This past Thursday, Feb. 11, 2016, part-time lecturers who are a part of the Eastern Michigan University Federation of Teachers got together to host a table on the main floor of the Porter Building from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. to invite students and staff to sign Valentine’s Day cards to give to EMU administrators.
These Valentine’s Day cards were designed with messages on them such as “roses are red, violets are blue, I didn’t get paid, but my rent is still due.” Those students who signed a Valentine card were given a piece of candy in return, a snack size Payday bar, in honor of Valentine’s Day and to keep their puns going. These cards were to be delivered to EMU administrators to protest the new pay schedule. The new pay schedule has been protested for the past two years and members of the EMUFT held their last protest rally and event this past fall inside and outside of Pray-Harrold.
EMU has moved from paying part-time lecturers every two weeks to delaying their first paycheck of the semester until the end of the first month. This means that in the first month of every semester these lecturers receive 1/7 (14 percent) of their total pay rather than the 1/4 (25 percent) of their total pay as they did when the previous pay schedule was in place. This change affects about 600 part-time lecturers, who teach about 40 percent of the credit hours at EMU.
When asked to previously comment on the protests regarding the new pay schedule, Executive Director of Media Relations for EMU, Geoff Larcom, said that the pay schedule was undertaken to “ensure a high degree of payment accuracy and reliability throughout the year.”
In a flyer members of EMUFT were handing out in Porter, some of the problems EMU’s lowest paying employees run into because of the delayed pay schedule are missing bills, obtaining late fees to those bills and damage to their credit scores.
