January 14, 2019
Contact: Noeleen McIlvenna, 202-258-0879, mcilvenna2016@gmail.com
Contact: Marty Kich, 419-303-4619, martinkich@gmail.com
Contact: Rudy Fichtenbaum, 937-620-7430, rfichtenbaum@gmail.com
On Sunday, January 13, AAUP-WSU completed a strike authorization vote in response to the WSU Board of Trustees unilaterally imposing an unfair labor contract on January 4. AAUP-WSU had already filed an intent-to-strike notice with the State Employment Relations Board, but the final decision on whether to strike was dependent on a democratic vote of its members.
85% of voters authorized a strike, and 95% of eligible voters did vote. The strike will begin on Tuesday, January 22, 2019 at 8:00am.
The contract imposed by the administration will make it more difficult for faculty to offer individualized attention to students who most need it. It will reduce the percentage of students completing their degrees or completing them in a timely manner. And it will reduce the quantity and the quality of the research and scholarship produced by the faculty, undermining the academic reputation of our University and eroding the value of the degrees that our students are earning and that our alumni have already earned.
The faculty are committed to meeting the educational needs of the students in the Dayton region who depend on our providing an affordable education and a pathway to career opportunities that might otherwise be out of their reach.
Marty Kich (President of AAUP-WSU) said: “Administrators and Boards come and go. But most faculty will spend their entire careers at Wright State. We have a deep interest in the long-term viability of our University and are devoted to its academic mission. Faculty working conditions are student learning conditions, and the value of the degrees that our students earn is defined in no small measure by the professional contributions of our faculty.”
Kich added: “Like the teachers in the ‘Red for Ed’ movements nationwide, our faculty are standing together to uphold the principle that public education serves the public good. We want to preserve faculty’s role in making decisions about the University. No one who has been following what has been happening at Wright State in recent years can possibly think the administration or Trustees need more power.”
Rudy Fichtenbaum (Chief Negotiator for AAUP-WSU and President of National AAUP) said, “Our members have voted to reject not only the language itself but the administration/Board’s skewed idea of negotiation, in which their proposals cannot be discussed but can, at most, be traded off against one another. That is not fair dealing in any sense of the phrase.”
About AAUP-WSU
AAUP-WSU – the American Association of University Professors, Wright State University Chapter – is the union representing all full-time WSU faculty (excepting only administrators) with appointments in WSU’s primary academic colleges on both the Dayton and Celina campuses. [These colleges are the Colleges of Engineering and Computer Science; Education and Human Services; Liberal Arts; Nursing and Health; Science and Mathematics; the Lake Campus; and the Raj Soin College of Business.]
Collective bargaining for WSU’s tenured and tenure-eligible faculty began in spring 1998 and was expanded to include non-tenure-eligible faculty in fall 2012, both via secret ballot votes overseen by Ohio’s State Employment Relations Board.
About AAUP
The mission of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is to advance academic freedom and shared governance; to define fundamental professional values and standards for higher education; to promote the economic security of faculty, academic professionals, graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and all those engaged in teaching and research in higher education; to help the higher education community organize to make our goals a reality; and to ensure higher education’s contribution to the common good. Founded in 1915, the AAUP has helped to shape American higher education by developing the standards and procedures that maintain quality in education and academic freedom in this country’s colleges and universities.
American Association of University Professors 