A contract extension between Eastern Michigan University and the union representing the school’s full-and-part-time lecturers has been agreed upon. The contract was set to expire Friday at midnight.
Enough progress was made during Thursday's roughly eight-hour bargaining session that the two sides agreed to extend the contract until September 28. The EMU Federation of Teachers said recently that the main issues were appointment structure, promotional pay, and professional development funding.
Jeremy Proulx is one of the lead negotiators for the union. He says the hope is that they will finalize a deal next week.
"We haven’t got a full agreement yet, but we have come to an agreement on all of the major financial issues."
Proulx added he has been leading negotiations for the union since 2016, and this has been the toughest one so far, largely because of the combining of the part-time and full-time lectures into a single contract.
"Just the process of putting together two contracts into one and making sure everything kind of fits together was challenging. So, add that to all the regular challenges you have with a negotiation, and it creates a difficult lift for everybody involved."
The EMU administration said in a statement that “steady progress continues to be made and we are encouraged by the sincere efforts on the part of both bargaining teams. Negotiations will continue on Tuesday of next week and it is our hope that remaining issues will be resolved to the satisfaction of all parties involved.”
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