FAM frustrated as negotiations with university drag on

The Faculty Alliance of Miami (FAM) is still bargaining for a new contract after nearly six months of ongoing negotiations.

Their former contract, which was reached in spring of 2025, ended on June 30, meaning faculty began classes this academic year without raises. The two issues FAM and the university are still negotiating about are faculty pay raises and health insurance. The cost of living and the cost of healthcare have both risen in recent years, which has added additional pressure during negotiations as faculty worry about their savings.

Benjamin Sutcliffe is a professor of Russian and faculty associate with the Havighurst Center for East European, Russian and Eurasian studies. He is also a member of FAM. Sutcliffe said he’s seen an erosion of trust between the university and the faculty since coming to Miami in 2004.

“We all want what is best for Miami,” Sutcliffe said. “That’s the administration, and that’s also the faculty, so it’s just that apparently it’s becoming two different versions of what will make Miami great.”

Sutcliffe isn’t the only professor who feels like the university priorities don’t always reflect the needs of the faculty. Theresa Kulbaga, professor of English and president of FAM, said she believes the university should be able to offer its faculty more in terms of wage increases than it currently is, especially considering rising inflation that has led to a higher cost of living in recent years.

“They are spending a lot of that money on other things besides the academic mission, like sports arenas and external lawyers,” Kulbaga said. “We would like to see some of that money go to the academic mission, including faculty.”

FAM planned a “Teach Out” event for Sept. 2, which encouraged its faculty to take their classes outside that day to show the work they do and to celebrate Labor Day. The holiday itself has strong ties to labor activism, which Kulbaga said is one of the reasons FAM decided to create the event.

The university administration, however, had other ideas. On Sunday, Aug. 30, FAM members received a letter from Jazmyn Barrow, an external attorney contracted by the university to engage in FAM negotiations.

The letter instructed FAM to call off the “Teach Out” event and hold classes in their regularly assigned classrooms. According to the letter, the event violated FAM’s Collective Bargaining Agreement and Ohio Senate Bill 1 and was considered an “unauthorized strike.”

An unauthorized strike “includes any such action, absence, stoppage, slowdown, or abstinence when done partially or intermittently, whether during or after the expiration of the term or extended term of a collective bargaining agreement or during or after the pendency of the settlement procedures,” according to Section 4117.01 of the Ohio Revised Code.

FAM leadership disagrees with the university administration’s characterization of the event and the university’s response.

“It is retaliation against the union for an action that was planned to celebrate our labor and mobilize our people to celebrate Labor Day,” Kulbaga said. “Doing this in the middle of contract negotiations is an attempt to intimidate our faculty and engage in union busting.”

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On Monday, Aug. 31, faculty received an email from the Office of the Provost reiterating that professors were to teach their classes inside. The email also said professors would be required to get approval from their department chair if they wanted to take their classes outside.

This policy is not listed in Miami’s University Policy Library, however, the Class Attendance Policy does stipulate that instructors should include course-related activities that occur out of the regular classroom on the syllabus or send a written notification to students as early as possible.

“The concern is not the outdoor location itself, but the use of instructional time or activities to subject students to a concerted union-organized labor action, which is prohibited by state law, university policy, and faculty members’ professional and ethical responsibilities,” Provost Trent Gould wrote in a separate email to The Miami Student.

On Sept. 1, FAM leadership sent an email to its members that canceled the “Teach Out” event, but urged members to wear their FAM shirts and attend the faculty assembly that same day as a show of support for the union. Around 40 FAM members showed up, Kulbaga said.

Still, not every FAM member was moved to anger by the university’s stance. Steven Conn, W.E. Smith professor of history, said when he read the first email he laughed, because the reaction seemed so disproportionate to the proposed event.

“This was an embarrassment for Miami,” Conn said. “It made news around the country … This made Miami look bad. It made it look silly and petty.”

mahones5@miamioh.edu