MSU Extension on bumpy road to unionization

Michigan State University Extension workers say they are having trouble seeking recognition for their recently announced union.

The majority of workers in the program have signed union cards, which union organizers say is the first step toward official recognition by their employers. But organizers say MSU is slowing down the process, echoing members’ concerns about another unionization effort on campus.

MSU Extension works with counties throughout the state to provide educational services. Employees assist community members with agriculture, business development, health care, and tourism, among many other things. Every public land-grant university has an Extension program.

“These people are really the face of the university in many communities across the state, and the fact that the university doesn’t seem to recognize their importance — I think that’s been very apparent to many extension faculty members over the last few years,” said Víctor Rodríguez-Pereira, the president of MSU’s nontenure faculty union.

The union, called MSU Extension United, plans to affiliate with the larger Union of Non-Tenure Track Faculty.

In promotional materials shared with The State News, union members argue:

• Wages are not in line with the cost of living
• Merit-based salary increases are awarded subjectively
• Criteria for performance evaluations are unclear and subjective
• Employees belonging to marginalized groups are being left out of important conversations

Jeremy Jubenville, an extension department professor of horticulture and greenhouse horticulture, said “these are reasonable expectations” during the board’s public comment period last month, where they first publicly announced the union.

Jubenville said during the meeting that the vast majority of the union’s approximately 400 employees had already signed a union card.

The union is trying to get MSU to voluntarily recognize them, but Rodríguez-Pereira said members will have to go through the National Labor Relations Board if they don’t.

Organizers say MSU’s Human Resources department is deliberately delaying important meetings and withholding information, unnecessarily prolonging the unionization process.

The university argued that many extension employees who signed union cards should not be considered faculty members and therefore did not belong in a subsection of the union for non-tenured faculty members, Rodríguez-Pereira said.

“They’re working on a very outdated definition of what teaching is,” Rodríguez-Pereira said. “I don’t think we can hold on to the idea in the 21st century that the only way to teach someone is to sit in a classroom with students.”

He said an outside arbitrator agreed with the union’s definition of faculty a few months ago, but that not much progress has been made on unionization since then.

“They keep finding new problems, new reasons to slow down the process,” Rodríguez-Pereira said. “You can only entertain those concerns for so long.”

He said the university is trying “to make people disinterested or tired or just drop out.”

“In this case, MSU Extension teachers are not going to give up,” said Rodríguez-Pereira.

MSU spokesman Mark Bullion said in a statement that the “university is working with the union in good faith,” following the process outlined in a board resolution adopted in 2021.

The concerns of the organizers of MSU Extension United echo those of the Union of Tenure Stream Faculty, another union organization on campus. Members claim that MSU is slowing down the process.

The union previously complained that MSU would not cooperate with the organizers, refusing to send a list of names of staff members who, according to the university, are part of their negotiating group.

“They’re doing union busting 101,” said NiCole Buchanan, an organizer with the Union of Tenure Stream Faculty.

The university canceled planned meetings with an arbitrator last month, Buchanan said.

According to Rodríguez-Pereira and Buchanan, the law firm Ogletree Deakins is representing MSU in negotiations with both MSU Extension United and the Union of Tenure Stream Faculty.

The firm previously drew criticism from organizers of the Union of Tenure Stream Faculty for a section of its website that bragged about higher education lawyers specializing in “union avoidance.”