When university employees form a union, a central labor-law obligation takes effect: the employer must maintain the status quo while the parties negotiate.
For UTSF, the bargaining unit includes tenure-system faculty and librarians. Status quo provides the ground rules for how MSU must interact with the union and every bargaining-unit member before the first contract is ratified. The same principle applies after a contract expires while a successor agreement is being negotiated.
What status quo means
Status quo refers to the terms and conditions of employment that existed when the union was officially recognized.
Under Michigan public-sector labor law, the university may not make unilateral changes concerning mandatory subjects of bargaining. Those subjects generally include:
- Wages and other compensation.
- Hours of work.
- Health care, retirement, and other benefits.
- Working conditions.
The rule protects the bargaining process. If an employer could change compensation or working conditions at will during negotiations, it could undermine both the union’s authority and the purpose of collective bargaining.
Maintaining status quo does not mean everything is frozen or paused. Normal operations and established processes should continue. If MSU has regularly provided annual raises through an established process, the status quo calls for that process to continue; it does not justify canceling raises.
Mandatory and permissive subjects
The obligation applies to mandatory subjects that the employer must negotiate in good faith, such as wages, benefits, hours, and working conditions.
Some university decisions concern permissive subjects that the employer is not legally required to bargain. MSU and UTSF may choose to discuss those issues, but the rules governing unilateral changes differ.
Some classifications are straightforward. Raises are a mandatory subject, while the price of a vending-machine item is generally unrelated to employment terms. Other questions require closer analysis. Faculty can contact UTSF when they are unsure whether a change is covered.
Members and non-members
After recognition, UTSF became the exclusive bargaining representative for the full bargaining unit. The university’s status-quo obligation therefore applies to eligible tenure-system faculty and librarians whether or not an individual has joined the union.
MSU cannot bypass UTSF by negotiating individual side agreements that alter pay structures or working conditions. It also cannot treat non-members differently by withholding a standard raise or changing an individual tenure clock because that person did not join.
Membership still matters: members elect leaders, set bargaining priorities, serve on committees, participate in meetings, and vote on tentative agreements.
What status quo looks like for faculty
In an academic workplace, wages, hours, and working conditions extend into many professional practices.
Tenure and promotion
Established criteria, procedures, and timelines for tenure and promotion cannot simply be replaced. This does not mean expectations can never change; it means changes must follow the same established policy and process used before recognition.
For example, a department that regularly updates tenure expectations by comparing peer departments can continue following that policy. It cannot discard the policy and impose a different method unilaterally.
Teaching and working conditions
Covered practices can include teaching loads, course assignments, research and service expectations, grievance procedures, established schedules, and remote-work arrangements that had become an accepted norm.
Compensation and benefits
Base salary, summer-pay formulas, retirement contributions, insurance premiums and coverage, overload compensation, and the established process for annual raises should remain stable unless UTSF and MSU negotiate a change.
Professional development
Consistent support for conference travel, research materials, sabbaticals, or other professional-development activity may become part of the status quo even when the practice is not fully described in a single written policy.
The dynamic status quo
Status quo is not always a frozen snapshot. Longstanding and consistent practices can be dynamic.
If the university has regularly granted a step increase, cost-of-living adjustment, or merit raise, the established practice can require that increase to continue. Canceling a normal process merely because contract negotiations have begun could itself be an unlawful unilateral change.
Why it matters
Status quo protects a level bargaining field. It prevents administrative power from being used to change faculty compensation, daily work, benefits, or career processes while an agreement is being negotiated.
Those protections cover the entire bargaining unit. They keep changes to mandatory employment matters where they belong: at the bargaining table between MSU and the faculty’s elected union representatives.