In May 2009, a college dean notified a lecturer who had taught continuously at UNO for six years as an instructor and three years as a lecturer that his services would not be needed in the 2009-2010 academic year. The lecturer sought advice from the AAUP grievance officer with whose help a grievance was filed on the grounds that a lecturer is owed a one-year notice of dismissal under 3.3.1.1 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement. The Senior Vice Chancellor turned down the grievance. Among her reasons was the argument that the appointment to lecturer is a separate appointment from the instructor appointment, hence a lecturer is not owed a year notice until they have been a lecturer for six years or more. AAUP appealed this decision but the Chancellor supported the Senior Vice Chancellor’s decision. AAUP then moved to step three which requires bringing in an outside hearing officer agreed to by both the University and AAUP.

The hearing was held on campus on November 23, 2009; the hearing officer’s opinion was delivered to us in February 2010. The opinion supports the AAUP’s interpretation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement; the University is required to give lecturers 12 months written notice of termination. He concluded that the University should pay the grievant the 2008-2009 salary, an amount not including the raise he would have earned for the 2009-2010 academic year.

The Collective Bargaining Agreement does not require mandatory arbitration so the hearing officer’s opinion is advisory to the Board of Regents. Their response came to us on March 6th. They rejected the hearing officer’s opinion and reiterated the position argued by Senior Vice Chancellor Hynes in the hearing. This position holds that the contract letters offered to special appointments such as lecturers include both the beginning and ending dates of their employment and no further notice is necessary. In signing the letter, they assert that the lecturer agrees that their employment ends on the date specified.

In spite of their long service, their departments scheduling them to teach and publishing their scheduled classes, the contract provisions for raises from year to year, and other evidence that continuing employment is expected, the University asserts that these faculty members are not employed as of the end of the time stated in the yearly contract letter. Furthermore, the Board’s response undermines the spirit of the grievance process by rejecting outright the well-argued, thorough opinion of the outside hearing officer. The posture revealed in their response does not bode well for future efforts to settle differences amicably.

Respectfully submitted,

Loree Bykerk, President

March 29, 2010

(We urge members to read the pdf documents of the hearing officer's opinion, the Board opinion, the national AAUP letter to Chancellor Christensen, the Chancellor's response,the April 30, 2010 UNO AAUP letter to the Chancellor, the Chancellor's May 4, 2010 response, the Board of Regents' May 25, 2010 letter, and National AAUP letter, June 7, 2010).

Note: The grievant has consented to allow his name to be included in the attached documents.

Consult the tax information on this pdf document to determine your taxable income for the value of your life insurance for 2010. For example if the value of your life insurance above $50,000 was $120, you would pay taxes on that $120 value. If you are in a 38% tax bracket your cost per year would be $45.60. For more information about benefits click here.

At its December 10, 2009 meeting, the UNO AAUP Executive Committee voted unanimously to recommend ratification of a settlement between the UNO AAUP and the NU Board of Regents which settled our ongoing salary dispute on the 2009-2011 contract. This settlement went into effect retroactively and was reflected in the December pay check for the months of August-December 2009.

The settlement addresses three issues: (1) The amount of the salary increase, (2) increases in the promotion monies for faculty promoted to associate professor and professor, and (3) restoration of the university insurance contribution to faculty going on phased retirement.

Full-time UNO faculty will receive an average of a 5.84 percent increase over the two years, with a raise of 4.5 percent in 2009-2010 and 1.34 percent in 2010-2011. As in previous contracts, 70 percent of the money each year will be distributed on an equal percentage basis for satisfactory performance and 30 percent for exceptional performance. Promotion monies will continue to be drawn from the exceptional performance pool.

Faculty promoted to associate professor effective 2009-2010 will receive a $4000 promotion raise; those promoted to that rank effective 2010-2011 will receive a $4250 promotion raise. Faculty promoted to professor effective 2009-2010 will receive a $5250 promotion raise; those promoted to that rank effective 2010-2011 will receive a $5500 promotion raise. (In the 2007-2009 contract, faculty promoted to associate professor received a $3000promotion raise, and faculty promoted to professor received a $4250 promotion raise. These amounts had not been increased in eight years.)

Recently, the UNO Administration informed the UNO AAUP that new contracts for faculty going on phased retirement would only provide half the university contribution to the premium for medical insurance which full-time faculty receive. The proposed settlement restores the full university contribution which earlier had been in place.

The American Association of University Professors issued a statement today backing its University of Washington affiliate's calls for that institution's provost, Phyllis Wise, to resign from the Board of Directors at Nike. The national AAUP's statement disputes Ms. Wise's assertion that she can ethically hold the Nike board position by recusing herself from the board's discussions of Nike's contract to provide her university with athletics gear. The statement also expresses concern that her position on the board will have a chilling effect on faculty research on Nike. Ms. Wise has argued that serving on Nike's board will enable her to bring about positive change at the corporation.

In the last few years the Landmark Legal Foundation has lodged public records requests of and complaints in regard to labor education centers in at least eleven public universities and colleges, including Florida International University, Indiana University, UCLA, UC Berkeley, the Universities of Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts-Amherst, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, and The Evergreen State College. Thus far, to our knowledge the most serious complaints, which threaten academic freedom, appear to have taken place at UC Berkeley and Evergreen, where the foundation seeks to restrict the work of the centers, in terms of who they serve and what they do. At Berkeley, Landmark’s complaint alleged, among other charges, that the Labor Center provides services for private (union) benefit rather than for public benefit. At Evergreen, Landmark made a request for a state audit of the Labor Center, charging that this program "is in violation of Washington's requirement that public funds must only be used for a valid public purpose." The letter from Landmark went on to say that "Rather than a valid public purpose, the Center's activities are designed to promote a particular political ideology."

In the two examples provided above, an external body (Landmark) is seeking to interfere with work in the academy, on ideological grounds, in situations that in some regards are comparable to those faced by university legal clinics (see Robert R. Kuehn and Peter A. Joy, Lawyering in the Academy: The Intersection of Academic Freedom and Professional Responsibility, Journal of Legal Education, 53,1(2009): 97-124). And that external body has a highly politicized agenda: the website of the foundation (the full name of which includes, "The Ronald Reagan Legal Center") has as its banner, "The best investment a conservative can make," and has a running news item that the foundation nominated Rush Limbaugh for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

The claims of Landmark in regard to labor education are a fundamental threat to academic freedom, to the autonomy of higher education institutions and professionals in them, and to the responsibilities of each to serve society. They also run counter to common sense thinking about the role of educators and researchers, and of colleges and universities in society. Landmark focuses on labor education without addressing far more common centers and programs that serve private economic concerns and interests. Imagine a higher education institution which could not have a business school or economics department with centers or programs that educate future entrepreneurs or business leaders or provide in-service opportunities to current businesspersons. Indeed, that was part of the response at Berkeley, where the complaint also related to Proposition 209 and the Center’s hosting a Summer Institute for Union Women and sponsoring a Latino Leadership School and Black Trade Union Leadership School. Educating potential union leaders is not unlike educating potential CEOs and managers. Both are legitimate academic endeavors.

It appears that most universities have responded to Landmark's requests in ways that defended the rights of labor centers. However, at Evergreen, despite the fact that the state auditor gave the college significant flexibility in how to handle the audit request, college administrators went forward with a review – conducted by the college's internal auditor – that raised questions about the ethics of providing educational services to unions and community groups (e.g., of immigrant communities), and of being involved in any work that could be seen as opposing the work of federal agencies (in this case, for example, Immigration and Customs Enforcement). Those questions mirrored charges made by Landmark that "the Center's focus appears to be increasingly directed toward thwarting federal and state law enforcement efforts to combat illegal immigration in Washington . . . The use of public funds to undermine federal and local law enforcement in the performance of their duties is not a valid public purpose."

The claim, as applied to the Labor Center's activities, appears to suggest that any effort to educate workers and immigrants about their constitutional rights would be counter to the public interest. Such interpretations not only lack face validity, they run counter to the concept of academic freedom, of both individual professionals as well as of the university. They run counter, as well, to conceptions of academics and academic institutions responsibly providing services to society. If academics and universities are involved in community outreach and service, as they should be, they must be protected from ideologically motivated attacks on their academic work. That dimension of academic freedom is part of the contribution of this concept and condition to the benefit of society.

The founders of the American Association of University Professors, articulated in their "1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure" the "special dangers to freedom of teaching," referring to "the danger of restrictions upon the expression of opinions which point toward extensive social innovations, or call in question the moral legitimacy or social expediency of economic conditions or commercial practices in which large vested interests are involved." The statement then cautions against related threats that lie in "governmental policy or a strong public feeling on economic, social, or political questions." The founders of this association knew whereof they spoke. The fourth case investigated by the AAUP was that of Scott Nearing, a graduate of the Wharton School, who in 1915 was non-renewed as an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania. The AAUP, and the New York Times, construed the non-renewal as a dismissal. The reasons for the action of the University lay in Nearing’s political views, statements, and writings, among other matters, on the topic of child labor, and the relationship between capital and labor. Nearing ran afoul of vested interests.

We reaffirm the core value of academic freedom, which works to the benefit of society, and which underlies and protects the involvement of academics in the lives of their communities. The Landmark Foundation's actions and claims as regards labor education are a threat to academic freedom and to academic institutions and professionals fulfilling their professional responsibilities. Administrations will best serve the public interest by supporting that freedom, including by supporting the freedom of college and university labor centers to do their work.