On Tuesday, April 16th, the FAMCO bargaining team held our fourth negotiating session with the MU administration, lasting 8 hours. Present for the administration’s team, but largely inactive during the session, were Interim Provost Rich Veit, Associate Provost Susan Gupta, VP Christine Benol, VP Joseph Pingitore, VP Jim Pillar, HR Director Kathy Stein, and MU General Charlene Diana. Leading the negotiations for the administration, despite the substantial allocation of senior management time and university resources to their bargaining team, is an attorney from Gibbons Law, an external law firm President Leahy has retained to negotiate against the MU faculty.

Not only has President Leahy chosen to divert resources that could be used on instruction to outsource the important work of negotiating the successor contract with faculty, the lawyer he has hired has come late to every single session, including the first session where the administration came without a single proposal.

But this week’s behavior by President Leahy’s attorney of choice takes the cake: In an outrageous and chilling example of well-worn anti-union tactics, the administration’s team engaged in what appeared to be a premeditated attempt to conduct an ad hominem attack on one of our members, Professor John Comiskey, falsely accusing him of inappropriately canceling his classes to attend the bargaining session.

When pressed on how they came to believe this, management’s external counsel made misleading comments that suggested students had complained, and even went so far as to blame the lawyers’ lateness to the session on the premise that they “may have been” dealing with student complaints against Professor Comiskey, who just this semester received a national award from The Center for Homeland Defense and Security as educator of the year. When pressed further by FAMCO, the administration’s external counsel failed to confirm that there was, in fact, a real student complaint, or that their lateness was related to any need to address an actual student concern.

Instead, it appears to us that the university’s lawyers, both internal and external, chose to traffic in unsubstantiated claims about a faculty member’s adherence to professional duties as a way to distract attention from their own bad form, and to escalate a campaign to intimidate faculty who have stepped up to protect their colleagues and our academic mission.

This shameless behavior is a new low.

The FAMCO team made our outrage known, prompting the administration’s external counsel to make the absurd claim that they “did not come to the session to be attacked,” noting that, after all, the university has made significant investments in a management team to negotiate with faculty.

On their point that the university is incurring a serious expense in hiring high-priced lawyers, on top of the cost of releasing a provost, an associate provost, three vice presidents, and a human resource director from other university work to bear witness to outsiders bullying their own faculty, we can only agree.

The good news is that despite the shocking and flagrant attempt to falsely discredit one of our own team members, and amidst repeated attempts to delay responses to proposals FAMCO, the FAMCO team has been successful in moving us forward on expected tentative agreements on several non-economic items, pending review, including:

• establishing greater clarity in procedures for graduate faculty status appointment and continuances
• retaining faculty protections from unwarranted administrator access to eCampus shells
• providing for increased accountability in ensuring due process in grievance proceedings
• protecting COVID compassionate review provisions for faculty moving through the reappointment, tenure and promotion process
• expanding contract language that further asserts the parties’ shared  values in ensuring a non-hostile, non-toxic workplace

There is additional good news to report, as members who attended the April meeting will know: FAMCO has been heartened to receive the support of concerned MU student leaders, as well as the support from our state leaders from AFT-NJ and from the New Jersey AFL-CIO.

Check out the terrific shout-outs and great photos in recent issues of the AFT statewide newsletter, as well as the jaw-dropping coverage of administration’s orientation toward our students’ concerns over the latest tuition hikes in this week’s Outlook below.
Going forward, the FAMCO bargaining team is back at the table on May 7 and May 15,and the time is now for you to do your part to win the strong contract we all deserve- for us and for the good work we know we are doing with our students!

You can take the next step with us by marking your calendar for our upcoming May Day celebration on Wednesday, May 1st from 2:45pm-4:15pm in the upper level lobby and Pozycki patio for a chance to gather for some end-of-the-semester socializing and solidarity on this year’s International Workers Day!