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Across MSU, faculty support UTSF because stronger working conditions, academic freedom, and shared governance make a stronger university.
Faculty are being asked to do more with less amid larger classes, heavier mentoring, and a mental-health crisis. A union can fight for less micromanagement, smaller classes, campus child care, fair salaries, free parking, safety, democracy, and social justice.
As executive management grew while tenure-system ranks declined, administrators increasingly drove MSU’s agenda. A faculty union can move faculty closer to the driver’s seat and level that imbalance.
Academic governance shows that positive change starts with people who feel invested, heard, and willing to work for the common good. The union brings those people together and gives them a collective voice.
A union is a campus movement larger than any one person. University employees are stronger together than alone, and every worker deserves a livable wage.
Faculty deserve a say in institutional decisions. Collective action can address unit inequities, caregiver support, retirement and resource decisions, reinforce Faculty Senate, and build solidarity with other MSU bargaining units.
Experience in the American Guild of Musical Artists showed how unions give representation to people whose voices might otherwise be overlooked. Tenure-system faculty deserve that same representation.
Educators’ work should be rewarded with equity, diversity, and inclusion. Faculty create the research university and deserve to be heard where decisions about their work are made.
Repeated crises exposed declining faculty voice, unilateral decisions, and poor working conditions. A union can give shared governance enforceable power, defend tenure and academic freedom, and help everyone research, teach, and learn with dignity.
After decades of seeing university leaders ignore faculty, a legally recognized bargaining unit is the path to a real seat at the table for the people who provide MSU’s education.
Over decades, faculty voice, benefits, real salaries, tenure-system positions, and staff support have eroded while work shifted onto faculty. Faculty must join together as one voice to change that direction.
Academic freedom cannot be taken for granted. Collective power is needed to defend the faculty handbook, due process, Faculty Senate, and fair treatment for faculty, students, and staff.
Universities’ Eurocentric and neoliberal foundations, the pandemic, and racial and political pressures especially burden junior and historically marginalized faculty. Protecting their rights is a shared responsibility: unity creates strength.
Academic freedom, free speech, and research autonomy are the essence of tenure. Faculty should share responsibility for decisions at the department, college, and university levels.
Support grew from learning about administrative neutrality and the union’s role in academic freedom, tenure-based research quality, and retirement security, along with how rare labor actions are among comparable faculty unions.
Students benefit when faculty receive strong support, competitive salaries, and excellent benefits. Better faculty working conditions strengthen both teaching and research across the campus community.
Every person who joins a union strengthens workers’ ability to organize for living wages, health care, child care, time off, and secure retirement. UTSF is part of the collective work of challenging unchecked power.
In a polarized political climate, faculty need stronger protection for classroom expression and the freedom to teach and share work from marginalized voices without fear of reprisal.
Faculty play a central role yet remain subject to poorly made decisions from above. A union can put education at the center, win support for faculty work, and resist the erosion of tenure and academic freedom.
Faculty are the heart of MSU, and governance should reflect that. A union organizes faculty into a counterweight to administrative power, weak transparency, and poor accountability while supporting teaching and research.
MSU should move from a corporate model toward a sustainable institution centered on students, staff, teaching, and research, with better staffing, benefits, merit raises, salaries, and democratic faculty participation.
MSU faculty are innovative, rigorous, ethical, and deeply committed to education, research, and community. Organizing amplifies their voice and expands their contribution to students and lives beyond campus.
Administrative decisions too often discount faculty, favor athletics over academics, and erode research resources. Pandemic sacrifices and delayed, inadequate raises show why faculty need enforceable collective power.
Faculty deserve respect and dignity. A union advances a democratic, transparent, accountable, community-oriented public university where participation, diversity, equity, and justice shape teaching and learning.
Faculty kept the university running through leadership churn and a pandemic, adapting courses and research while losing raises and retirement benefits. Support, stability, and a collective voice are overdue.
Collective organizing creates more equitable outcomes as academic freedom erodes, faculty workloads rise, and tenure lines give way to precarious appointments. A union supports a shared response in solidarity with the university community.
Faculty Senate does valuable work, but advisory votes lack force. A union can make faculty part of university decisions, protect rights, and prioritize inflation adjustments in compensation.
Faculty have much to offer, yet expanding administration consumes resources and weakens their role in governance. Collective organization can restore that voice.
The administration’s handling of salary and benefits during the pandemic and its disregard for thoughtful Faculty Senate recommendations show the need for a union voice that requires real conversation.
A union can negotiate clear tenure and promotion standards while protecting wages and the benefits of current and retired faculty during periods of claimed crisis.
Tenure-system faculty were among the few MSU employee groups without a union and therefore lacked equal collective-bargaining power. Organizing gives faculty an equal voice.
Unionization empowers professors to overcome workplace injustice and disrespect. Working together for each person’s well-being can also improve MSU’s broader academic environment.
The pandemic showed what happens without representation, while long-term higher-education trends continue to work against tenure-system faculty. A union offers the strongest chance to resist those trends.
Challenging injustice is a core social-work value. A faculty union is a concrete step toward equity in how MSU faculty are supported and compensated.
Inadequate pay, punishing workloads, and demoralizing conditions have driven talented scholars away from academia. Faculty need representation and a seat at the table to build better conditions.
A collective voice is stronger than isolated voices. A union provides a way to express shared faculty concerns and respond when administrative changes affect everyday work.
Collective bargaining over working conditions, health care, and retirement is long overdue and can improve faculty retention and MSU’s research, teaching, extension, and outreach.
Fair and competitive wages, better conditions, and stronger teaching and research support help faculty serve MSU students and Michigan residents well. A union can protect that capacity.
Workplace voice and democracy grow when people act collectively. Tenure-system faculty can rebuild the institution with other campus groups and gain a real say at the decision-making table.
Strength in numbers is the faculty’s collective will to make meaningful change with one voice. A union is essential to making that voice heard.
Faculty unions protect fair wages, benefits, working conditions, academic freedom, diversity, educational quality, and the integrity of higher education, especially during budget pressure.
Decades in a musicians’ union and at negotiating tables showed the power of representation. With an advisory Senate and diminished salaries and benefits, faculty need collective bargaining centered on students and educators.
A union can elevate faculty in university governance after years of being ignored and strengthen MSU’s academic mission by putting students first and protecting academic freedom.
A large employer holds enormous power over an individual employee. A union is a practical safety net that levels the field when workplace rights are threatened.
Union experience during the 2008 financial crisis showed that collective bargaining can preserve salaries and expand dependent tuition benefits. Faculty need that protection amid below-inflation raises and administrative turmoil.
A union is a step toward restoring MSU as an intellectual community where ideas and curiosity matter more than budgets and scoreboards, and where bureaucracy no longer stifles academic life.
MSU faculty need leverage to make administrators more transparent and accountable. Recent leadership failures and their consequences show why university affairs require stronger faculty governance.
United faculty can stand for the causes they believe in, including equity and justice.
Faculty create knowledge, mentor scholars, attract research funding, educate future generations, and serve the public, yet tenure, academic freedom, and faculty voice have eroded. A union can restore voice and respect.
UTSF can make the workplace more democratic through collective decision-making and provide power to challenge the erosion of tenure and academic freedom in an increasingly market-driven university.