The Ferris Faculty Association shared their new collective bargaining agreement over winter break, ending an 11-month long discussion and bargaining cycle.
The most notable changes seen by faculty and administrators during this cycle include a combination of promotion with tenure and overall amicable communication from both parties.
FFA president and science professor Charles Bacon noted that the union has wanted to make such a change to the tenure process for years.
“The coupling of first promotion with tenure plus the increase in pay for each rank will benefit new faculty working to earn tenure,” Bacon said. “All faculty striving for promotion will benefit from the increase in pay at each rank.”
Professors work to obtain academic tenure in order to achieve job security. A tenured professor is employed indefinitely and may not be dismissed without cause, while non-tenure track professors often work under nine-month long contracts. Nationally, professors with academic tenure have decreased by nearly 40% in the past 40 years.
The main administrative representative at FFA contract discussions is Associate Provost Steve Reifert. Reifert does not see this change as a sign that the number of tenured faculty members will rapidly increase. Instead, he views it as a logistical change which both parties recognized as a more fair system for promotion.
“What this does is change some confusion in the contract language where previously you could be promoted from assistant professor to associate professor without achieving tenure, and both the administration and the union thought that was a fairness issue,” Reifert said.
The FFA and the administration completed several tentative agreements in the past calendar year. Bacon noted that the current contract may still see “incremental modifications” in the future as the changes settle into place. Despite this, there has been consistent praise from both parties about the efficiency and respect displayed during this bargaining cycle.
“The process was unique because we’d asked Dr. Pink if we could try a more collaborative approach,” Bacon said. “We asked if we could meet ‘in house’ with Ferris stakeholders and no external attorneys, so that both teams had the freedom to fully participate in discussions. Without his support we likely would have been looking at another job action. Both sides were committed to reaching an agreement and avoiding the contention that comes with a job action.”
Bacon refers to the previous bargaining cycle of 2018, which resulted in a faculty strike during the first week of fall semester. Reifert agreed with this comment, stating that the two parties may not have reached all of this contract’s agreements without such collaboration.
“It was an incredible shift,” Reifert said. “Typically what happens, and it happened last time, when you get into a contentious atmosphere [with] outside negotiators who really don’t get us, you don’t get anything changed with the economics.”
Under the administration of former university president David Eisler, FFA members often discussed with an attorney from Detroit’s Dykema Gossett law firm on behalf of the administration.
President Bill Pink has been credited by administrators, FFA members and members of the Ferris Non-Tenure Faculty Organization for an improved relationship between faculty and the administration. Pink stated the following after the new collective bargaining agreement was shared publicly:
“I have been energized by the process of establishing relationships with our FFA leadership as well as so many individual faculty members on campus. Our conversations have been helpful to me in gaining better insight into Ferris State; both as I understand where we’ve been, and also where we are capable of going. I have found the FFA leadership to be incredibly collaborative in our conversations, and I look forward to continuing to build upon that collaborative spirit.
I have also found this to be the case in my conversations with other unions and the employees within those unions on our campus. While we may not always agree, we have civil discussions and attempt to understand perspectives. This method should always be the practice. We will never reach the heights that we are capable of as an institution without these important relationships.”
Provost Bobby Fleischman is the Vice President for Academic Affairs. While he was not present in most contract discussions during this bargaining cycle, Fleischman still sees this contract as a step forward for the university.
“I think everybody came together in an unprecedented way to make this work and move forward so that it’s something that we can point to as building on relationships, and delivering the best possible experience for our students,” Fleischman said.
Read future editions of the Torch for more news regarding Ferris’ on-campus unions.