Knowing Ana Mari, it is hard to imagine any UW President more devoted to this place .. and that very much includes the needs of the underpaid contingent faculty. What underlies this email must be a frustration that a fractious group in support of SEIU is trying to divide the faculty instead of working together to solve the real problems of the contingent faculty.
EMAIL to AAUP Listserve from Ana Mari Cauce
Dear All,
I have to be extremely careful about ANYTHING I say about work conditions that impact the faculty. I also have to be VERY careful about when and where I meet with faculty so that I cannot be accused of “surveillance.”
As someone who has always approached my work and communications with faculty with directness and without fear, I’m sure you can appreciate how the current situation might be frustrating. It DOES affect my voice and my ability to be unguarded. I wish it were different, but it is what it is.
The legal firm also contracted with a communications firm to ensure we share accurate and timely information to help faculty make an informed choice. I agree the scope of the contract is articulated poorly, and I have directed our counsel to revise it. (If anyone had asked directly for this information, by the way, we would have provided it. We were never asked.)
That said, I stand by each messages I have sent. You may disagree with my opinions, which is your right, but I speak for myself. To insinuate Jerry’s and my few, and quite restrained, faculty
The resources the University is spending do not use any tuition or taxpayer funds and are public record. By contrast, we don’t know the amount of member’s dues SEIU is spending on mass mailers, deploying organizers to your homes and classrooms, or the recent survey administered by an outside entity. Where’s the transparency there?
I believe our current activities are necessary to ensure all faculty are fully informed so they can debate and discuss the facts together. This is an important choice that will impact the future of our university for decades to come. You deserve to have multiple sources of information as you are making this important decision.
Ana Mari Cauce
President
Sure there was a place for the union back in the day. But, we have come a ways since then. I believe the unions have morphed into gangster organizations that give little in return. They have become as the political class , a self perpetuating class of their own. It is so unsettling that the people that propose classless societies and most of all restraint are the very ones that push the hardest to maintain status. They make rules for themselves that counter the rules they observe for everyone else.