Ohio University’s Faculty Senate proposed that the entire faculty organize into a collective bargaining unit to better negotiate with the administration regarding contracts.
Chemistry professor Ken Brown, who presented at last night’s meeting, said the resolution to organize comes after the administration used private money from the faculty to subsidize health insurance costs.
OU began using about 10 percent of faculty members’ salaries toward health insurance and then offsetting that with a 10 percent salary increase, said Joe Bernt, director of graduate studies in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism. He could not specify when OU began subsidizing faculty healthcare costs with faculty salaries or when it stopped using the money for healthcare.
OU now has about a $1 to $1.5 million health care benefit surplus because the money stopped going toward health insurance costs and began being held for other purposes, Bernt said.
He did not comment specifically on what those other purposes are.
“When I first came here, health care was absolutely free for employees in the ’90s,” he said. “Over the course of the ’90s and this decade, the university has been whittling away, whittling away, whittling away and saying they have to take the money from faculty … in order to have health insurance.”
He said OU President Roderick McDavis promised three years ago to return the money to faculty but that OU kept “stealing” that money and using it toward whatever purpose it saw necessary. Because the administration no longer uses the money toward health care benefits, the senate called for its return to faculty members.
Brown said he believes the administration’s failure to redistribute the surplus to the faculty represents a lack of respect and a breach of the trust the faculty members had in handing over their money.
Joe McLaughlin, chairman of the senate’s Finance and Facilities Committee, said he wasn’t sure the resolution should only be attributed this one incident. Brown said this was just the “straw that broke the camel’s back,” and Bernt agreed.
“We can come up with lots and lots (of examples) to explain how this is just typical of a whole pattern of behaviors that necessitates this action,” Bernt said.
The senate expressed its frustration and anger with the administration’s general disregard for its opinions and concerns, citing how it only signed — and thereby supported — one of its 19 resolutions this year.
“Even if you make an agreement with the administration, if they find it inconvenient, they can just dismiss it,” Brown said.
He added that the senate should begin this summer by sending out e-mails to all faculty members, inviting them to join this collective bargaining unit. The senate will present a second reading of the resolution in September and then put it to a vote.
Reader Comments
I have a question. If the Bernt's and several other faculty members, are so unhappy here, why do they stay? I've never ever heard them say anything positive. Is there not a school out there that would make them happier and more pleasant people? Or, it appears that they have all the correct answers, why don't they become part of the Administration and show us all how this place should be governed?
who said they were unhappy teaching here? the faculty are tired of being ignored by the administration and the Board of Trustees. they are being treated in a manner that does not equal their standing within the university hierarchy.
they don't propose to have all the answers and know a better way to run this university, but when decisions are made by the administration that affect them without their ability to directly respond, or their concerns are ignored, then something must be done.
blah blah blah blah blah blah
"blah blah blah blah blah blah", wow with pithy comebacks like that perhaps you should run for an administration job at this university? Or maybe you already have one? Why should these professors leave? They have been here before McDavis and the Trustees turned this university into McUniversity instead of an institution of higher learning. These faculty that are being ignored are the backbone of this institution. They shouldn't be ignored! Yes, sometimes absurd requests are made on their behalf, but many of their gripes are legitimate. It must feel like a sucker punch to the gut to be told to teach more, earn less, and shell out more money for your own health care and not get those raises you are promised, and on top of that find out that the university is taking money from your paycheck and doing whatever they want with it. Why do most of these professors stay if they are unhappy with things? Three reasons come to my mind instantly; 1. They were here before McDavis and Krendel and Trustees began their reign of tyranny and want things to be returned to a happy medium. 2. They are about to get tenure or already have it, so would you walk away from 5-10 years of service, tenure, retirement, etc. when you probably won't get that elsewhere? 3. They know that by quitting and giving up the trustees and company will think it's OK to treat their faculty with constant disrespect and disdain.
I applaud the few faculty who continue to fight for their rights. Many more probably would, but they don't want to be denied tenure, and who can deny tenure? McDavis, Krendel, other faculty members. Academics is a vicious world, probably one more cutthroat than most major business ventures.
McUniversity: bah bah bah bah baaaaaah, I'm hating it!
Oh, I get it now, it's the "I was here first argument"...........very valid!!! My mistake!!
It's actually extremely valid. Who better to help guide the university than the large group of educators keeping it running? I'd trust a diverse group of educated doctors of philosophy over 6 businessmen who have little care about education and more care about their own cash flow and prestige. I am glad though you probably only read the first 4 sentences of my post and then stopped. Oh well, in the end either the trustees, the provost, and the president will listen to the professors or they will have more grumbles and have a more difficult time finding new faculty.
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