Dive Brief:
- The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system has negotiated a tentative contract with the Inter Faculty Organization, a union representing 4,000 state university faculty.
- Details of the agreement are under wraps at the advice of the mediator who brokered the deal, but the union told its members, via its website: “We think you’re going to like it.”
- The Minnesota system includes seven state universities and 24 community and technical colleges, but not the University of Minnesota.
Dive Insight:
The deal, which still must be approved by the board of trustees and a faculty vote, took nearly a year of often-contentious negotiations to hash out. State legislators had approved a $17 million increase in funding in the spring for the Minnesota system to use on employee pay increases, and when that didn’t spark a contract agreement, it added fuel to faculty union’s ongoing criticism of the system’s chancellor, Steven Rosenstone. In June, the system reached a contract agreement with the Minnesota State College Faculty union, which represents more than 5,000 faculty members at the system's two-year colleges.