why we still need a faculty union

posted on Feb 19, 2025

danny caballero

This post does not represent the views of Michigan State University, my departments, the UTSF, or any other organization. These are my personal views.

I’ve helped organize our faculty over the last four years. The Union of Tenure System Faculty (UTSF) has yet to be recognized by Michigan State.

I could go into the details of why that is: from the hiring of a union-busting law firm; to a provost’s office that cannot fathom relinquishing power; to the growth in the executive and managerial class that keeps most of the money for their own salaries, perks, and pet projects; to delay tactics meant to wear us down. You can read my public statement to the Board of Trustees if you want more details.

university administrations are short-sighted

The immediate reaction to filing our union cards in December of 2023 was that MSU’s administration and, in particular, the office of the provost hired a notorious union-busting law firm. Seriously, read about these people.

I honestly don’t know how folks like this get up, put on their shoes, brush their teeth, and go in to work - but I guess the money is good.

The provost’s office did not approach us to ask why we wanted a union. The president (current or former) did not ask us what we wanted to see changed. The board didn’t approach us at all. They hired a law firm to stop us. We are still waiting to be recognized, and we continue to attend arbitration hearings to make our case.

Now, universities are under the direct threats from the federal government. Through these executive orders, which seem in many cases to be unconstitutional, illegal, or, at least, significantly overstepping their authority, the president and his enablers are trying to destroy the American experiment. These fragile people cannot fathom an educated populace. They don’t want people to think critically. They don’t want people to have useful information. They want to sow division to consolidate power, take away our rights, and enrich themselves.

If you have any doubt that they want to misinform, mislead, and manipulate, look at the recent attacks on sitting representatives who are simply trying to inform their constituents about their constitutional rights. I intend to do the same for our students in the near future.

Go ahead. Let the people see you for what you are.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@aoc.bsky.social) 2025-02-18T03:54:44.834Z

I am not privy to the internal conversations of the university administration, but their public actions and statements indicate they are focused on stopping any loss federal funding.

Too late, my dudes.

As I have written, theirs is an executive frame, which is necessarily reactionary, tactical, and defensive.

This is not new. MSU has been lead poorly for a long time. There have been numerous issues, many of which made their way to the public through outstanding local reporting, and incredibly brave people sharing their stories. In each, the response has been reactionary, tactical, and defensive.

This short-sighted approach is not limited to more public scandals.

Our faculty and staff are overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated. Annually, we have to bargain with the university for our department budgets. We have to fight to offer the courses at the scale and quality that we know our students need. Our regular requests are simply to have the staffing so that we can teach the courses to the increasing number of students that MSU admits. Mind you, we don’t have control over the number of students admitted, but we are expected to teach them. We are expected to provide the same quality of education to more students with fewer resources.

Admitting more students who pay more tuition is a short-term solution to a long-term problem. Moreover, it absolutely unsustainable given how that money is not allocated to the departments that need it.

In the most bonkers approach, the university ties our annual budget requests to 2010 budget numbers. That’s 15 years ago. We have created new programs and new departments in that time - as a university does to keep pace with society, science, and technology. In fact, the Department of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering was founded in 2015! We have new needs as we admit students from a wider variety of backgrounds across our state. We must support the students we admit, and we must support the faculty and staff who teach them.

If we budgeted our household based on 2010 numbers and only in response to crises, my family would be in a world of hurt.

This is no way to run a railroad, and sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train.

we need a faculty union

The university administration could have approached our union organizing efforts as an opportunity to work with us to make the university better. They would have found a partner in us; people who care deeply about MSU, our students, and our community. Instead, they chose to fight us. They chose to spend money on a law firm to stop us. They chose to delay and obfuscate. They chose to ignore us.

And even in the face of the current crisis, they continue to:

That’s fine. I’m not going anywhere. We’re not going anywhere.

As I have written before, we need a faculty union. We need a faculty union to protect our rights, to ensure that we have a voice in the decisions that affect us, to ensure that we have a say in the direction of the university, to ensure that we have the resources to do our jobs well, to ensure that we are treated fairly, to ensure that we are paid fairly, and to ensure that we have the academic freedom to explore the edges of our current collective knowledge.

msu needs a faculty union

But, MSU administration, you need a faculty union, too.

You need us now more than ever.

We care about this place. We care about our students and their education. We care about the community and what the future holds for it. We care about the research and the scholarship that we produce. We care about the people who work here. We care about the people who live here. We care about the people who visit here. We care about the people who will come here in the future.

We care about the long-term health and success of this university.

In us, you have a group of people that has demonstrated that we can organize, that we can work together, that we can make decisions together, that we can work to make the university better. You have an active, fearless, and organized group of people who are willing to fight alongside you to against the threats that face us. You have people who have dedicated their entire lives to this place, who have invested their time, their energy, and their passion in MSU. You have people who not bounded by their administrative roles, who are not limited by their job descriptions, who are not constrained by their titles.

Why in the fuck wouldn’t you draw on that expertise, energy, and passion in this moment?

I really want the answer to this question.

we need recognition now

We need a organizing mentality. The administration is doing its work and it’s trying, I get that. And I appreciate what they are trying to do.

But it’s not enough. I’m sorry, but it simply isn’t.

We are confronting a crisis in higher education and the choice is to follow the executive path, to hope that lawsuits and legislation will save us, to expect that someone will rescue us. And while that might alleviate some of the immediate pain, it will not solve the underlying issues.

MSU should recognize UTSF immediately and engage our grassroots organizing against these attacks. We can do so without the administrative endorsement, but I’d prefer to stand side-by-side with MSU.

We’re fighting for the same thing: a thriving, diverse, inclusive, and supportive MSU community both now and in the future.

Recognize UTSF now.