Takeaways:
Dear colleagues,
Thank you again to everyone who joined us on Friday to tell the Board of Trustees that faculty deserve fair pay. You can find a thorough write-up of the action in the TribLIVE.
The pressure we put on the administration this month leading up to this action resulted in significant progress at the bargaining table. Most importantly, we tentatively agreed to three articles: Health and Safety, Union Communication and Access, and Dues Deduction:
The administration also presented new counterproposals on Workloads and Discipline & Discharge, two key topics where we have been waiting for their responses for months. On Workloads, their counter would create new workload policies in each unit and require that every faculty member actually has a job description, which is an important first step. We have more ambitious goals for protecting against workload expansion and ensuring that part-time faculty work is calculated fairly, and we will continue to bargain with the administration to make progress on those. On Discipline & Discharge they agreed to “just cause,” a well-established legal standard that requires that discipline be based on substantial evidence, and that it be proportional, progressive, and fairly applied. We need to work through some details but just cause is the key priority for this article.
The administration also agreed to additional bargaining sessions in March and April, something we have been pushing for since we started bargaining.
We still have a lot of work to do, but the pressure you are putting on the administration is working to bring them to the table with responsive counterproposals, so that we can find common ground and move toward a strong first contract.
You may have seen that the administration posted some of their proposals on a new website. As you can see from that page, we are still waiting for proposals from them on a number of key issues (including tenure and promotion, layoffs and recall, and all economic topics). If you look at their proposals, in some areas they reflect important changes that we have successfully pushed them to agree to, such as longer contracts and an improved renewal process for appointments. But they also clearly fall short on a number of key priorities, such as protections against increasing workloads and the enforceability of certain improvements, which is why we are still in discussions over most of these. This site is also missing a number of proposals that we have received from them, most notably Management Rights, which they have not withdrawn and in which they claim expansive authority to make unilateral decisions about our jobs.
As always, reach out to your Council rep or CAT member with questions and feedback and consider joining the CAT to help communicate with your colleagues and organize the actions that have been so effective in bringing the administration to the table.
In solidarity,
Your bargaining committee
Tyler Bickford (chair), Professor, English, Oakland
Nicholas Bircher, Part-time Professor, Nurse Anesthesia, Oakland
Lauren Collister, Faculty Librarian, ULS, Oakland
Anthony Fabio, Associate Professor, Epidemiology (Public Health), Oakland
Lech Harris (secretary), Part-time Instructor, English, Oakland
James Hill (archivist), Visiting Assistant Professor, History, Oakland
Haitao Liu, Professor, Chemistry, Oakland
Stephen Robar, Associate Professor, Political Science, Bradford
Sabrina Robinson, Part-time Instructor, Slavic, Oakland
Valerie Rossi (clerk), Teacher, Falk Laboratory School, Oakland
Evan Schneider, Assistant Professor, Physics and Astronomy, Oakland
Paul Scott, Assistant Professor, Health and Community Systems (Nursing), Oakland
Jeffrey Shook, Professor, Social Work, Oakland
Stacey Triplette, Associate Professor, Spanish, Greensburg
Abagael West, Teaching Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences, Oakland
Links!
- The pressure we built this month leading up to our action at the Trustees meeting on Friday was effective. We’ll need to keep this up as we negotiate around key issues like workloads and pay. Join the CAT to help with this effort.
- In February we tentatively agreed to three articles, including Health and Safety, in which the administration finally agreed to commit to binding standards.
- As we reach the one year anniversary of active bargaining, the administration has finally begun presenting counterproposals on key non-economic articles that we proposed last Spring and Summer, including Workloads and Discipline & Discharge.
Dear colleagues,
Thank you again to everyone who joined us on Friday to tell the Board of Trustees that faculty deserve fair pay. You can find a thorough write-up of the action in the TribLIVE.
The pressure we put on the administration this month leading up to this action resulted in significant progress at the bargaining table. Most importantly, we tentatively agreed to three articles: Health and Safety, Union Communication and Access, and Dues Deduction:
- Health and Safety ensures strong standards that we will be able to enforce through our contract’s grievance procedure. Since Pennsylvania public sector workers are not covered by OSHA, and the Commonwealth does not have an equivalent law protecting workers like us, we do not currently have many legal protections if the administration were to cut corners or reduce safety standards. And while the university currently has extensive health and safety policies that largely conform with private sector standards, as faculty we do not have any recourse if those policies are not followed in our buildings or departments. This article will change that, and give us strong tools to ensure that our offices, labs, classrooms, libraries, and clinical spaces are safe and free of hazards.
- Union Communication and Access ensures that our Union will have the information we need to advocate for our colleagues, that we will have access to campus spaces to hold meetings and events, that we will be part of orientations for new faculty, and that we will be able to communicate with our colleagues without interference
- Dues Deduction is a standard technical article in which the administration has agreed to make payroll deductions for faculty who sign membership cards and authorize those deductions.
The administration also presented new counterproposals on Workloads and Discipline & Discharge, two key topics where we have been waiting for their responses for months. On Workloads, their counter would create new workload policies in each unit and require that every faculty member actually has a job description, which is an important first step. We have more ambitious goals for protecting against workload expansion and ensuring that part-time faculty work is calculated fairly, and we will continue to bargain with the administration to make progress on those. On Discipline & Discharge they agreed to “just cause,” a well-established legal standard that requires that discipline be based on substantial evidence, and that it be proportional, progressive, and fairly applied. We need to work through some details but just cause is the key priority for this article.
The administration also agreed to additional bargaining sessions in March and April, something we have been pushing for since we started bargaining.
We still have a lot of work to do, but the pressure you are putting on the administration is working to bring them to the table with responsive counterproposals, so that we can find common ground and move toward a strong first contract.
You may have seen that the administration posted some of their proposals on a new website. As you can see from that page, we are still waiting for proposals from them on a number of key issues (including tenure and promotion, layoffs and recall, and all economic topics). If you look at their proposals, in some areas they reflect important changes that we have successfully pushed them to agree to, such as longer contracts and an improved renewal process for appointments. But they also clearly fall short on a number of key priorities, such as protections against increasing workloads and the enforceability of certain improvements, which is why we are still in discussions over most of these. This site is also missing a number of proposals that we have received from them, most notably Management Rights, which they have not withdrawn and in which they claim expansive authority to make unilateral decisions about our jobs.
As always, reach out to your Council rep or CAT member with questions and feedback and consider joining the CAT to help communicate with your colleagues and organize the actions that have been so effective in bringing the administration to the table.
In solidarity,
Your bargaining committee
Tyler Bickford (chair), Professor, English, Oakland
Nicholas Bircher, Part-time Professor, Nurse Anesthesia, Oakland
Lauren Collister, Faculty Librarian, ULS, Oakland
Anthony Fabio, Associate Professor, Epidemiology (Public Health), Oakland
Lech Harris (secretary), Part-time Instructor, English, Oakland
James Hill (archivist), Visiting Assistant Professor, History, Oakland
Haitao Liu, Professor, Chemistry, Oakland
Stephen Robar, Associate Professor, Political Science, Bradford
Sabrina Robinson, Part-time Instructor, Slavic, Oakland
Valerie Rossi (clerk), Teacher, Falk Laboratory School, Oakland
Evan Schneider, Assistant Professor, Physics and Astronomy, Oakland
Paul Scott, Assistant Professor, Health and Community Systems (Nursing), Oakland
Jeffrey Shook, Professor, Social Work, Oakland
Stacey Triplette, Associate Professor, Spanish, Greensburg
Abagael West, Teaching Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences, Oakland
Links!
- If someone forwarded this to you, sign up to receive these emails
- Find previous bargaining updates here
- Get in touch with your Council rep
- Get involved with the Communication and Action Team
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