ATHENS, Ohio — Eligible Ohio University faculty are currently voting on whether to form a union, following last minute anti-union messaging from OU’s administration.
Voting in the faculty union election began last week, after ballots went out in the mail on Feb. 12. The official election period began on Tuesday, Feb. 18, and will last until Tuesday, March 4, the last day on which faculty ballots may be postmarked.
In the run-up to the vote, both OU and organizers with United Academics of Ohio University, the would-be union, have worked to get their messages across.
“It’s a really exciting time,” said Julie White, a UAOU organizer, political science professor and Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies core faculty member. “It brings to fruition four years of organizing work we’ve been doing across campus and on our regionals. It’s exciting to see that across all the colleges and campuses and ranks of faculty, there’s enthusiasm for moving this forward.”
Throughout the election campaign, organizers have emphasized issues of pay, staffing cuts, workloads and a lack of faculty input in decisions that affect them.
White said Ohio Senate Bill 1 gives more urgency to unionization effort. The bill, which has been passed by the Ohio Senate and is currently up for consideration by the Ohio House, would reshape Ohio’s public universities by banning diversity and inclusion programs and practices, preventing faculty from striking, and much more.
While White said the biggest direct impact of the bill on unionization would be on the faculty’s ability to strike, she said the bill’s movement through the statehouse also demonstrates the need for faculty to have a collective voice.
“We are a voice – not just within the university, but we can be a voice for faculty concerns beyond the university as well, to our community, to the state,” White said. “We are going to have to be very organized faculties across the state of Ohio if we are going to be the ones that guide the future of higher education here, and I think that is work we can do independent of whether we have the right to strike or not.”
The proposed union would be established through an association of the American Federation of Teachers and American Association of University Professors.
The relationship with labor organizations has been a point of emphasis in OU’s communications to faculty members, which a faculty member shared with the Independent.
Multiple emails referred to a January resolution by the Ohio University Board of Trustees opposing the formation of the United Academics of Ohio University union. In the resolution, the board said that it will accept the result of the faculty’s vote, but that it agrees with the OU administration’s preference “to continue our direct relationship with faculty without introducing an external third party union.”
A third email stated, “It is important to understand” that if a union forms, “You are selecting a third party to be your voice in all employment matters. You will no longer be able to deal directly with your department or college regarding your terms of employment, including any overload pay or other additional compensation.”
Asked about the emails, OU Senior Director of Communications Daniel Pittman said in an email, “We believe our University is and will always be at its best when our OHIO faculty and our academic and administrative leadership are able to work alongside one other to plan our collective future,” reiterating the administration’s preference to avoid working with “an external third party.”
However, White said that the term “‘third party’ misconstrues the relationship between the bargaining unit and our AAUP/AFT affiliation.”
“Both AAUP and AFT have traditions of autonomy at the collective bargaining unit level,” White said. “When we sit down to bargain, it is the faculty who will be sitting down to bargain.”
White added, “I’m not sure who they’re imagining the third party is.”
She also took issue with a claim made in one of the emails from OU, which cautioned faculty that if a union forms, “You will no longer be able to deal directly with your department or college regarding your terms of employment, including any overload pay or other additional compensation.”
“I think it depends which working conditions we’re talking about negotiating, but most unions still have a lot of room for negotiation between, say, department chairs and faculty about things like courses that will be taught, about scheduling,” White said.
For conditions that will be subject to negotiation by the bargaining unit, including contracted work outside regular job duties, White said that negotiation will occur with a high degree of transparency. She specifically said organizers hope to negotiate for bargaining meetings to be recorded and shared with faculty.
Additionally, White added, “There’s constant communication while a bargaining team is sitting at the table with the university about what is being proposed, about the question of whether we should accept the proposal.”
Both union organizers and OU are encouraging all faculty to cast their votes.
“First and foremost, we believe all faculty should have a voice in this decision, and the University encourages all eligible faculty members to participate in the vote,” Pittman said. “It is important to note that we will respect the decision of our faculty, regardless of the outcome.”
White said, “We are looking forward to seeing the super-majority of faculty who have already signed on to support the union get their ballots in in the next week and a half.”
Votes for the union election will be tallied on March 17 by the State Employment Relations Board. The result of the election will be determined based upon the simple majority of the votes cast.
Eligible faculty, as outlined by a consent agreement obtained by the Independent through a records request, includes full-time, non-supervisory faculty members, with the exception of faculty in the Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine and many departments in the College of Health Science and Professions.
From March to October 2024, Ohio University spent about $125,000 on legal fees related to UAOU, including a dispute over the composition of the bargaining unit.
