EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Your UAOSU bargaining team and the administration team met from 11 am to 4:30 pm on Tuesday, February 11. Your UAOSU team arrived with two articles ready for tentative agreement, having worked through them in advance. The administration team brought nothing. During a caucus, your team worked through a counterproposal on Term of the Agreement and passed it to the administration team. Again, they passed nothing.
UPCOMING SESSIONS
Use the links below to add these to your calendar.
FULL UPDATE
Your UAOSU team arrived at the session with two articles—Academic Freedom and Health, Safety, Facilities, and Work Site—ready for tentative agreement. Our work during these negotiations has secured additional guarantees for faculty access to shared governance, the ability of instructors to assign grades without interference from administration, access to safety information and PPE, replacement of damaged research equipment, and access to flexible work arrangements. However, the session began with the administration team’s admission that they had brought no proposals and their assertion that they had no intention of preparing any during our nearly day-long session. We pointed out the urgency of making progress on Compensation, as our faculty have now been waiting more than half a year for expected salary increases. The administration team responded that the majority of the articles that are currently open are on the union team’s side of the table and that it is customary to settle “non-economic” articles prior to economic ones. We pointed out that several of these articles have outstanding issues that cannot be addressed until the structure of compensation for the duration of the new contract has been resolved.
After a caucus and careful deliberation about how to proceed, your team passed Academic Freedom and Health, Safety, Facilities, and Work Site articles, which the teams signed into tentative agreement. We spent the remainder of the session discussing our concerns about the administration team’s previous counterproposals of the Compensation article in the hope that we could make some headway even in the absence of an actual proposal from their side. Our primary concern is that their previous proposals have ignored the need for across-the-board salary increases to combat inflation in favor of a merit-only system; moreover, the structure they have proposed for their merit-only increases fails to commit any university funds to salary increases. This structure incentivizes departments to give out only the minimum possible merit increase to all faculty, regardless of the range of increases we agree to.
After a final caucus, your team passed a counterproposal for Term of the Agreement to the administration team, pointing out that we cannot agree to their proposed five-year contract when they continue to propose salary increases that are punitive to the faculty that carry out the mission of the institution. Our counterproposal is for a three-year contract.
We concluded the session by urging the administration team to bring a Compensation counterproposal to our next session that is fair to faculty and that commits real dollars to salary increases for the people who have been hardest hit by inflation.
Our website provides a table with links to all of the proposals passed in these negotiations. You can also find a list of the currently scheduled bargaining sessions, as well as all updates at uaosu.org/bargaining.
The next bargaining session is 9:30am–4:30pm on Tuesday, February 18 in Cascade Hall 141. Even if you can only drop by for half an hour, your attendance matters: show the administration that faculty demand a contract that provides 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 second contract . You can become a member online by going to uaosu.org/join.
In solidarity,
Bill Thomas and Your Bargaining Team