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May 27, 2005
Indiana University Labor Studies Under Attack
Dear Union Sisters & Brothers, Colleagues & Friends,
Ruth Needleman, Professor of Labor Studies
(rneedle@iun.edu)
Just this week, six employees of the Indiana University Division of Labor Studies were terminated: three faculty among them. The reason given was a budgetary crunch resulting from legislative cuts in our funding and university demands for increasing income annually. As you may know, a Republican governor and Republican control of both houses of the state legislature have
made Indiana a very union unfriendly state. Public sector unions were thrown out of government agencies, a right to work law threatens on the horizon, and now the labor studies program has come under the knife.
Even though a faculty budgetary committee developed an alternative budget that would require no faculty layoffs, the Director went ahead and implemented his budgetary proposal, closing down the South Bend office,laying off two tenure track faculty, Paul Mishler and Cathy Mulder, and faculty member Rae Sovereign, who has just completed her Master’s Degree as required by her contract.
Indiana University is a public university with a clear mission to serve constituencies in the state, especially under-served constituencies like adult working people. Increasingly public universities are functioning like private ones, forcing every unit to generate income above expenses, and setting budgets every year higher than the previous year’s income. It works like gain-sharing has worked in many workplaces—forcing workers to become ever more productive every year in order to meet the rising standard.
And why wouldn’t universities feel the same pressure of corporate competitiveness and privatization? Not only were tenure-track faculty terminated, but part-time, temporary and less credentialed employees were kept. The decision on whom the ax would fall did not follow IU policy; it ignored seniority, credentials and faculty governance. Welcome to Wal Mart University!
We are asking you for letters of support for maintaining our regional offices that serve working people where they live and work, in this case, the South Bend office. We are asking for support to reverse the arbitrary and discriminatory termination of Rae Sovereign, Paul Mishler and Cathy Mulder, three of our top faculty. Finally we ask for your support in opposing hiring and firing procedures that violate university academic policy, and that promote contingent, part-time jobs over fully-funded, skilled jobs. We cannot let WalMart become the model for universities as well.
Please send your letters in support of the Division of Labor Studies at Indiana University, to Executive Vice Chancellor & Dean of Faculties William M. Plater, IUPUI, Administration Building 108, 355 North Lansing Street, Indianapolis, Indiana 46202-2896. You may also e-mail him at wplater@iupui.edu. Please send me a copy, and also William Schneider, IUPUI AAUP, whschneider@iupui.edu.