By Steve Gunn
EAGnews.org
    
BOZEMAN, Montana – For years the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers targeted faculty members at Montana State University for membership.
    
The unions finally got their way in 2009 when professors voted to form a local union affiliated with both the NEA and AFT.
    
Four years later, at least 30 percent of those new union members are not happy, and they’ve forced an election for union decertification, according to InsiderHigherEd.com. Current members have until April 16 to vote on whether to remain with the union.
    
Many faculty members are reportedly unhappy about a lack of results from the collective bargaining process.
    
The local union has managed to negotiate one contract for members, which includes a one percent raise in the first year and a two percent raise with $500 bonuses the next. But some members wonder if that’s enough of a return on the $631 per year they pay in dues, the news report said.
    
“They’ve been here four years. They’ve achieved nothing significant,” Bennett Link, a physics professor, was quoted as saying. “They claim things that they didn’t do, and this doesn’t really inspire a feeling of confidence in the union.”
    
MSU was the last public university in the state to unionize, which was “a win for academic labor, which had targeted Montana State for decades,” the news report said.