A state judge has ruled that Michigan Technological University engaged in an unfair labor practice when it chose to raise some professors’ salaries in the middle of contract negotiations with the faculty union. The union, a chapter of the American Association of University Professors, filed a complaint about the timing of those raises in October 2005 — and then a third of the faculty members promptly petitioned to dump the union as their bargaining agent.

According to the Associated Press, an administrative-law judge from the Michigan Employee Relations Commission said last Thursday that the university had “communicated to employees that the union was essentially powerless and irrelevant” when it raised some faculty members’ pay in the middle of negotiations. The judge ordered the union and the university to resume bargaining, which has been stalled for the past two years, and extended the union’s certification as the faculty’s bargaining agent by four months.