Update:  LEO has also started a site on its Web page to post comments of support for the union regarding the pay issue discussed below. Pop over and show some solidarity.

The Lecturers' Employee Union/AFT at the University of Michigan says the university is playing fast and loose with their contract and with their members' hard won-pay increases.

According to the current three-year agreement, which runs through 2010, lecturers' pay is supposed to increase by the same average rate as that of full-time tenured and tenure track faculty. For the 2008-2009 year, LEO members saw their pay increase 2 percent, while their counterparts got 4.1 percent increases.

LEO member Elizabeth Axelson took to the mike in Ann Arbor to protest UM’s bad faith in awarding negotiated raises. Photo by Beth Hay.)

The university says the additional 2.1 percent doesn't count for the lecturers because it comes from a pool dedicated to retention, promotion and equity. LEO's contract allows those increases to be excluded from the formula.

The problem is, after filing a Freedom of Information ACT request, the union found out that the university has been shifting money around from the faculty's basic salary fund to the excluded fund, thereby giving the full-time faculty higher average increases, but sheltering their obligation to give the 900 lecturers their comparable due.

LEO has filed a grievance, and on April 2, they held a rally to protest the university's lack of good faith. They were joined by other campus organizations, the Graduate Employees' Organization/AFT and Students Organizing for Labor and Economic Equality (SOLE).

"We really want the university to do what they said they would," says Bonnie Halloran, LEO's president who is on temporary leave. She spoke to a Detroit News reporter who covered LEO's protest rally on April 2. 

The union characterizes the university's sleight of hand with member raises as a shell game.

Other coverage of LEO's grievance goes into more detail about the four different funds the university uses to pay faculty.  According to the Michigan Daily, which saw documents LEO secured through its FOIA request, the university pays for retention, promotion and equity through its "Super C" fund. "After only comprising 0.3 percent of the colleges' entire compensation for 2005 and 2.8 percent for 2007 [the first year of LEO's current contract], the value of the "Super C Fund" shot up to 30.4 percent" of the total in 2008.

Students who spoke at the rally said they're worried about UM retaining their favorite teachers, the lecturers, who teach 40 percent of the classes at the university.

LEO plans to take the issue to arbitration.