Faculty and staff at the University of Kansas have announced a plan to organize a union to improve working conditions for educators and learning conditions for students.
The union would be known as United Academics of the University of Kansas (UAKU), and it would represent over 1,500 full-time and part-time tenured and non-tenured-track faculty. It would also represent teaching, research, clinical and online professors, lecturers, curators, librarians, scientists who conduct grant-funded research, and other categories of faculty and academic staff.
The union would be affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers and the American Association of University Professors.
Organizers said recent attempts by the university to suspend tenure and its use of short-term contracts for many teaching faculty members led to the decision to unionize. They also said faculty have had no voice in major decisions about academic programs, and wages have not been competitive with other flagship universities.
The organizers said they will begin collecting union authorization cards over the next few months, and then there will be a secret-ballot vote to officially form a union.
[ photo: University of Kansas – Facebook ]
