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Miami University faculty members have voted 450 to 241 to unionize, in an election where nearly 90 percent of eligible voters participated, according to tallies released Wednesday.
“We started our advocacy chapter in 2015, and we started organizing the union during COVID, so it’s been almost exactly three years that we’ve been working on the union and almost eight years that we’ve been working on organizing over all,” said Cathy Wagner, a lead organizer for the Faculty Alliance of Miami, or FAM.
Wagner, a tenured English professor, said the union will include tenured and tenure-track faculty members and longer-term contract faculty. She said Ohio law bars part-timers from unionizing, and Ohio’s State Employment Relations Board said that visiting faculty couldn’t be part of the bargaining unit.
FAM is affiliated with the American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers. The State Employment Relations Board’s general counsel said in an email that the agency “will have the opportunity to certify this union on June 8.”
In an email, a university spokeswoman said, “When the time comes, the university will negotiate in good faith and is committed to supporting our faculty, students and our mission of academic excellence.”
“We expect it will take some time to establish our first faculty collective bargaining agreement,” she said. “In many cases, negotiation of an initial contract can take up to or beyond one year. University administration has always recognized faculty’s right to organize and respects the thoughtful consideration our faculty members have exercised throughout this process, along with the election results.”
