EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Your UAOSU bargaining team and the administration team met from 10am-2pm on Thursday, September 26 in Cascade Hall. This session was particularly action-packed, as a total of 11 counterproposals were exchanged following a brief presentation from a representative from OSU’s finance and administration office. This presentation, which offered a positive overview of financial health, was followed by a package of seven counterproposals passed by the administration team: Faculty Appointments, Periodic Review of Faculty, Promotion and/or Tenure, Compensation, Benefits, Leaves, and Term of Agreement. They also passed a Letter of Agreement on Generative AI as a separate item. We passed counterproposals on Position Descriptions and Workload, Discipline and Termination, and a Letter of Agreement on Exceptional Service.
Despite the rosy outlook of OSU’s finances described in their presentation, the administration team made minimal movement in their Compensation proposal. While we are very glad to see some movement, it was still significantly short of what faculty need for their own financial security and to mitigate the impacts of inflation. In addition, the administration agreed to continuous appointment for all promoted faculty; this represented significant movement on the part of the administration and a big step forward in improving job stability for faculty. Taken as a whole, the administration’s counterproposals from this session indicate a potential willingness to begin moving toward agreement on some of the most important issues facing faculty at OSU.
UPCOMING SESSIONS & EVENTS
Use the links below to add these to your calendar. Please double-check the location on our website before you head over, as there may be some changes.
- Fri 10/4 4-6pm – Odd Friday – Please join us at Common Fields at 4pm this Friday for the first Odd Friday happy hour of Fall Term! We invite all OSU faculty to join us for “Odd Fridays” during Fall term weeks 1, 3, 5, and 7 for informal gatherings. This drop in meetup is a great way to get caught up with your union!
- Tues 10/15 2-5pm (location TBD) – Bargaining
- Wed 10/23 5:30-7pm – Fall General Membership Meeting – If you’re planning to attend, please RSVP at uaosu.org/fallgmm
- Thurs 10/31 9am – 5pm (location TBD) – Bargaining
- Additional October dates to be confirmed. Please check uaosu.org/bargaining for the latest information
FULL UPDATE
The session began with a short presentation from the administration, providing a basic and broad overview of OSU’s economic situation. The depiction of OSU’s financial health was encouragingly positive, both in terms of our recent history as compared to other institutions, and in terms of the projections for continued robust growth in the future. Following this presentation, the administration team passed what they described as their “package” of economic counterproposals: Faculty Appointments, Periodic Review of Faculty, Promotion and/or Tenure, Compensation, Benefits, Leaves, and Term of Agreement.
The majority of the movement from the administration team came in the Faculty Appointments article, in which they agreed that all faculty who have achieved promotion will be on continuous appointment. Currently, all non-tenure-track faculty are on fixed term appointments that expire annually or biannually, and are subject to renewal (or non-renewal). Under the proposed language, all faculty who have achieved promotion would no longer have appointments that expire and need to be renewed, nor would they be subject to non-renewal. While we had initially proposed that all faculty receive continuous appointments, this movement by the administration represents a major step forward in job stability for promoted faculty.
In Periodic Review of Faculty, the remaining sticking point with the administration is a disagreement over what should constitute an overall assessment of “failed to meet expectations” on an annual review. Our contention is that such an overall assessment should be limited to a review in which the faculty member has either failed to meet expectations in the majority of their job duties, and/or has failed to meet expectations in a category that represents a minority of their job duties for consecutive years. The administration is arguing that even a category that makes up as little as 5% of one’s job duties (service, for instance) can be the basis for a failed PROF if one’s supervisor determines that it is of sufficient importance. Such an arbitrary determination is particularly unacceptable in view of the important effects a failed PROF can have on a faculty member. Such effects include loss of merit increases to salary or triggering of a post-tenure review. Because of this interaction between the PROF and the post-tenure review process, this issue is also one of our last sticking points in the Promotion and/or Tenure article.
The administration team made some modest movement in their Compensation counterproposal; although, given the needs of our bargaining unit and the bright outlook for OSU’s financial future (as their own data shows), it still falls far short of what we hoped. They still decline to consider our proposed one-time inflation adjustment and annual across-the-board increases in favor of a merit-only increase system. In their previous pass, they proposed a 1.5 to 3% merit increase for the current year, followed by five years of 0 to 1% “merit” increases (or perhaps more appropriately, non-increases). In this iteration, they have at least proposed that bargaining unit members would receive an increase every year, but have only bumped up the minimum to 1.8%, with a proposed maximum increase of 4.25%. Since they refuse to commit to a salary pool to pay for the increases, they are incentivizing units to give everyone the minimum salary increase of 1.8%. While we engaged in some discussion about whether anyone in any unit would receive more than the minimum, the most salient fact is that this range is simply far too low to address the needs of our faculty, who are suffering from the effects of inflation and the rapidly rising cost of living in our area. It also opens up the likelihood of increased inequity between those units that are ‘flush’ with resources, and those that are not. While we appreciate the movement made by the administration in this counterproposal, we will continue to fight for a better deal than what they have offered so far.
Sadly, there is little movement to report in the remaining articles we received in this package: Benefits, Leaves, and Term of Agreement. In the Benefits article, the administration continues to reject extending a few fringe benefits to retired faculty, or to permit non-tenure-track faculty to be considered for emeritus status. They also decline to extend the tuition reduction benefit for OSU credits, or even to allow current tuition benefits to be split between multiple dependents. Similarly, in Leaves, they have declined our proposed sick leave bank, which would allow faculty to transfer their sick leave hours to those who need it. They have also declined to extend sabbatical leave to non-tenure-track faculty or adjust the amount of salary that is covered for faculty on sabbatical leave, and they are attempting to renege on our existing agreement that the 120 hours of paid family leave provided by OSU is not prorated for part-time faculty. Their Term of Agreement proposal continues to suggest that the modest movement that they have made is so good that we should want to lock it in for six years. Needless to say, our perception of these proposals is considerably less rosy.
The administration team also passed a counter on the Letter of Agreement on Generative AI, which will create a labor-management committee. They continue to remove the definitions and some of the proposed topics but have accepted that issues related to AI may interact with our contract, and that both parties retain all rights. Crucially, this means that as issues emerge that may warrant impact bargaining, we can initiate that process.
We passed counterproposals on Position Descriptions and Workload and Discipline and Termination. The remaining sticking point in Position Descriptions and Workload is that the administration team objects to our list of things that a workload policy should include as too granular and procedural. They would prefer something similar to the language in our first contract, which simply required that units have a workload policy, trusting that they would do a good job of developing transparent policies that would meet the needs of faculty. Unfortunately, many units produced deficient policies that failed the faculty that depended on them. This time, we will fight to make sure that units are producing coherent workload policies that meet the needs of faculty. In Discipline and Termination, all that remains is to iron out language regarding informal processes to address work performance issues that do not rise to the level of disciplinary action. We think we are close on this.
Currently, our next scheduled bargaining session is 2–5pm on Tuesday, October 15th (location TBD). We’ve asked the administration team for additional dates in October and location information for the scheduled sessions (10/15 and 10/31). We will update our bargaining page and share the updates with you as soon as we can. You can find a list of the currently scheduled bargaining sessions, as well as read our updates and proposals at uaosu.org/bargaining.
For the past several sessions we’ve had a strong showing of support from faculty observers. If you haven’t attended yet, October is a great time to catch up with bargaining by attending a session. Even if you can only drop by for half an hour, your attendance matters: show the administration that faculty demand a contract that gives us the equity, respect, and stability we deserve.
Our power in negotiations comes from all of us working together as a united faculty. Becoming a member is the first step in supporting your bargaining team and securing a strong contract . You can become a member online at uaosu.org/join.
In solidarity,
Bill Thomas and Your Bargaining Team