EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Your UAOSU bargaining team and the administration team met for a morning bargaining session on Friday, January 10 at Cascade Hall. The administration team brought 3 counterproposals: Position Description and Workload, Research Support and Copyright, and a Letter of Agreement on Exceptional Service. There are still several significant details to be hammered out in the first two counterproposals; however, we are very close on the Letter of Agreement on Exceptional Service. Disappointingly, the administration team did not bring a counterproposal to our Letter of Agreement on the CGE strike. Instead, they verbally communicated that they are rejecting our proposal completely, as the protections for faculty we proposed would impede their ability to discipline faculty or unfairly evaluate faculty for graduate employee work that they were called upon to perform during the strike.
Your team brought counterproposals on Compensation, Leaves, Benefits, and Term of the Agreement. Our passing of the Compensation counterproposal was prefaced by a statement reiterating the economic concerns of our faculty and pushing back against the administration team’s disingenuous misinterpretation of these concerns as being limited to salary minimums.
UPCOMING SESSIONS
Use the links below to add these to your calendar:
- Thurs Jan 16 9:30am-4pm Cascade Hall 141
- Thurs Jan 23 9:30am-3:30pm Cascade Hall 141
- Wed Jan 29 9:30am-12:30pm Cascade Hall 141
FULL UPDATE
The session began with the administration team passing their counterproposal on the Position Description and Workload article. While we have made significant progress, we continue to struggle with their reluctance to include guidance to units on what a workload policy should include. For instance, we have proposed that a workload policy should be clear about how different course types (e.g. labs) are weighted—something that is important to many of our faculty—but the administration insists that this is too prescriptive to include in the contract. We will continue to work on this in future sessions, as we know that clarity regarding workload guidelines is a key issue for faculty.
They also brought a counterproposal to our Letter of Agreement on Exceptional Service. This would establish a joint labor-management committee to explore ways for OSU to reward faculty who perform substantial informal service (such as advising and mentoring students) above and beyond the already substantial formal service requirements. This is an important way to recognize the informal service that especially falls on faculty of color, women faculty, and faculty from other underrepresented communities. We are very close to agreement on this proposal, with only some details on dates of implementation remaining to be ironed out.
The administration team also brought a counterproposal to our proposal on Research Support and Copyright. They continue to express a lack of interest in our proposal to return 5% of overhead from grant funds to principal investigators, and are similarly disinterested in our proposal to grant instructors who develop Ecampus courses the right of first refusal when it comes to teaching those courses. They also declined our proposal to increase the bridge funding pool from 1% to 3% of recovered F & A costs; however, they declined this based on their understanding that the pool had not been exhausted in the last two years that bridge funding has been available. As we have heard anecdotally from some faculty who were told otherwise when applying for bridge funding, we are seeking more information for our future discussions about this issue at the bargaining table. If you have knowledge or experience with applying for bridge funding that could shed light on this subject, please contact us, either in person during a caucus at a bargaining session or via email at info@uaosu.org.
In response to questions from our team, the administration team indicated that they would not be bringing a counterproposal to our Letter of Agreement on the CGE strike, opting instead to verbally reject it entirely. Furthermore, they asserted that this is because they may choose to discipline or issue unfavorable performance reviews to faculty based on their performance (or non-performance) of graduate employee work. Your UAOSU team will continue to fight to protect faculty in the wake of the strike.
Your UAOSU bargaining team then passed a counterproposal on Compensation. We emphasized the degradation in buying power that faculty have experienced during the last few years of high inflation and low salary increases, and pointed out that the flat increase that we have continually proposed is intended as an inflation adjustment that would be especially beneficial to faculty with lower salaries. We also pointed out that “lower salaries” does not equate solely to “minimum salaries,” as the administration team has disingenuously interpreted our concern for lower-paid faculty as a desire only to increase salary floors. The increases to these salary floors that they have so far agreed to, while significant, affect only about 6% of our faculty. More help is needed for many of our faculty who make more than the minimum but have nevertheless been hit hard by inflation. Astonishingly, the administration team chose to double down on their obtuse approach by asserting that we were stating that our union is no longer interested in raising the salary floors. Despite this absurdity, your bargaining team remains committed to working with the administration to increase compensation for faculty who are suffering from the ravages of inflation.
We then presented counterproposals on Leaves and Benefits, both of which are reasonably close to agreement. In Leaves, we continue to propose that all promoted faculty should be eligible to apply for sabbatical leave; as we pointed out in the session, this was implemented at the University of Oregon with unqualified success. In Benefits, we continue to propose an increase in the faculty tuition credit from 12 hours to 16 hours, if those hours are used at OSU. This would cover the number of credits a student would need to take each term in order to meet the administration’s stated goal of graduating every student in four years. This seems both logical and reasonable, and the cost to the institution is negligible.
Our final counterproposal was for the Term of the Agreement. The administration has advocated for a five-year contract, a term that is nearly unheard of in higher education. Given the miserable compensation proposals they have so far presented, we have no interest in locking faculty into such a long contract with no economic reopener. We continue to propose a three-year contract, which will give us an earlier opportunity to meaningfully advocate for faculty.
The next bargaining session is TODAY 9:30am–4pm in Cascade 141. Even if you can only drop by for half an hour, your attendance matters: show the administration that faculty expect a contract that provides the equity, respect, and stability we deserve.
You can find a list of the currently scheduled bargaining sessions, as well as read our updates and proposals at uaosu.org/bargaining.
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 second contract . You can become a member online by going to uaosu.org/join.
In solidarity,
Bill Thomas and Your Bargaining Team