MSU Extension partners with counties throughout the state to provide educational services. Workers assist community members in agriculture, business development, health care and tourism, among many other things. Every public land-grant university has an extension program.

“These people are really the face of the university in many communities across the state, and the fact that the university doesn't seem to recognize their importance — I think that’s been very clear for a lot of extension faculty members in the last few years,” Víctor Rodríguez-Pereira, the president of MSU’s Union of Non-Tenure Track Faculty, said.

The union, dubbed MSU Extension United, plans to join the larger Union of Non-Tenure Track Faculty.

In promotional material shared with The State News, union members argue that:

• Wages haven’t kept up with the cost of living
• Merit-based raises are awarded subjectively
• Criteria for performance evaluations is unclear and subjective
• Employees belonging to marginalized groups are left out of important conversations

Floriculture and greenhouse educator with extension Jeremy Jubenville said "these are reasonable expectations" during public comment at the Board of Trustees meeting last month, where they first publicly announced the union.

Jubenville said at the meeting that a vast majority of the roughly 400 extension employees had already signed union cards.

The union is trying to get MSU to voluntarily recognize them, but Rodríguez-Pereira said members will have to go through the National Labor Relations Board if they don’t.

MSU’s Human Resources department is purposely delaying important meetings and withholding information, unnecessarily lengthening the unionization process, organizers say.

The university argued that many extension employees who signed union cards should not be considered faculty, so they wouldn’t belong in a subsection of the Union of Non-Tenure Track Faculty, Rodríguez-Pereira said.

“They're working on a very antiquated definition of what teaching is,” Rodríguez-Pereira said. “I don't think in the 21st century we can cling into the idea that the only way of teaching someone is by being in a classroom with students.”

He said an outside arbiter sided with the union’s definition of faculty a few months ago, but they haven’t made much headway on unionizing since.

“They’re still finding new issues, new reasons to delay the process,” Rodríguez-Pereira said. “You can only entertain those concerns for so long.”

He said the university is trying “to get people disinterested or tired or trying for people to just give it up.”

“In this case, MSU Extension faculty are not going to give it up,” Rodríguez-Pereira said.

MSU Spokesperson Mark Bullion said in a statement that the “university is working in good faith with the union,” following the process outlined in a board resolution passed in 2021.

The concerns of MSU Extension United organizers closely match those of Union of Tenure Stream Faculty, another unionization effort on campus whose members claim MSU is delaying the process.

The union has previously complained that MSU won’t cooperate with organizers by refusing to send a requested list of names of staff the university considers to be a part of their bargaining unit.

“They are engaging in union busting 101,” Union of Tenure Stream Faculty organizer NiCole Buchanan said.

The university canceled scheduled meetings with an arbiter last month, Buchanan said.

Law firm Ogletree Deakins is representing MSU in negotiations with both MSU Extension United and the Union of Tenure Stream Faculty, according to Rodríguez-Pereira and Buchanan.

The firm previously received criticism from Union of Tenure Stream Faculty organizers because of a section of its website that boasts of higher education attorneys that specialize in “union avoidance.”