"You're Gonna Need a Bigger Room." -Chief Brody

Will this be it? The last bargaining session? If so, it's time to rally, time to gather, time to come together and make one last, enormous show of support for a fairer, more equitable, and overall great contract for U-M lecturers!

I wrote a possibly lovely, arguably clever, yet certainly long-winded introduction to writing about the next regularly-scheduled bargaining session. But let's not bury the lead too much: Next Friday, April 6, will mark the third and final OPEN bargaining session, running from about 10 AM until about 5 PM. It will NOT take place in Palmer Commons. Instead, bargaining will take place in the Michigan Room on the second floor of the Michigan League (911 N. University Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48109. There's also a MUCH-smaller Michigan Room in the Michigan Union on S. State St., but we'll be at the Michigan LEAGUE.)

This may be the final bargaining session before LEO membership partakes in a major job action, so the agenda could be quite something! Events are speeding up!

Keep in mind that each open-bargaining session is a very big deal, perhaps most visibly on the University of Michigan's biggest campus, in Ann Arbor. On open-bargaining days, more of us lecturers come. On open-bargaining days, we're joined in the bargaining room by our allies who have "a direct interest in the working conditions of lecturers."

We're joined by our students who understand that we care deeply about teaching them, about being compensated enough to afford to keep teaching them here at U-M.

We're joined by our tenure-track-faculty allies, our fellow educators.

We're joined by our family members who rely on our hopefully-regular paychecks and benefits.

We're joined by allies from fellow U-M unions, like the nurses' union, which is also bargaining its new contract at this time.

On the last open-bargaining date, March 16, the number of attendees was around 250 — not a bad turnout! True, we had to order extra pizza to feed everyone. True, the fire code limited the number of chairs in the bargaining room and the number of people who could sit on each chair. True, also because of the fire code, a number of people had to stand or sit in the sixth-floor caucus room or the hall outside, at least until more chairs opened up in the fourth-floor bargaining room, Great Lakes Central* in Palmer Commons.

But ultimately, LEO truly generated a lot of visible, audible support on that day, just as it did in Dearborn on March 9, the first open bargaining day, and in Flint on March 23.

Again, open bargaining is a very big deal. So let's take advantage of it! Invite your students! Invite your colleagues! Invite any U-M parents and/or alums that you know! This will probably be the last chance for many who care about the lecturers in their lives to watch history be made regarding the working conditions of U-M's thousands of lecturers.

Let's each fill a seat, get something to eat, and help support LEO to negotiate a contract that can't be beat!

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* - According to the numbers I ran across, the Michigan Room in the Michigan League has a maximum capacity of 125, which is thirty-five fewer than Great Lakes Central. So don't worry if you can't stay all day. Plenty of people should be waiting outside to fill that seat! In fact, there's a certain beauty to supporters coming and going in waves, like an ocean of well-wishing and witnessing, washing away at the shore...

Image: Kirsten Herold, captain of The LEO Bargaining Team, leads a caucus discussion during Ann Arbor's first open bargaining session.