LEO 2026 Convention Recap
Group photo of attendees at the UAW Local 600 hall
LEO’s 2026 Annual Convention was Saturday October 3rd, held at the historic UAW Local 600 Hall in Dearborn, MI. Lecturers, librarians, archivists, curators, and now research museum collections managers from the Ann Arbor, Dearborn, & Flint campuses came together to vote on important union matters and work towards shaping our union’s future.
The convention began with opening remarks from Dearborn LEO Chair, Jamie Wraight, who painted a picture of the struggle to maintain morale on a campus neglected by the University leadership through years of deferred maintenance. Jamie predicts that we will continue to hear the refrain of deferred maintenance as an excuse to not pay Dearborn & Flint lecturers more, just as deferred maintenance was invoked at the negotiations table this summer during the Flint Contract Reopener. Jamie offered up a reasonable suggestion: the University should use central funding to invest in capital improvements on the Dearborn campus. Investing in UM-Dearborn is an investment in Michigan’s communities because the student population is 93% in-state. In terms of social-mobility, UM-Dearborn is ranked 2nd state-wide and in the top 100 nationally.
LEO President Cindee Giffen shared her State of the Union that highlighted our union’s strength in numbers and our continued engagement with members in a range of activities from new hire orientations & member workshops, to solidarity & political action, to social events like picnics and reading hours. Cindee also identified the consolidation of our strategic goals from last year into 3 large categories:
Increase equity across the three campuses
Building our coalitions on campus and our voice in politics
Strengthening our union
LEO Dearborn Campus Chair Jamie Wraight
LEO President Cindee Giffen
We also got an update on GEO’s negotiations with the University, in brief: it is not going well. LEO encourages our members to sign up for the GEO Allies listserv: bit.ly/GEOAllies as well as to sign onto this union solidarity statement. GEO has been an important ally to LEO over the lifetime of our union, and it’s important that we show our solidarity and support to our union siblings.
LEO Vice President and Chief Grievance Officer, Aric Knuth, presented on important LEO contract enforcement wins, including blatant violations of our contract language. Just because our contract outlines what the rules are, it doesn’t mean that our supervisors won’t accidentally (or intentionally) break the rules. It's up to us members to be vigilant about any instance where we suspect our contract might be violated. If you think something isn’t right, bring it up with your LEO steward first and we can take up the issue from there. We have over 70 stewards total, which is a historic high for LEO, but it is still not enough to keep an eye on everything. Please consider volunteering to be a union steward yourself via this LEO Involvement Interest form.
LEO Vice President Aric Knuth
We welcomed the new additions to our LEO-GLAM bargaining unit: the Research Museum Collections Managers (RMCMs)! It remains to be seen exactly how the RMCMs will become integrated into the GLAM unit, but we’ve assembled a bargaining team to negotiate those details with the university. On the team will be RMCMs Jim Moss, Aly Baumgartner, Alison Harrington, as well as current GLAM members Elena Colón-Marrero and Scott Dennis.
Flint LEO Chair Jennifer Miller debriefed everyone on the process and outcome of the Flint Contract Reopener this summer and we were able to celebrate the additional 1% annual raises for the remaining 2 years of the lecturer contract on top of the 3% annual raises already in place for the Flint & Dearborn lecturers. There is much more work to be done to fight for parity & equity between the 3 campuses and we encourage you to join the Tri-Campus Equity Committee to help shape that fight as lecturers start preparing for their next contract campaign which will kick into gear next academic year.
LEO Flint Campus Chair Jennifer Miller
Before lunch we had robust small group discussions on important union issues. The Lecturers discussed contract priorities and strategies to win in preparation for contract negotiations starting next academic year while the LEO-GLAM & RMCM groups had a similar discussion about negotiations and how they could integrate into the existing contract. After lunch we recognized our union stewards for their work within the union. We also had the opportunity (for the first time!) for members to make a personalized membership card.
Dearborn LEO stewards Hussein Nasrala, Claudia Walters, & Sophia Calzada-Orihuela
In the afternoon we proceeded to vote on the 2027 Budget and a Constitutional Amendment to clarify that collective bargaining agreements that only impact one campus, like the Flint Reopener, only need to be ratified by those members of that campus. Both the budget and the amendment passed!
The convention was closed out by special guest, MI State Senate District 2 candidate Abbas Alawieh, who is also a UM-Ann Arbor alum. Abbas shared a heartfelt story about how it was a LEO Lecturer that first helped him when he was really struggling as a student, and after receiving that help he went on to be a successful student, earning his BA, and then later a Master’s Degree in Public Health. Abbas talked about the importance of local & state politics in this time of crisis and his support of unionized labor & higher education.
After the convention a number of LEO activists canvassed in Dearborn as part of AFT Michigan’s Red for Ed walks to promote the endorsed candidates of the Michigan AFL-CIO, which include Board of Regents candidates Paul Brown and Amir Makled.
LEO members getting ready to canvass