From UCHC Adminsitration: Important Information Regarding Faculty Unionization and Faculty Salaries

Please see below for very brief, but important, items for your consideration when deciding to vote for or against the union next week.

Regardless of your decision, please remember to VOTE next Tuesday or Wednesday.

Thank you.

UCHC Administration 
 

IMPORTANT THINGS TO CONSIDER BEFORE YOU CAST YOUR VOTE

•       Collective bargaining is just that – collective.  With a faculty union you and your individual interests would be pooled with those of over 500 others.  The voice of individuals is diminished.   In addition, individual circumstances can’t be addressed without a third party present.

•       You can’t “try on a union for size” then discard if it doesn’t fit.  Decertifying a union requires signatures from at least 30% of an existing bargaining unit and filing a petition with the Labor Board for another election.  None of this can happen for at least a year. 

•       You already get the same health insurance and pension benefits as unionized employees, but currently you don’t have to pay union dues for the privilege.  By longstanding state law and practice, whatever benefits SEBAC negotiates for the state’s unionized employees are applied to non-unionized employees. 

•       If faculty unionize, you must pay dues or an agency fee regardless of whether you personally chose the union or not.  Union dues could be approximately 1% of salary, as they are in Storrs.

•       A faculty union means outsiders (e.g., local and national union organizations, arbitrators, labor boards) may insert themselves into issues that have been the domain of our faculty.  

•       A union will be involved in all interactions between faculty and administration on matters related to wages, hours, and other conditions of employment.  Unless explicitly agreed to by the union and the administration, no faculty members can negotiate on their own behalf.

•       Don’t be misled by promises of greater influence in formulating policy if you vote for a union.  Unions cannot set policy for the Health Center. 

•       Only a handful of the nation’s academic medical centers have unionized faculty.  As such, the presence of a faculty union at the Health Center may be a deterrent to recruiting quality faculty.

•      Unions cannot guarantee higher salaries. Please see the attached comparison of our median salaries with those of other unionized academic medical centers.