Members of AAUP Department of Academic Freedom, Tenure, and Governance on Strike

The strike is the first in a series of planned rolling one-day ULP strikes as the AAUP fails to bargain in good faith.

This morning,  members of the AAUP’s Department of Academic Freedom, Tenure, and Governance (DAFTG) who are part of our bargaining unit, walked off the job.  This action is the first in a series of rolling one-day strikes by US-AAUP members, and it comes after nearly a year and a half of bargaining and 396 days of working without a contract. This is the first time in the history of the US-AAUP that members have struck. Staff are standing up for equity, financial stability, respect, and a secure future for the AAUP. 

Join us for a livestream with the strikers and AAUP member supporters at 12 ET on our Facebook page. 

As we noted in a recent Substack post, the staff union has filed an unfair labor practice (ULP) charge against the AAUP over the failure to bargain in good faith. This charge—specifically, the AAUP’s pattern of regressive bargaining on compensation, demonstrated by its withholding of nearly eleven months of retroactive pay owed to the staff—is the basis for today’s strike. In July, after months of negotiations on salary that included retroactive pay to January 1, 2023, the employer suddenly removed retroactive pay from the table, taking tens of thousands of dollars out of the pockets of staff who’ve already worked over a year without a contract.

"I have for many months held out hope that a contract agreement would be reached, but I am ready to strike now that it has become clear that the AAUP has no intention of settling a fair contract. It is dismaying that an organization that claims to support labor rights and equity would so quickly set aside the values it publicly espouses by bargaining regressively and withholding retroactive pay from its own staff,” said Anita Levy, a senior program officer in DAFTG with more than 20 years of service to the AAUP. 

“Since leaving my former position as a tenured professor, I've spent nearly two-thirds of my 20 months on the AAUP's staff working without a contract. I'm striking to remind the Association's management and elected leaders that my work is valuable to the AAUP and its members, the profession, and the labor movement," said Mike DeCesare, a senior program officer in DAFTG.

The department's work is at the heart of the AAUP's distinctive mission, so it is significant that our DAFTG colleagues are leading the way in the US-AAUP's planned rolling, building strikes.

DAFTG staff carry out the daily work of promoting and upholding the Association’s principles, which involve the concepts listed in the name of the department: academic freedom, tenure, and governance, all crucial to the mission of the AAUP. Among their many duties, the department’s staff are responsible for fielding inquiries and complaints from across the country, some of them from faculty members in the middle of the worst crises of their professional lives. The department provides advice and assistance concerning AAUP policies and standards, and, when an institution’s administration has acted in violation of them, they can reach out to seek an appropriate resolution. 

“I am going on strike because my colleagues deserve a fair contract, and it seems this is the only way we can move AAUP management to bargain with us in good faith,” said David Langkamp, the program coordinator for DAFTG and another of the US-AAUP members striking today. “It has been a long time coming—we started bargaining on May 4, 2022, and our last contract expired more than a year ago. I see every day how much my colleagues put into their work and how much they believe in and strive to promote the mission of the AAUP. If the AAUP wants to truly live up to its stated values, it needs to do right by the staff that make that work possible.” 

“When I was a faculty member, I envied my colleagues at other institutions who had the opportunity to organize and stand together to prevent the erosion of their work conditions. Becoming an US-AAUP member was one of the major attractions for me in joining the Association’s staff,” said Mark Criley, a senior program officer in DAFTG. “Now I’m alarmed by the number of our members who have left the AAUP since contract negotiations began, many of whom cited management’s positions in bargaining as a reason for doing so. Few of these colleagues have been replaced. I am striking in solidarity with those who left and those who remain.”

“Just as the membership of the AAUP must have supportive work conditions to be most effective in their jobs, the staff employees of the AAUP must have supportive conditions—including  compensation packages that incorporate retroactive pay increases, adjustments for annual inflation, and regional differences in the cost of living, opportunities for remote work, and full paid study leave that provides for ongoing professional development,” said Saranna Thornton, past chair of AAUP’s Committee on the Economic Status of the Profession, current member of the Committee on Gender and Sexuality in the Academic Profession, and president of the Hampden-Sydney College AAUP chapter. “I urge the AAUP management team to reflect the attributes that those of us in the AAUP membership most want to see in our college and university employers. See the enormous value that AAUP staff bring to the organization and negotiate a contract that reflects this.”

Strikes will continue and expand in scope as the US-AAUP begins mediation so that the AAUP understands the gravity of what it means to withhold pay and not come to the table in good faith. 

If you’re an AAUP member or leader, you can take action. If you haven’t already, please email members of the Council; tell them you support the strike and it’s time to bargain in good faith and settle a contract. Thank you for all of your support!

Here is the Council’s contact information (you can copy the list directly into the send line of your email; Council members’ full information is listed below.)

irene.mulvey@gmail.com, davisp1971@gmail.com, sinclair@aaup.org, longa@law.unm.edu, nmajumdar@pscmail.org, rawlsg@yahoo.com, antonio.gallo@csun.edu, karosemb@umd.edu, dmurch@history.rutgers.edu, davarian.baldwin@trincoll.edu 

Irene T. Mulvey, President (2024), Mathematics, Fairfield University (retired)

Paul Davis, Vice President (2024), History and American Government, Cincinnati State Technical and Community College

Christopher Sinclair, Secretary-Treasurer (2024), Mathematics, University of Oregon

Ernesto Longa (2026), Law/Library Science, University of New Mexico

Nivedita Majumdar (2024), English, City University of New York, John Jay College

Glinda Rawls (2024), Counseling, Western Michigan University

Antonio Gallo (2026), Ethnic Studies, California State University, Northridge

Karin Rosemblatt (2026), History, University of Maryland, College Park     

Donna Murch (2026), History, Rutgers University 

Davarian Baldwin (2026), American Studies, Trinity College