The UMN-TC-AAUP Executive Committee wrote to Vice President Horstman and President Gabel to express their outrage at the email sent by Horstman on October 7, 2022 to the entire "University Community" that described the University's bargaining with Teamsters Local 320 in partisan terms. That letter is reproduced below.
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Dear Vice President Horstman and President Gabel,
We, members of the Executive Committee of the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), were outraged by the 10/7 internal email regarding the status of bargaining with Teamsters Local 320. Addressed to the “University Community,” this message laid out and justified the University’s bargaining position in partisan terms. Under the pretense of an objective “update” on negotiations, this email, delivered under the official imprint of UMN Human Resources, denounces one sector of University employees—a union exercising its legal right to collective bargaining—to the larger University body. This email does not present a fair or balanced picture of the labor dispute in question, and such mass emails—emails that we cannot opt out of—are the equivalent of a captive audience meeting.
Framing the University’s agenda as a Human Resources update gives that agenda the false appearance of an objective account while excluding—and according to our understanding, misrepresenting—the positions of Local 320. For instance, the 10/7 email does not mention that the University has been hiring temporary workers to fill Teamster jobs in the dining halls and paying them as much as $5 more an hour, or that the University is demanding that the Teamsters give up their right to bargain over health benefits. Additionally, the email focuses on the average starting wage of $21.67, when the issue of contention is the concentration of workers at much lower wages that do not cover the cost of living in Hennepin County. Nearly 10% of Teamsters who responded to a recent survey reported being homeless in the past year, almost 25% went hungry for lack of money, and 40% worked a second job outside the University to make ends meet. While the 10/7 email asserts that the University “always negotiate[s] in good faith” with our “valued employees,” nothing about this messaging strategy indicates good faith or valuing employees, be they the members of Local 320 or the larger community subjected to the administration’s misuse of internal channels for anti-labor propagandizing.
The University should not misuse its access to our inboxes in this way in the future. However, the damage has been done, and in our view the only way to rectify this abuse is to give Local 320 an equal opportunity to communicate with the University community directly. We call on the University administration to distribute, as an internal email to the University community, a response from Local 320, so that University members can have a full picture of the status of negotiations. As University of Minnesota faculty, we value our co-workers in Local 320 and insist on their right to disseminate their position as widely and as authoritatively as the administration has elected to do for its own.
Sincerely,
Sumanth Gopinath, President, AAUP-UMTC
Heather Holcombe, Vice President, AAUP-UMTC
Teri Caraway, Treasurer, AAUP-UMTC
Gopalan Nadathur, Secretary, AAUP-UMTC
Nathaniel Mills, Member-at-Large, AAUP-UMTC
Ruth Shaw, Member-at-Large, AAUP-UMTC
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Dear Vice President Horstman and President Gabel,
We, members of the Executive Committee of the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), were outraged by the 10/7 internal email regarding the status of bargaining with Teamsters Local 320. Addressed to the “University Community,” this message laid out and justified the University’s bargaining position in partisan terms. Under the pretense of an objective “update” on negotiations, this email, delivered under the official imprint of UMN Human Resources, denounces one sector of University employees—a union exercising its legal right to collective bargaining—to the larger University body. This email does not present a fair or balanced picture of the labor dispute in question, and such mass emails—emails that we cannot opt out of—are the equivalent of a captive audience meeting.
Framing the University’s agenda as a Human Resources update gives that agenda the false appearance of an objective account while excluding—and according to our understanding, misrepresenting—the positions of Local 320. For instance, the 10/7 email does not mention that the University has been hiring temporary workers to fill Teamster jobs in the dining halls and paying them as much as $5 more an hour, or that the University is demanding that the Teamsters give up their right to bargain over health benefits. Additionally, the email focuses on the average starting wage of $21.67, when the issue of contention is the concentration of workers at much lower wages that do not cover the cost of living in Hennepin County. Nearly 10% of Teamsters who responded to a recent survey reported being homeless in the past year, almost 25% went hungry for lack of money, and 40% worked a second job outside the University to make ends meet. While the 10/7 email asserts that the University “always negotiate[s] in good faith” with our “valued employees,” nothing about this messaging strategy indicates good faith or valuing employees, be they the members of Local 320 or the larger community subjected to the administration’s misuse of internal channels for anti-labor propagandizing.
The University should not misuse its access to our inboxes in this way in the future. However, the damage has been done, and in our view the only way to rectify this abuse is to give Local 320 an equal opportunity to communicate with the University community directly. We call on the University administration to distribute, as an internal email to the University community, a response from Local 320, so that University members can have a full picture of the status of negotiations. As University of Minnesota faculty, we value our co-workers in Local 320 and insist on their right to disseminate their position as widely and as authoritatively as the administration has elected to do for its own.
Sincerely,
Sumanth Gopinath, President, AAUP-UMTC
Heather Holcombe, Vice President, AAUP-UMTC
Teri Caraway, Treasurer, AAUP-UMTC
Gopalan Nadathur, Secretary, AAUP-UMTC
Nathaniel Mills, Member-at-Large, AAUP-UMTC
Ruth Shaw, Member-at-Large, AAUP-UMTC