $5.5 million.)
Combined with their proposed $100 to $200 million on a new basketball arena, and $1.5 million on outside legal counsel—including at least $813K paid to two union-busting law firms just through August 2024—the university plans to spend well over $200 million paying third parties instead of its own employees. Even after all that, Miami is flush with cash — according to yesterday’s Board Finance and Audit Committee agenda, the university has “assessed its financial resources across the enterprise” and found an extra $150M to draw off into a special investment fund.
Meanwhile, Miami was ranked number three in undergraduate teaching among all public institutions in the nation by U.S. News and World Report. We do the work of teaching that earns this university its national ranking — not the lawyers, not the consultants, and not the administrators or trustees who are denying us raises.
Faculty and librarians deserve job security and fair pay. If the University can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on third-party contracts unrelated to its academic mission, then it can show librarians and faculty that it values the crucial educational work we do every day in the classroom by giving us a FAIR CONTRACT NOW.
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