Cleveland State Law Profs File Unfair Labor Practice Charge: 'Satanic' $666 Merit Pay Raise Was Retaliation for Union Activities

The AAUP Chapter at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law has filed an unfair labor practice charge with the State of Ohio alleging that the law school retaliated against certain faculty in the award of merit raises in 2013 and 2014 because of their union activities. Faculty were placed in four merit raise bands -- $5,000, $3,000, $666, and $0 -- based on scholarship and scholarly influence (40%), teaching as measured by student evaluations (40%), and service (20%). The complaint alleges that eight AAUP organizers received raises of $0 or $666, despite "exemplary scholarship and teaching scores." The complaint charges that the $666 raise in effect calls "AAUP's organizers and AAUP Satan." In a memo distributed to the central administration and copied to the entire faculty, one of the eight AAUP organizers alleges that:

[The $666 figure] is a universally understood symbol of the Antichrist or Devil -- one of our culture's most violent religious images. Implicitly, but unmistakably and obviously intentionally, [the Dean] used his powers to set faculty salaries as an occasion to brand his perceived opponents as the Antichrist.

In its response to the unfair labor practice charge , the university argues:

[T]he Charging Party cannot point to a single directive, or even a reference, from the Dean to a "666" or satanic merit pay amount for certain allegedly union-active faculty members. The $666 merit award was the result of mathematical division, not anti-union animus.

Update:

• ABA Journal, Was ‘Satanic’ Pay Raise for Law Profs Intended as Retaliation for Union Activities?
• Above the Law, Law School Accused of Issuing ‘Satanic’ Pay Raise
• Althouse, Cleveland State Law Profs File Unfair Labor Practice Charge Alleging That 'Satanic' $666 Merit Pay Raise Was Retaliation for Union Activities
• Chronicle of Higher Education, Union Raises Heck About Law Professors’ ‘Satanic’ $666 Pay Increase
• Today's General Counsel, Union Prof Sues Over 'Satanic' $666 Merit Pay
• Volokh Conspiracy (Orin Kerr), Law Dean’s $666 Faculty Pay Raise “In Effect” Called Professors Satan, Complaint Alleges
• Wall Street Journal Law Blog, Could It Be Satan? Yes, Says Union in Dispute With Law School