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FROM: Ruth
Needleman, professor of Labor Studies, rneedle@iun.edu.
TO:
Workplace
DATE: June 6, 2005
RE:
Indiana University Labor Studies Under Attack
May 21, 2005
Dear Union Sisters & Brothers, Colleagues & Friends,
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 Wal~Mart 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.
In Solidarity, Ruth Needleman, professor of labor
studies, rneedle@iun.edu.
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