Why Is the AAUP Making Its Staff Contingent?

We've lost another valued staff member, and with him, years of experience and knowledge. He's one of many.

The AAUP’s long-running problem with retention bubbled up again last week. Zach Kesler, the AAUP’s valued database manager, resigned. He’s the latest in a long list of staffers who’ve left the AAUP over the past few years—since 2020 the AAUP has lost about half its staff. 

Zach’s departure is a huge loss for the AAUP and its members. For three years, he helped implement and maintain the member database, working with members every day and handling thousands of records a month. The AAUP seems to be planning to hire a contractor to replace him, a contractor who will come in with no knowledge of the AAUP’s complex systems. And Zach, like many others before him, didn’t leave the AAUP for another job. He left because AAUP management consistently fails to create an environment that allows the staff to do their work in a stable, supportive environment. 

And when a member reaches out to Zach, they won’t get him. They may get an auto-reply message that someone they don’t know will be in touch. A consultant who doesn’t know the AAUP’s work, and doesn’t know that member or their needs, may reply. Someone without the skills and historical knowledge that Zach has developed over his tenure at the AAUP.

This move to consultants and contingency is incredibly problematic. It diminishes the AAUP’s capacity to serve the academic labor movement. The turnover and lack of institutional knowledge hurts members. It hurts our ability to defend and strengthen academic freedom, shared governance, and the faculty voice at a time when higher education is under widespread attack. 

It means management is taking work away from the bargaining unit and giving it to nonunion workers. An overreliance on these contingent workers creates precarity instead of stability, and devalues the integrity of the staff’s work. This should ring alarm bells among AAUP members. And we must strongly emphasize this doesn’t come about because of financial exigency—report after report shows the AAUP to be in good financial condition. 

Of course, Zach isn’t alone. We lost our excellent organizer Ellen Kress in August. Before that was Jenna Sablan, who was in charge of government relations. She was never replaced. We lost a researcher and two other government relations specialists. Our midwest organizer Ursula Lawrence, organizer Mike Magee, Department of Organizing and Services deputy director Jim Bakken, and field services representative Sarah Lanius—all these positions went unfilled, and consultants have been used in lieu of trained, permanent staff. When the AAUP hires staff at the senior program officer level, which includes management as well as bargaining unit members,  traditionally every member of the staff is invited to participate in interviews with finalists and to offer feedback about candidates; consultants, by contrast, are too often appointed without staff input or transparency. There is a consultant who is currently doing the work of the former CFO and COO and acting as direct supervisor to staff members in the Department of Finance and Administration. No doubt there will be more upheaval to come. 

Throughout this contract fight, we’ve fought for policies that will retain workers and create equity in the organization. Things like access to study leave and a reasonable accommodations policy that actually puts the AAUP in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. And throughout the negotiations, management has fought us tooth and nail  while creating an environment that promotes turnover and tension rather than retention and stability. And who suffers? The movement and the members.

We’re in the final push for our contract now. We have sent a very fair package to management that offers a compromise on study leave so that we can create true equity at the AAUP through expanding this benefit rather than eliminating it, as management prefers. And if management declines that, we are ready to escalate and fight for our members and AAUP members.

So thank you to all of you who are with us, including the executive committee of the Louisiana AAUP state conference and the University of Maryland AAUP which both recently signed on to our letter of support. Lastly, thank you to Zach. In addition to being a great staffer for the AAUP, he’s been on our bargaining team, fighting the good fight each day with humor and lots of spreadsheets. We will miss you very much. Thank you for everything you’ve done. 

Next week is a big week. Stay tuned.