Ohio faculty librarians fight against insulting contract offers

Faculty and librarians at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, have been negotiating a contract for as long as they've been in a union-about a year and a half. Still, there is no agreement, and members of the Faculty Alliance of Miami have run out of patience. Through protests, letters and demonstrations they are conveying their message loud and clear: It is time for a fair contract, and it is past time that administrators show more respect for the people who are the backbone of this university.

Instead, offers from administrators, particularly for librarians, have been frustrating. At one point, one of the university's lawyers suggested that if librarians didn't like the excessive workloads they have, they could leave the university.

The librarians want "limits and guidelines around total weekly working hours" and "solutions to alleviate chronic overwork," according to an open letter addressed to the Dean of Libraries and signed by 25 librarians. They are stretched so thin they have not been able to take the vacation time they are entitled to, and programs they'd like to put together for students have gone by the wayside-there is simply no bandwidth to organize them. "We cannot, as librarians, continue to do more with less," says Rachel Makarowski, a special collections librarian. "Less resources, less staffing, all of that comes at a cost," including to students, faculty and community members who might have questions that librarians can't answer in a timely fashion.

"What we are asking for should not be contentious, yet administration continues to combat our reasonable proposals to better our workplace," the librarians said.

Another key point of contention is pay: Administrators have offered just a 1.5 percent pay raise for librarians, "which entirely fails to keep up with inflation and falls below the raises offered to faculty," librarians wrote to the dean. Miami University librarians already earn an average salary that is below the minimum salaries at other Ohio universities; the union wants an increase that allows them to catch up after years of inadequate pay. It also wants salary floors to ensure that librarians at every rank are paid reasonably.

The Faculty Alliance of Miami, which represents tenured and tenure-track faculty, nontenured faculty, and librarians, has been aggressively fighting for a fair contract, showing up at the university president's office with handwritten letters from faculty and students, packing the open bargaining sessions with members, and projecting huge letters onto the libraries that read, "President Crawford: Stop Stalling! Fair Contract Now!"

While there has been progress on some areas of the contract, librarians are outraged at the obvious lack of respect shown during negotiations. "When Management first came out with their compensation counter-there were a lot of eyebrows and outrage that were raised in the libraries," said Makarowski. After two years without raises - that was their starting point? Librarians already knew Management didn't value us, but is [that] really what they felt we were worth?

"Librarians do not ask for much," Makarowski continued, naming things like being able to afford food and clothing, pay off student loan debt and buy a home. "We deserve to be able to live a life that doesn't demand that we barely scrape by every month."

Makarowski's comments appeared online as part of a robust virtual campaign, but there have been in-person rallies, marches and plenty of community support as well.

"As students, we deserve the best education possible," said Patrick Houlihan, a senior political science major and a member of Students for FAM, at one rally. "We cannot get the best education when faculty are worried about their financial security. We need faculty to succeed for students to succeed."

[Virginia Myers]