UConn-AAUP Welcome Back Message
August 2026
Dear Colleagues,
Welcome back for a new academic year, everyone, and greetings to our new colleagues! I hope you had a most roborant (my favorite GRE word) summer and that your batteries are recharged for the semester ahead. This year, as we mark the 50th anniversary of collective bargaining at UConn, faculty in this country face challenges like never before. With AI creep, austerity budgeting, grant terminations, censorship and political firings, the teaching and research missions of our institutions are slowly but surely undermined. Against these threats, UConn-AAUP stands in solidarity with colleagues everywhere in defense of faculty rights, shared governance, and quality higher education.
The AAUP was founded in 1915 with the goal of defending academic freedom; our own chapter formed in 1932. The Connecticut state legislature approved collective bargaining for state employees in 1975, and the following year, our faculty voted in overwhelming numbers to unionize with UConn-AAUP as their representative. The first contract negotiations dragged on for months, but by April 1977, the sides had reached a deal quickly ratified by our members and the Board of Trustees. When the first contract went into effect in July 1977, it gave our faculty their first cost-of-living increase in 5 years.
Today, UConn-AAUP represents more than 2500 faculty members at Storrs and the regional campuses. And on the 50th anniversary of our union, we begin the year with a new contract in place. Negotiated over 19 months, it includes raises retroactive to August 23, 2025 (for those continuously employed since that date) and raises for 26-27 and 27-28. The fourth and final year is a “wage reopener” to be negotiated later (same as for all the other state employee unions). Adding up the raises across the first three years (and ignoring compounding), the total increase for the bargaining unit is 13.5% — a full point better than achieved at neighboring UMass. There are a number of other improvements, including (but not limited to) larger increases for promotion in rank, higher per credit rates for adjunct faculty members, and – for the first time in our contract – provisions for paid family leave.
Unfortunately, the sides were unable to reach agreement on two very important contract articles – Articles 14 (“Reduction of Staff for Discontinuance of Programs or for Financial Exigency”) and 30 (“Faculty Participation in Department Governance”). Meetings over the summer produced no progress, so these two articles now head to interest arbitration, where we are confident our positions will prevail. However, as the saying goes, arbitrators can be arbitrary, so there are no guarantees. The process, set forth in state law, can take months to play out, and UConn-AAUP will update you whenever there is news.
Collective bargaining requires constant vigilance on the part of the union to make sure that your contract is respected by management. On that front, I’m sorry to say that our administrators have been keeping us very busy. For starters, our grievance concerning unilateral workload increases in CLAS is moving to arbitration. Workload is a mandatory subject of bargaining, making the administration’s failure to negotiate these changes a serious breach. Here too, we are confident that the union will prevail in arbitration and call upon the administration to respect the bargaining process and most importantly to respect our members’ rights. Reappointment is not an invitation for deans or provosts to rewrite faculty members’ job descriptions at management’s whim.
Looking at the bigger picture, it’s clear we have a challenging year ahead. The administration’s austerity agenda is resulting in severe understaffing, undermining the ability of our members to do the work they love. Adding to the chaos, the University’s “budget transformation initiative” is creating perverse incentives that will threaten even highly successful graduate programs. Not to be outdone, the regime in Washington DC continues its all-out assault on higher education, cutting research funding while pressuring university boards and presidents to make ideologically motivated “reforms”. The attacks on academic freedom have only grown more extreme, with professors recently fired for their politics in Texas, for their curricular choices in Florida, and for teaching about the human causes of climate change at West Point.
Thus, even as we celebrate a half century of collective bargaining at UConn, it’s clear AAUP has a lot of work to do, and we want you with us! Our chapter’s work is funded entirely by local member dues, so the first step is to make sure you’re enrolled as an active member of UConn-AAUP. The most effective outreach is a one-on-one conversation with a colleague, so don’t be shy: we need to talk about our union in order to build it. Then, check your email for our weekly Monday Morning Memo with updates on the issues and opportunities to get involved. We have several events upcoming, including:
- Labor Week at the Student Union: September 8, 9 and 10 (12-2 pm each day);
- AAUP/AFT-CT Forum on Academic Freedom and Shared Governance, at CCSU in New Britain: September 18, 11 am – 1 pm;
- AAUP happy hour at Hops 44: September 25, 3:15-6 pm.
So, join us: we’re glad you’re here and eager to work with you. For more information, check out our website at https://uconnaaup.org/.
In solidarity,
Tom
Thomas D Bontly, Ph.D.
President, UConn-AAUP