Union Raises Heck About Law Professors’ ‘Satanic’ $666 Pay Increase

A union representing faculty members at Cleveland State University’s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law has filed an unfair-labor-practice charge with Ohio’s labor-relations board, claiming that the law school’s dean retaliated against union organizers by giving them $666 raises, “in effect” calling them Satan.

The details of the dispute are spelled out in a post by Paul L. Caron, of Pepperdine University, at TaxProfBlog. The complaint, filed by Cleveland State’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, states that faculty members generally received one of four merit-pay raises: $5,000, $3,000, $666, and $0. It asserts that eight union organizers received raises of $666 or $0, even though it states that they had “exemplary scholarship and teaching scores.”

“In effect,” the complaint says, the law school’s dean “has called AAUP’s organizers and AAUP Satan.” It says his actions constitute “clear evidence” of the school’s “anti-union animus.”

The university denied those allegations in its response to the union’s assertions, according to TaxProfBlog:

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.