The fact finding hearings have just ended, and I could not be more
pleased with the effort and dedication displayed by our fact finding team.

We had great support from many faculty members coming by to support us.
Again, it was greatly appreciated.

Here is what occurred yesterday at the hearings:

• The AAUP presented our health care proposals and retroactivity
exhibits, which are at
http://emuprofessors.org/files/EMUprofessors_Factfinding_Presentation.pdf
(starting at slide 390. We also presented our rebuttal to health care
and our rebuttal to their presentation on retroactivity, which is at
http://emuprofessors.org/contract2006/factfinding, if you scroll down to
the bottom.

• Our main points on health care were:
o We accept new premiums and new out of pocket faculty health care
costs. However, these should be slowly phased in and/or alleviated by
higher raises, as was done at the comparable institutions.
o Any raise to faculty should be a combination of a flat percentage plus
a dollar amount to help lower paid faculty. In addition, new faculty
should not have any health care premiums imposed on them.
o Choice of health care plans needs to be maintained.
o The comparables have had health care premiums for multiple contracts,
and it is unrealistic for EMU to be comparable in year 1. The question
is how to structure this transitional contract

• We finished with a discussion of retroactivity, where we stressed that
we want 3.5% fully retroactive, as well as the TIAA-CREF contribution
associated with it. The administration now seems to accept that health
care premiums should start in Jan 2008, so they only want to offer us 2%
retroactive for this academic year. The comparable institutions
received an average raise of over 4% in 2006-07, so what we are asking
for is very reasonable.

• Once again, the administration decided to play by its own rules. In
the middle of their last presentation on retroactivity, they handed out
a detailed spreadsheet on cost factors. This should have been presented
to the AAUP on February 1st, as that is when we presented all of our
cost information. At worst, it should have been included as a rebuttal
exhibit to our compensation presentation, where we presented a series of
slides on the cost of a 1% raise. They did not and chose to wait until
the last 15 minutes of three days of hearings to give us this
information, to make sure that it received as little critique and evaluation
as possible. We strongly objected, and the fact finder gave us time to
digest the new information and respond. We did so, and asked him to be
skeptical of key pieces of information that were slid into the hearings
long after the most appropriate time and so there could be as little
scrutiny as possible. We believe the AAUP's approach of giving
everything up front
helped the fact-finder prepare for the hearings, and we continue to be
disappointed in how the administration tried to game the system for
every possible advantage. The basic idea of fact-finding and the
university is open debate, and they set an extremely poor example to
faculty, students and the community.
• Here are some numbers:
o On February 1, the administration submitted 65 pages of
compensation-related exhibits. During the hearings, the
administration’s compensation presentations morphed into 185 pages, many
of which contained new empirical data that was not delivered on the 1st.
o On February 1, the administration submitted 44 pages of health
care-related exhibits. During the hearings, the administration’s health
care presentations morphed into 101 pages, which again contained many
new empirical tables and inferences.

Where do we go from here? Both sides have to present a written report
to the fact finder on March 16th. Neither side gets to rebut these
reports, which are a summary of our positions. Then, the fact finder
indicated that he would have a final report by the first week of April.

What happens at that point will be a main subject of discussion at
today’s chapter meeting, at 2:30 in Halle Auditorium (downstairs).
Please come by and hear more details, and maybe even thank the fact
finding team for their hard work.

To review, our team is:
• Linda Woodland
• Megan Endres
• Diana Wong
• Paul Leighton
• Jim Carroll
• Dave Crary
• Jim VandenBosch
• Howard Bunsis
• And a special thanks to our Office Manager, Julie Berger, who was a
tremendous source of strength and support for our team.