Dear colleagues,
Nothing says care quite like rejection — or at least that is what Management wants you to think. Management has treated the past two days as a Rejection Fest, refusing to engage with FAM on multiple proposals:
- Evaluation of Supervisors
- Artificial Intelligence
- Academic Freedom
- Shared Governance
- Financial Exigency and Retrenchment
- Health, Safety, and Security (though we note that management “value[s] your safety more than anything” while rejecting our concerns)
- MOU: Immigration Enforcement Access and Information Sharing
It’s hard to tell if these rejections come from true objections or just their disinclination to put in actual effort because they don’t care. Their first compensation offer and persistent rejections certainly would point us to the latter. For instance, they do not care to provide any assurances on raises beyond a measly 1% for the first year (and that’s only if management doesn’t delay negotiations past July 1). It even gets worse: for years two and three they simply proposed to give us the same amount offered to other staff — even if the Board of Trustees approves 0%.
However, your FAM Negotiating Team refuses to back down. We are committed to fighting for stronger protections for librarians, including Academic Freedom. Our librarians deserve to know that they are protected in ALL aspects of their work. We returned a number of other counters, including: Financial Exigency and Retrenchment, Evaluation of Supervisors, Health, Safety, and Security, Compensation, Professional Development and Reimbursement for Travel, and Association Rights. We also introduced a memorandum of understanding on Artificial Intelligence.
In spite of enduring so many rejections from management, we were able to reach agreement on another article: Annual Evaluations. This brings our total tentative agreements to six so far. We are looking forward to having more productive discussions around the outstanding issues so we can finish negotiations as quickly as possible.
We are fighting alongside our members to improve Miami for all librarians, faculty, and students! You can help us make progress on both the librarian and faculty contracts:
- Come to bargaining next week to support our librarians on April 29. Can’t make it on Wednesday? Mark your calendars for these other upcoming bargaining sessions:
- FAM-T: May 4, 11, 18, 22
- FAM-L: May 6, 13, 19, 27; June 17 (additional June dates to be discussed)
- Join walkarounds to talk to your colleagues about why this contract matters! Contact info@famiami.org to sign up.
- Make your voice heard at an upcoming action 📣:
- Sanctuary Campus Rally: Friday, April 24, 1:00pm: Starts at Cook Field and ends at Roudebush (with YDSA)
- Cook Field Funeral Celebration: Friday, May 1st, 12-1pm, collaboration with FAM and MIami students. Our demands: No ICE on campus, real investment in students, and 15%+ raises for faculty and librarians! More information here.
- Art build 🎨with OSA: Wednesday, April 29, 6-8pm, Upham 167
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