Sign on! Tell the Board of Regents to support UW system workers
Can you join me and take action? Click here: https://actionnetwork.org/
For the past two decades, the UW system has been under attack: budget cuts combined with increased inflationary pressures have forced our faculty, staff, and students to do much more with much less. Republican legislators have weaponized common sense resources for student success like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and, now, administrators in both UW System and on campuses across the state are responding by closing campuses (Richland Center, Marinette, and now Waukesha), and laying off faculty and staff who have devoted their lives to meeting the needs of our students and contributing to the common good.
Hundreds of faculty and staff across the state (from UW-Oshkosh and UW-Green Bay to UW-Milwaukee and UW-Platteville) have lost their jobs, depriving our students of the teaching and support they need to be successful.
Our local unions in the UW system have been organizing to defend public higher education because our working conditions are University of Wisconsin System students’ learning conditions. American Federation of Teachers-Wisconsin locals sounded the alarm on disastrous changes to state statute in 2015 that eliminated tenure, as well as faculty, staff, and student governance rights from state statute.
Our locals organized a statewide drive to Fund the (Tuition) Freeze in 2017, organized against Point Forward’s potential gutting of curriculum at Stevens Point in 2018, and, just last year, our locals organized to defend DEI positions from the corrupt bargain UW system administration made with Republicans in the legislature. Now, our local unions are taking a stand against the seemingly permanent austerity our political leaders have imposed on us and the disastrous choices of so many of our administrators. Just last fall, our own UW system president, for instance, suggested chancellors should make “difficult” decisions to reduce curricular offerings for “low-income” students. In this context many of our locals—including Green Bay, Oshkosh, Whitewater, River Falls, and the Teaching Assistants Association at Madison—have asked our chancellors to engage in a process called “meet and confer” to exchange ideas about making our workplaces better and ensuring our students have the resources they need to be successful.
This process is not collective bargaining, is completely legal, and, given where we are, a collaborative effort between administration and our UW system workers has never been more important. Instead of listening to the voices of their own faculty and staff, however, every administration has said no.
Moreover, several have told their own employees they cannot listen to their own workers if they are organized in a union. (This is ironic considering that the legislature previously vitiated the sharing of university governance with students, academic staff, and faculty a decade ago.) In short, administrators are expending a great deal of university resources – at a time when those resources are limited – to tell us they don’t want us to be part of the conversation. If we are going to have a functioning university system, grounded in the ideals of high-quality education and academic freedom, much less rebuild our UW system as the national crown jewel of higher education that it deserves to be, it is imperative that UW administration backs down from trying to intimidate faculty and staff from exercising their rights to collective action and advocacy for our students.
Thus, the leadership of AFT-Wisconsin asks you to sign this letter calling on the Board of Regents, the UW system, and campus chancellors’ offices to immediately do the following: Respect the rights of faculty and staff to exercise their collective voice through their union Agree to legal meet and confer relationships with the elected leadership of faculty and staff AFT-Wisconsin chapters when they ask administration for it and engage in good faith efforts to exchange ideas about improving campus working conditions and student learning conditions Refrain from engaging in efforts to intimidate faculty and staff from joining and getting involved with their faculty and staff union Cease and desist efforts to eliminate academic programs, lay off faculty and staff, or reduce academic options for students without the explicit support of faculty and staff on those campuses.
Can you join me and take action? Click here: https://actionnetwork.org/