American Association of University Professors Oakland University Chapter records

The faculty joined the American Association of University Professors within a year of Oakland University opening and the chapter formally opened in January 1960. In September 1970, the faculty voted to request recognition as a bargaining unit and the chapter was soon certified as the collective bargaining representative for faculty. The first president was Joe DeMent, Chair of the English department. He and other OU professors led the unionization drive and the ensuing round of collective bargaining with OU in early 1971: James McKay, professor of mathematics, was one of the driving forces of the chapter; physics professor Robert Willamson was a former AAUP president; and English professor Marilyn wiliamson chaired the AAUP's first bargaining team. When the negotiations broke down in early September, the faculty went on strike – what a faculty member claims was “the first faculty strike in the history of American higher education.” (Brian Murphy, “Born and Born Again: 1969 and its Discords”, Oakland Journal 13 (2007): 109-113). In fact, it was the first strike at a four-year campus in the United States (Jack H. Schuster, "Faculty Unions and Academic Decision-Making: The Governance Experience on Six Campuses," Ph.D. diss., University of California Berkeley, 1977, p.135). For over a week, the university was closed. The stalemate was broken by a state-appointed fact-finder and mediator from the Michigan Employment Relations Commission, who helped work out an agreement. In 1972, the AAUP membership agreed to a then unusual no-strike agreement with OU and a mediator for the Michigan Employment Relations Board issued binding recommendations.

After a period of stabilization, tensions flared up again during the negotiations for OU's sixth contract in 1976. In September 1976, the faculty went on strike again and picketed for the first time. Eventually a 3-year contract (the university's first multi-year contract) was adopted. A series of 3-year contracts followed in the next decades, sometimes accompanied by a work stoppage.