Union negotiations get underway later this morning at Eastern Michigan University with full and part-time lecturers bargaining together for the first time.
Until now, the nearly 70 full-time lecturers and some 420 part-time lecturers at Eastern had bargained separately with the administration.
Starting today, says EMU Federation of Teachers Vice President Anke Wolbert, the two groups will bargain together, hopefully using their strength in numbers to achieve their goals of higher wages and relaxing of workloads for full-time lecturers and job stability and benefits for part-time lecturers.
“I believe we’re both aware that this is an ambitious process with an ambitious timeline.”
EMU’s Vice President for Communications, Walter Kraft, says the administration respects the full and part-time lecturers and their needs.
“But we have to balance that with what the impact is with increased costs.”
The hope is to have agreement on a new contract before the current contract expires August 31st.
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