Faculty Staff Union President Caroline Coscia announced last Monday that the FSU filed a cease and desist letter with UMass Boston following the revisions to the protest and demonstration policy.
“It has come to the attention of the Faculty Staff Union at UMB that recent changes to the Space Use & Reservation Policies were recently made. Such a change is an intrusion on our labor-management relationship and the union is demanding that the University meet to bargain over the changes to this policy,” the union wrote in an email to Chancellor Suárez-Orozco. The space use policy includes the revised protest policy.
The cease and desist letter, which was filed Sept. 10, reads, “On behalf of the Faculty Staff Union, we hereby demand that the University of Massachusetts Boston cease and desist implementation of the recent changes directed by Kathleen Kirleis, Vice Chancellor of Finance & Administration of the Space Use & Reservation Policies.”
The Classified Staff Union and the Professional Staff Union sent similar letters to the University, according to Amanda Achin, the secretary for the CSU.
The CSU and PSU could not be reached for comment.
Earlier this month, the unions which filed the cease and desist letter, alongide the Graduate Employee Organization, held a demonstration at the Chancellor’s Convocation Sept. 12. Although the action was not directly related to the updated protest policy or the cease and desist letter, the letter and the protest are both connected to the unions’ broader demands for a “democratic bargaining process,” Achin said at the protest.
Steve Striffler, a professor in the Labor Studies Department, wrote in an opinion for The Mass Media, “Instead of promoting debate or adopting educational methods for addressing pressing social issues, administrators across the country opted for the disciplinary path, racing to find new ways to limit free speech and curtail protest on the nation’s campuses.”
In an addition to the article in the FSU newsletter, he wrote, “This should concern us all, and is no doubt why the FSU sent a cease and desist letter to the Administration asserting that this change in policy has a material impact on union members’ rights and therefore must be bargained with the FSU before it can be implemented.”
The Director of Communications, DeWayne Lehman, could not be reached for comment.
