Rank and File Members of U-M Campus Labor Unions Urge AFT-MI “NO” Endorsement of Jordan Acker

On Friday, April 10th, rank-and-file members of University of Michigan academic labor unions—the Graduate Employees’ Organization (AFT Local 3550), Lecturers’ Employee Organization (AFT Local 6244), and University Staff United (AFT Local 284) —sent over 50 emails to the AFT-MI Ad Board urging the Board to decline to endorse Jordan Acker for UM Regent.

Some of workers’ reasoning was procedural, urging AFT-MI to wait until after the Michigan Democratic Party Convention on April 19 to make their recommendation, while others were substantive, citing their interactions or experiences with Acker. Despite the emails, the AFT-MI Ad Board voted to recommend to the state AFL-CIO an endorsement of the incumbent Jordan Acker. We also understand the vote was divided. 

Members of campus labor are deeply disappointed in AFT-MI’s decision to endorse despite Jordan Acker’s track record. As members share below: from suing GEO during their strike to scolding graduates publicly for wanting a living wage, to firing pro-Palestine university workers and denying them their Weingarten rights, and disciplining students and workers who exercise their first amendment rights, Jordan Acker is not worthy of AFT-MI endorsement.

Below are excerpts from some of the emails sent to the AFT-MI Ad Board, shared with consent:

• “Whether through campus labor council meetings or conversations with rank-and-file workers, it is clear that leaders and members are NOT voicing clear, majority support for this incumbent. He is deeply unpopular on the Ann Arbor campus and entirely absent from the Dearborn campus (where I work). His positions on DEI, data centers, and pro-Palestinian speech are laughably out of touch with campus labor, and his track record is a minefield of bad, unpopular, and anti-worker decisions, often in complicity with the Trump administration. From my perspective, the proposal to endorse Acker comes from a place of electoral fear, namely that challenger Amir Makled is a risky choice. Acker’s track record with labor is far riskier for workers on this campus. Fear-driven strategy does not represent the labor movement I want to be fighting in.” (Dom Bouavichith, USU)
• “I am one of the students who was stalked by UM’s private contractors for almost a year: a direct consequence of Acker’s crusade against campus protesters. What I have experienced at the hands of the Regents, particularly Acker, has been life-changing and it does not scratch the surface of what many of my coworkers have had to endure. To us, AFT-MI endorsing Acker would mean AFT-MI endorsing the enormous harm that he has used his position to perpetrate.” (Katarina Keating, GEO)
• “As an AFT MI member, I urge you to withhold endorsement of University of Michigan Regent Jordan Acker. He has singled out a member of my union, University Staff United, and got them fired without allowing them to use their Weingarten rights, a very basic right we fought so hard to win, and over first amendment protected peaceful protest prior to their employment that bore no criminal charges or convictions.” (Rita Lee, USU)
• “On the issues of substance, I’m organizing at a university with coworkers who are outraged by the university’s cuts to DEI, UM’s complicity in Israel’s crimes against humanity, assaults on gender affirming care, and several other issues. Endorsing Jordan Acker, given his record, sends a message to my coworkers that AFT doesn’t have a principled stance on any of the above issues, and I fear this would be demobilizing and make my organizing more difficult.” (Terrence Gatton, USU)
• “In the first place, the lack of consensus among locals at U-M and the wildly unpopular policies that these regents have enacted should give pause. I am a trans woman, and I will feel personally let down if this goes ahead. They ended gender-affirming care for youth at Michigan Medicine and have not restored it despite the fact that AG Dana Nessel, along with other prominent lawyers, has secured a court order striking down the administration’s attempts to pressure healthcare providers on this issue. They have also presided over the end of DEI, the building of the wildly unpopular Ypsilanti Data Center.” (Grad worker, GEO)
• “Jordan Acker is uniquely unpopular as a Regent candidate, due to his support for an unpopular and immoral data center in Ypsilanti, his support for ending DEI at University of Michigan, his failure to support gender affirming care at Michigan Medicine, and his wholehearted support of the University of Michigan administration’s attacks on students and community members peacefully protesting genocide. In general, Acker is an example of the kind of capitulation to Trump that, in addition to being deeply immoral and contrary to our international union’s values, is almost guaranteed to lose.  If AFT Michigan endorses Jordon Acker, they risk losing a regent seat in the general election.” (Aaron Stark, USU) 
• “If re-elected Acker will continue to act in ways that undermine the needs of all employees and students at U-M, the Ann Arbor community, and the entire state of MI (see ending gender-affirming care for minors at the top provider of this type of care in the state). This is well-known which is why he is so unpopular. There is great risk if he becomes the candidate that he will not be re-elected. He is not the safe option here, either for winning the race or for the actions he would take if he did manage to win.” (J Gentry, GEO)
• “I’m a lecturer at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and I definitely don’t support an early endorsement. Please, despite the current unprecedented pressure from the leadership of AFT-MI to throw your weight prematurely behind Jordan Acker, don’t vote to endorse any candidates for U-M Regent before the Democratic convention later this month.” (John F. Buckley, LEO)
• “In our roles as VP & President, we met with Regent Acker multiple times throughout the contract campaign and strike. While Regent Acker and his allies are using this as evidence to positively tout his willingness to work with labor, our perspectives on these meetings reflect the contrary. Regent Acker spent our time with him talking about himself and his twitter presence, and did not make space to hear our concerns about the working conditions of graduate workers on our campus. He called our living wage demands unreasonable, incorrectly argued that we already made a living wage, and gave us a little time and space to speak. We felt belittled and disrespected in these meetings, with Regent Acker making a mockery of graduate workers’ importance to the university, our rights to a living wage and fair working conditions, and our commitment to transparent, democratic, member-driven decision-making processes within our union.” (Ember McCoy & Jared Eno, former GEO VP and President)
• “I do not think [Jordan Acker] is the best choice in the election and I don’t think he represents teachers’ interests. His habitual attitude toward the workforce that he represents is high-handed and condescending, and his somewhat draconian view of student protest has negatively affected our students. His rival has taken a far stronger stance against worker surveillance and against institutional promotion of so-called “artificial intelligence.“ As the former is an existential threat to our organizing, and the latter an existential threat, perhaps, to our profession, I can’t imagine why any educator would prefer Acker. A coalition of educators’ unions taking extraordinary steps to support Acker is simply an act of self-disrespect.” (Philip Christman, LEO)
• “As a union, we need to stand in solidarity with candidates that reflect our values. Jordan Acker has not proven himself to be that candidate. Democrats have long purported that they need to “cater to the persuadable voters in the center” but that tactic has only led to the election of Donald Trump and other MAGA extremists.” (Mariel Krupansky, LEO)
• “[A]s someone who lives in Ypsilanti, I have seen our community steamrolled by this body of Regents who have continually rebuffed our complaints about their plans to build an eco-nightmare of a nuclear weapons research computing center in our most vulnerable area. Regent Acker has been especially callous about our concerns, so it would be particularly harmful to reward him with a pre-convention endorsement.” (Ryan McCarty, LEO) 
• “Acker has done his very best to belittle and disenfranchise AFT unions on U-M campus in his capacity as regent. He has not met with nor worked with campus locals, except through condescending communications. He’s betrayed Democratic values in numerous ways – calling for the end of DEI at U-M, pushing the U-M/ Los Alamos National Lab data center on Ypsilanti township without meeting with locals to hear their side. He’s backed policy changes that suppress freedom of speech on campus, resulting in several lawsuits from the ACLU and Sugar Law Center for Social Justice. He goes on the platform-formerly-known-as-Twitter to bash individual students. He caves to federal administration’s executive orders without thinking of the undeniable effect to U-M and the community, allowing programs to be gutted, funding cut, and marginalized people to suffer just for existing.” (Larry Wentzel, LEO)
• “During our 2022-2023 contract campaign, I, several other GEO officers, and then-AFT president David Hecker met with Regent Acker about the employer’s attempt to force closed bargaining on our members. Regent Acker spent the first 20 minutes of this meeting dressing us down for insisting on a transparent bargaining process that would be accessible to our members. He condescended to us and our members, repeated the employer’s version of what was at issue, and generally did not engage with our concerns – serious issues like a cost of living crisis and a pervasive culture of sexual harassment affecting our members. This was representative of his tone with us the entire campaign.  Regent Acker apparently saw it as his role to chastise us like subordinates, and not to strategize with us as allies. This is not someone who deserves Labour’s backing. I also feel obliged to speak to his record on the anti-genocide protests during Israel’s assault on Gaza over the past 3 years. I am Jewish, and I was incredibly frustrated with his handling of the protests. During this period, peaceful protests, such as die-ins, which occurred without incident during COVID mere years before, were met with violent arrests due to their connection with Palestine. Beyond that, however, Jordan Acker did a severe disservice to Jewish students and workers, like myself, by presuming to speak on our behalf, erasing our identities as Jews, and making fatuous claims that our campus was unsafe for Jews and our movement was anti-semitic. If anyone made the campus unsafe for Jewish students, it was Jordan Acker who vocally led calls for our violent suppression by the police.” (Amir Fleishman, former GEO officer)
• “I am aware that Makled has asked to meet with you and that you have ignored him, which is one thing that makes your planned endorsement of Acker deeply problematic.  Further, as a union member and activist on the U-M Ann Arbor campus I can tell you firsthand that Acker has been repeatedly hostile to labor and workers, has prompted attacks on peaceful protesters by UMPD, has voted against gender-affirming care at Michigan Medicine, has done nothing to reform deep problems with worker disability accommodations at U-M, and rarely engages with the campus community.  He is the absolute WRONG person to endorse.” (Craig Smith, LEO-GLAM)
• “Jordan Acker has been a failure of a regent since the start of his tenure. He has been unresponsive to our needs, unavailable for meetings (as are most current Regents), and condescending to students and staff. The establishment Democrats who have had endless support from AFT are widely unpopular on campus and within union locals. They have caved to every recent policy failure that has negatively impacted staff and students. From mass surveillance on campus, to the abandonment of DEI. Along with this, it has been reported that Denise Illitch has threatened union locals with withholding her support if they do not back Acker. This is abhorrent, anti-democratic, and anti-labor.” (Cameron Yaxley, USU)
• “I am asking you not to endorse unpopular candidate Jordan Acker for U-M Regent. I believe his failure to protect transgender healthcare at Michigan Medicine, and his support for the data center construction in Ypsilanti shows that he will falter in the face of environmental racism and transphobia. These are key public health issues of our time, considering the inequities perpetuated by AI algorithms, and the environmental health concerns that come with data centers (noise, air pollution, and specific to UM’s data center– Los Alamos nuclear weapons research that furthers imperialist violence), as well as the constant vicious attacks on trans people. A weak candidate unwilling to stand up to fascism is not someone to endorse, let alone get excited about. With Jordan Acker as regent, all we can expect to see is more repression on campus against staff, faculty, and students who stand up against genocide. On the contrary, I’m seeing a lot of my community members on and off campus getting excited about Amir Makled, whom GEO members voted to endorse.” (USU member)
• “I have been a UM employee for 10 years and have worked on several issues that affect students and faculty on the UM-Flint campus. As a result, I have been a close observer of Jordan Acker and his approach to supporting faculty and students, particularly struggling students on the Dearborn and Flint campuses. […] I understand that Mr. Acker has also been on the receiving end of unprecedented protests and some may feel that he is being unfairly singled out. As a Jewish faculty member, I can assure you that my concerns with Jordan Acker are based on his disappointing conception of politics, embrace of harsh austerity, lack of meaningful connections with labor, lack of consistent care for our students, and inability to rise to the occasion during these difficult times. He is being singled out because he has been notably less aligned with labor and student needs than other regental candidates.” (U-M Associate Professor) 
• “I have learned that the board will be voting on whether to offer an endorsement to Jordan Acker for the Board of Regents. I am writing to lend my voice to those calling to hold off on any such endorsement until the MDP Convention. To not do so seems entirely undemocratic and counter to union principles. The choices of the board should be made in the spirit of collective decision making and representing the members’ perspectives, not pushing through the opinions of a few of the leadership.” (LEO-GLAM member)
• “Acker argued for canceling DEI, stating that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts were bureaucratic and ineffective: (“the focus of our diversity efforts needs to be meaningful change, not bureaucracy” (X, March 27, 2025), providing left-flank cover for the dismantlement of DEI before Donald Trump even issued his executive orders.” (Jenna Knudtson, GEO)
• “I want to urge you to VOTE NO on incumbent Regent Jordan Acker. If I can be frank, endorsing him will put the seat at risk. There is no more unpopular regent on campus than Jordan Acker, who has betrayed Democratic values time and time again.” (Kathleen Brown, GEO)
• “Acker is not responsive to community interests, often refusing to meet with stakeholders. He is just profoundly unpopular due to his support for ending DEI, his endorsement of the risky and unpopular data center against the wishes of the community, and his general support for persecution of free speech.” (Andy Brosius, USU)
• “As GEO’s Solidarity and Political Action Committee co-chair, […] I can attest that there is no consensus behind Jordan Acker. AFT-MI endorsing Jordan Acker would not represent locals’ informed and experienced-based opinions on Jordan Acker.” (Kaitlin Karmen, GEO)
• “Firstly and most importantly, Acker’s actions as a current regent have demonstrated time and time again that he is not an ally to GEO and as an extension AFT-MI. Despite his claims that he was instrumental in the process of securing our most recent bargaining agreement, during the GEO campaign he repeatedly used his social media presence to denounce the proposals put forth by the union. He shared misinformation and characterized graduate students seeking a living wage as unreasonable and violent when we took direct, nonviolent action to advance our contract negotiations. The irony is therefore increased now that he claims credit for our union’s success at the bargaining table.” (Grad worker, GEO)