Wayne Academic Union

Faculty and academic staff members at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, formed the WSU AAUP advocacy chapter in 1930. Faculty and academic staff began a unionization campaign forty years later and voted to form a union, making WSU AAUP a bargaining unit, in 1972—seven years after the state passed legislation granting collective bargaining rights to public employees and two months after the administration sent termination letters to hundreds of nontenured faculty and staff.

WSU AAUP members voted in 1998 to affiliate jointly with the American Federation of Teachers, which has brought the chapter—formally designated as AAUP-AFT Local 6075—additional organizing resources. In 2023, the chapter began calling itself Wayne Academic Union (WAU). After coming close to a strike in contract negotiations with the WSU administration, WAU agreed to its current three-year contract in August 2024.

We learned more about WAU from chapter president Jennifer Sheridan Moss, vice president Kess Ballentine, grievance coordinator and past chief negotiator Pramod Khosla, and executive director Mark Dilley.

How does the composition of WAU, which combines academic professionals and faculty members, make a difference in its goals and achievements as a bargaining unit? And what is the impact for WAU of belonging to a coalition of other unions on campus?

WAU is composed of most of the people who make a difference directly to students: faculty (clinical, research, teaching, and tenure-stream), advisers, librarians, financial aid officers, and other academic staff. We are all invested in a common goal: educating students. Our individual working conditions have a direct effect on our collective ability to reach that goal.

WAU is also a member of the WSU Coalition of Unions, an organization through which the leaders of fourteen campus unions gather alone or with administrators to discuss issues of concern to all of us. Together—and more strongly as a joint voice—we are able to address problems such as those with infrastructure, which also affect students and their learning conditions.

Universities are historically very hierarchical, and the work of full-time, tenure-stream faculty is viewed by administrators as significantly more valuable than that of other employees. Within our own union, we have been able to raise the salaries of our lowest-paid but highly valued members by employing raises tied to salary bands. Within the coalition, WAU can take advantage of the respect paid to us by the administration to have a positive impact on all of our colleagues.

How did WAU build on the successes and disappointments of past campaigns in the 2024 contract campaign?

In our last contract we finally won more job security and promotions for faculty of teaching (formerly called lecturers); in this contract we were able to increase the amount of promotional raises so that the first group of promoted teaching faculty saw substantial increases.

In our last contract, negotiated during the COVID-19 campus closure, we accepted very small raises to cooperate in shared sacrifice. The administration turned around and gave themselves substantial raises, which was infuriating to our membership. In this contract we negotiated an average pay increase of slightly more than 12 percent over three years.

For the first time this year, we introduced Bargaining for the Common Good into our negotiations. We were disappointed, though, that the administration did not engage with us on the issue of students’ need for an emergency housing fund. We are exploring other ways to develop this initiative and will continue discussions on the subject with the administration as well.

What are WAU leaders and members most proud of accomplishing in the 2024 contract campaign?

This is a solid contract that in many ways demonstrates significant gains after stagnating wages  and low raises in the last few contracts. What’s most important, though, to the leadership of WAU is that we achieved these gains through the organization and mobilization of an activated membership, at levels of engagement we had not frequently seen in our union. For example, on a humid and rainy day in the middle of the summer—when many of our members are off contract—we had over a hundred members at a rally. As evidence that we are doing something right by investing in organizing and leadership development, it bodes well for our future and for future contracts.

Our union represents members with very diverse salaries. In this contract we negotiated raises based on five salary bands. The higher percentage raises were very helpful to those in the lower bands, while those at the top will still see a substantial increase.

What are WAU’s priorities for the labor-management committees established to address issues that weren’t resolved in contract negotiations?

In this contract we were finally able to eliminate a merit salary system that was disliked on all sides and yielded very little money in anyone’s pocket. We did not, however, come to an agreement on how merit pay should be awarded. We should be able to come to an agreement before the next contract, and in the meantime our members got larger raises than they would have under the old system. We will also be examining health and retiree benefits and will develop a system by which members who were on long-term disability will be able to return to their positions if they are able.

How will WAU work to increase its power as a union and develop leadership for a sustainable future?

We have been hard at work over the last few years reenergizing our membership and have gained a lot of momentum in this effort during contract negotiations. We regularly had sixty or more people at our weekly “Bargaining in Brief” sessions, and record numbers of members volunteered in a variety of ways to help engage the membership. In an act that we believe was instrumental in wrapping up contract negotiations with raises close to our initial goal, we trained more than two hundred members in virtual strike schools over a period of two days. We closed contract negotiations with a tremendous amount of energy that we are now using to create and enact a long-term organizing strategy.

This year we have established our Communication and Action Team, which includes a variety of elected leaders, members from across the bargaining unit, and the WAU Council chair and information coordinator to help set, implement, and monitor organizing goals. Through this leadership we are engaging in a wide range of activities, including building a transparent leadership ladder, developing more robust new member and council representative orientations, and training far more members in messaging, campaign planning, bargaining, and organizing than in previous years. This group will also lead the development of a communication and mobilization infrastructure to ensure that we have open lines of communication across our large union and that as many members as possible can access training and contribute to organizing and mobilizing a powerful union. Additionally, our executive board had a strategizing session in the fall to begin establishing a five-year strategic plan that will engage leaders and members-at-large in enacting common goals. Overall, we are investing in our members in a variety of ways to build collective strength that can be applied not only in bargaining but also in continuing to advocate for more resources for higher education workers as providers of a critical public good.