No. Here at Kent State, we have a very close relationship with AFSCME local 153 and have supported them through the years with informational picketing and even a financial safety net for their members when a strike was contemplated. We hold a “solidarity chapter” membership in the Tri-County Labor Association, a regional division of AFL-CIO. We would support any one of the unions that make up the Tri-County Labor Association and they have backed us in our fight against SB 83 and now SB 1.
Our Association has always engaged in collective action and other solidarity activities in support of unions and movements with which we are not formally affiliated. In 2011, we reached out to the Fire and Police unions to form a Portage County coalition to fight Senate Bill 5, an existential threat to collective bargaining rights across the state. We walked the picket line in the fall of 2023 with members of the UAW local in Streetsboro when they were on strike. We have supported the faculty at Youngstown State with letter writing campaigns and other forms of solidarity even though they are affiliated with the Ohio Education Association (OEA) rather than AAUP. We have engaged in similar solidarity actions in support of unions representing nurses at various hospitals around the state.
If we were to disaffiliate from AAUP, we would continue to offer the sort of support we have offered in the past to the faculty at Akron University, Wright State, Ohio University, and other Chapters of Ohio Conference AAUP. We would continue to engage in collective actions in conjunction with AAUP and other state and national organizations and would continue to provide support for their advocacy work. These acts of solidarity are integral to our mission and reflect our values as one of the oldest and largest faculty unions in the state. Regardless of how we vote on the question of disaffiliation, we will always be part of the larger union movement. Independence would not mean isolation.
We are unaware of any faculty unions in Ohio that are unaffiliated with any state or national organization. While there are faculty unions around the country that are completely unaffiliated with any state or national organization, affiliation is the rule rather than the exception. It is, however, worth noting that the Kent Education Association (KEA) – the union that represents K-12 teachers in the city of Kent – has been independent of state and national affiliations since 1981.
No. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 provides (most) private sector employees the right to collectively bargain, but leaves up to the individual states whether state employees enjoy that right. The bill giving Ohio public sector workers the right to collectively bargain (ORC 4117) was signed into law in 1983 and came into effect starting in 1984. If the State Legislature and Governor DeWine decide to weaken or eliminate the rights contained in that law, that will negatively affect our union whether or not we are affiliated with AAUP, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), or any other national entity.
AAUP and AFT invested a significant amount of both time and money in attempting to elect pro-higher education and pro-union candidates at both the state and national level. They are no doubt extremely disappointed with the outcome of the national election on those fronts. We can only hope that AAUP and AFT will be more successful in lobbying those who were elected and convincing them to support – or at least not negatively impact – institutions of higher education and unions. We hope that AAUP will accept support from us in those endeavors if we ultimately vote to disaffiliate. (They have at various times threatened not to do so.) Whether or not we vote to disaffiliate from AAUP, our union will continue to work with other unions (including AAUP and AFT) and fight against any bills proposed in Columbus that would undermine our academic freedom, shared governance, tenure, or our right to collectively bargain.
The March 2020 decision by our Joint Coordinating Board (JCB) not to call for a vote to disaffiliate from AAUP at that time and to instead cap the combined dues that we pay to AAUP national and Ohio Conference AAUP at 28% of KSUFA’s dues revenue (the percentage we were contributing prior to the 2018 Supreme Court decision in Janus v. AFSCME rendering the collection of fair share fees unconstitutional) was already a compromise. (For more on this, see Vol. 1: A deep dive into the history and circumstances leading to our disaffiliation discussions.)
Since AAUP forced us to reconsider disaffiliating entirely on September 13, 2024, we have explored various compromises with respect to our affiliation dues – including affiliating at a lower dues rate as an advocacy chapter of AAUP rather than as a collective bargaining chapter. In several meetings that occurred in October 2024, AAUP leadership made clear that they would not allow KSUFA to disaffiliate as a collecting bargaining chapter and reaffiliate as an advocacy chapter. In a December 3, 2024 email to AAUP informing them of the change in our union’s name, we extended an invitation to have one of their leaders attend one of the Townhall meetings we plan to have in January or February. We noted that one of the questions we would like them to address is whether AAUP would be willing to consider an alternative dues structure that would reflect the fact that we are an autonomous union that is self-reliant with respect to all collective bargaining activities. In a statement we received on February 5, 2025, they made clear that the answer to that question is 'no'.
