The Long Island University-Post faculty passed a no-confidence resolution against school system President, Kimberly Cline at an emergency meeting last Thursday.
The vote followed the school system’s decision to lock the faculty out of classrooms at the start of the school year last week after failed negotiations with faculty from the university’s Brooklyn campus.
The school then brought in replacement professors for the start of classes last week.
“In what may be the first time in the history of education in the United States, a well-established faculty union was locked out,” a release from LIU-Post’s faculty council said.
Hundreds of LIU staff members and activists protested the lock-out in Brooklyn last Wednesday, on the first day of the new semester, the New York Daily News reported.
The resolution from LIU-Post faculty says Cline is the cause of an overall decline in quality for their school, including “a significant decline in student enrollment, unprecedented firings of personnel, and ineffectual management of the institution.”
Cline’s part in the lock-out reflects a disinvestment in academics and student needs, the resolution said.
The teacher’s union for the Brooklyn staffers, called the Long Island University Faculty Federation, authorized a strike vote in May after being unable to come to terms with the university system on pay and benefits, a press release from the university said.
The school system entered negotiations after the strike vote, but an agreement was not reached. The faculty contracts expired on Aug. 31.
LIU Post officials said their unwillingness to approve a more generous compensation package was based on their commitment to not raise tuition through to the year 2020.
Because the majority of LIU’s revenue comes from tuition, the faculty requests couldn’t be met without affecting the tuition cap, the university release said.
“It’s disappointing that the [Long Island University Faculty Federation] has rejected a contract offer that the university believes is generous and highly competitive,” LIU Vice President Gale Haynes said. “The university will continue to bargain in good faith, with the goal of welcoming its valued faculty back to the classroom upon timely resolution of the contract. During this timeframe, we will remain laser focused on our students beginning to the Fall semester with little or no disruption to their academic studies.”
Efforts to reach Cline were unavailing.
Long Island University includes two main campuses, LIU-Post in Brookville and LIU-Brooklyn, with satellite campuses in Brentwood, Riverhead, Rockland and Westchester.
