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This article was submitted on behalf of faculty, staff and student leaders at the University of Minnesota. Their names and affiliations are listed below.
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In recent years, the higher education workforce has become more vocal about workplace concerns, ranging from noncompetitive compensation to inadequate mental health resources for students. Upticks in unionization and union-led work stoppages across the nation’s campuses indicate an academic workforce increasingly willing to demand improvements in its working conditions. As elected leaders in the University of Minnesota’s faculty, staff and student senates, we are charged to help identify and address issues of concern to the workforce on our campuses.
In support of the U’s workforce, parallel DFL bills introduced this month (HF 4508 and SF 4597) would reform the Public Employee Labor Relations Act (PELRA) to ease restrictions currently in statute limiting which U employees are permitted to join together to collectively bargain. A likely outcome, should this legislation become law, will be an increase in the number of unions representing the U’s workers.
There’s just one catch: The same DFL-trifecta ostensibly helping the U’s workforce by advancing PELRA-reform has made it exceedingly challenging for the U to address pressing workforce needs.
Last year, the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota State system of colleges and universities requested legislative funding to support their core missions in both years of the state’s current two-year budget cycle. These state appropriations are key to enabling university administrators to offer annual pay raises to their employees. At the time, the state had a $17.5 billion surplus. To the astonishment of many of the U’s rank and file workers, the legislature funded both years of Minnesota State’s request, but only the first year of the U’s request.