HELU has sponsored roundtables with regional and state-level higher ed locals and allied organizations around the country. This is a report on what has been going on with the Michigan state coalition. Others are in the works. –Editor
From Anke Wolbert and Sean O’Brien. Anke Wolbert is on the HELU Steering Committee and is President of EMUFT, AFT Local 9102. Sean O’Brien is also on the HELU Steering Committee and is a member of Wayne Academic Union 6075
HELU activists in Michigan have banded together to form a state coalition to take on several existential threats to our students, universities and colleges, and our jobs. So far, the coalition has hosted several online and in-person events, actions, and meetings, each bigger than the previous one. In March, the coalition gathered in person at Wayne State University for its largest higher education summit yet, co-hosted with Labor@Wayne. In attendance were over 50 participants from 20 different locals and organizations from across the state. Using HELU’s Policy Platform participants assessed which pieces of the platform needed to be addressed at the federal and which might have solutions at the state level. Participants also identified obstacles for moving solutions forward. Based on these discussions, activists came together on June 23rd to formalize the following three committees to focus their work: Advocacy Planning Committee, Action Coordination Committee, and Workshop and Development Committee. Each of these committees focuses on some of the obstacles identified during the March summit and approaches to the higher education challenges in Michigan from several angles.
Like many states, Michigan’s higher education funding is under serious threat. After decades of divestment, Michigan routinely ranks between 42nd and 47th in the nation for funding. This year’s budget negotiation began with the state House of Representatives suggesting $0 in state appropriations for higher education. They have since adjusted their position by proposing serious cuts for the two largest universities in the state and redistributing their usual state appropriations to the other 13 state universities, threatening major lay-offs at these two institutions. While a separate item in the state budget, community colleges face threats under these measures as well.
Additionally, higher education has not been a separate line item in the state budget in more than a decade. Instead higher education state appropriations come from the school aid fund, worsening an already untenable situation for Michigan’s K-12 system. Until about two years ago, the Michigan House of Representatives did not even have a Higher Education Policy committee.
Complicating matters is that Michigan arguably has the most decentralized higher education system in the country, without any type of state-wide system. While there are several regional, land-grant based universities, an abundance of community colleges and smaller universities, and four Research I institutions, each functions as a separate entity, with separate programs and employment conditions. This decentralized nature means, for example, that developing any system for health and retirement benefits for part-time instructional staff at the state level is next to impossible.
As a coalition across our campuses and job classifications, MI HELU can begin to work towards workable solutions and press legislators for sustainable budgets. In May, MI HELU activists participated in a Lansing-based Lobby Day with AFT MI. In addition to the primary budgetary concerns, we asked Democratic lawmakers to develop a state-sponsored apparatus providing health care benefits to contingent and part-time higher ed workers. Michigan HELU will continue to press for this and other higher education worker challenges in the future.
If you are in Michigan and want to be part of our fight for fair and equitable working conditions of higher education workers, fair and sustainable learning conditions for our students and meaningful higher education budgets in Lansing, please contact us.