Getting angry may or may not be a mistake, but sometimes you need to get MAD.
MAD, in this case, stands for Mutually Agreed Dispute Settlement Procedure. (It ought to be MADSP, I guess, but it’s hard to say that without spitting on the person you’re talking to.)
It’s an agreement between sides during collective bargaining, which the University faculty is currently conducting with the University administration.
A MAD agreement does a few things, but maybe the most important is that it sets a mutually acceptable deadline by which a contract will be negotiated.
BGSU-FA, the faculty union here at the University, has been seeking a MAD agreement with the University since last summer, and the sides finally came to terms in December and agreed to negotiate a contract by July 12 of this year. (http://bgsu-fa.org/wp/2012/contract-mad/)
A lot of this negotiation will be about money matters, of course (wages, workloads, benefits), the stuff employers and unions always fight about – I mean, the stuff they politely come to agreement about. But there’s more to it than money.
Anyone who’s been here a while can tell you that the University has been through some weird times recently.
Last year was a pretty wild roller coaster, when the faculty voted to form a union and then Governor John Kasich and his merry band of pranksters in Columbus passed a law (over objections from Republicans and Democrats alike) that destroyed the bargaining rights of firefighters, teachers, and cops.
Some of the most restrictive language in the bill, the so-called Yeshiva language, was actually suggested to the legislature by members of the previous University administration. (http://www.toledoblade.com/Politics/2011/09/22/BGSU-officials-linked-to-role-in-S-B-5-draft.print)
Ohio voters then took these newspaper reports, rolled them up, and smacked the legislature’s nose with them, voting to repeal the right-killing bill by dramatic margins. (http://www.toledoblade.com/Politics/2011/11/08/Issue-2.html) That’s how we got here, but the current question is how we go forward.
We have a new administration at the University, a bargaining process that’s endorsed by a solid majority of Ohio voters, and a fresh opportunity to talk about the stuff that matters to us.
It’s time to ask ourselves and each other what kind of university we want, not just what we can afford. How can we build a better University?
If the MAD helps us agree on an answer to that crucial question, getting MAD will be the opposite of getting angry.
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