For people outside the University community, or even for those on campus every day, the behind-the-scenes workings of negotiations are mostly unknown. Since EMU's faculty union has declared a strike, we thought it would be of value to the public to distill the salient issues to just a few points:

• EMU’s faculty is central to the University’s mission and is both highly valued and respected.
• EMU values the significant contributions of all employee groups.
• EMU is sensitive to the financial impacts to students and their families. Bargaining decisions must be made within this context.
• The Administration has proposed two healthcare plans that would help control the spiraling increases in health care costs. Over the past 5 years, EMU’s healthcare costs have increased 61%. Several of the employee groups have agreed to these same plans, as have administrators. The AAUP, however, wants to see no changes in healthcare costs and has not been open to the concept of modest cost-sharing.
• Given the decline in state funding to EMU (11% over 5 years, or more than $9.5 million; source: official audit, see www.emich.edu/controller), the increases in healthcare costs to the University (nearly $9 million during the same time period), and increases amounting to millions of dollars in other fixed costs such as utilities, EMU has had to increase undergraduate tuition by a total of 23.2%. EMU has offered the faculty union a fair and competitive compensation package. The University has demonstrated its continual willingness to negotiate.
• Maintaining the affordability of education for our students and their families prevents the University from agreeing to the costly level of wage and health care demands made by the faculty at this point.