BARGAINING UPDATE
July 22, 2022
Dear colleagues,
Thank you to those of you who completed our bargaining survey in the spring. There was a high level of participation across the university and this information is helpful for us in determining our priorities at the bargaining table. The results of this survey revealed that contract renewals, contract length, and workloads were the top non-economic contract priorities for faculty at every campus and school.
Yesterday, we were very proud to present a group of proposals focused on these priorities to the administration. These proposals are at the core of our vision for this contract. We know that our jobs can be more secure and more fair, and that by creating transparent and enforceable procedures for contract lengths, renewals, and workloads, we will be freed to focus on our core work of teaching, research, service, librarianship, and clinical work, without having to worry about whether we’ll still have our jobs next semester or next year.
Our proposals say, simply, that for all faculty, including part-timers, if you are doing a satisfactory job and there is work for you to do, you should be able to keep doing it. The large majority of faculty at Pitt are on short-term renewable contracts, a system developed generations ago for a small number of temporary faculty. We all know the many reasons this demeans us and makes our work harder, and we know that a simpler, more humane system for appointing two thirds of the faculty is possible.
There should be fair and transparent procedures in place to confirm that faculty are doing a satisfactory job, and sometimes financial emergencies or other shocks may mean that there isn’t work for all of us.
But it is inefficient, unfair, and disrespectful to require us to reapply for our jobs constantly. We can and should have longer contracts, and the process of renewing our contracts should be transparent, fair, and straightforward.
The proposals we presented yesterday would also protect and strengthen tenure, establish new rights and fair procedures when faculty are laid off, and create consistent and flexible standards for promotion that respect the wide range of jobs we have in different schools.
We all know the many harms of short-term contracts, but a major one is that they erode academic freedom, another top priority from the bargaining survey. When we know that our chair or dean has total discretion to cancel our contract next term or next year, it makes it harder for us to pursue controversial lines of research, to teach challenging materials, and to speak up in committees and in shared governance, because the risk of angering the wrong person is too high.
Our proposals would also require that our assignments be reasonable and clearly specified, so that faculty are empowered to say “no” when asked to take on excessive work, and so we can see and respond when work is being unfairly distributed among different faculty.
The current system of short-term contracts has been building for decades to a crisis point. We have an opportunity now to fix this broken system, in a way that will make our jobs better and free up resources across the university to focus on our shared academic mission.
We will need your help to achieve this vision. If you haven’t done so yet, now is the perfect time to join our Communication and Action Team. The work of this team is vital to maintaining good communication between the broader faculty and those of us on the bargaining committee and to facilitating collective actions that will show the administration that we are organized, united, and ready to stand up for better working conditions.
We look forward to standing side by side with you as we work to make Pitt a better place to teach students, do research, serve library patrons, and care for patients.
In solidarity,
Your bargaining committee
Thank you to those of you who completed our bargaining survey in the spring. There was a high level of participation across the university and this information is helpful for us in determining our priorities at the bargaining table. The results of this survey revealed that contract renewals, contract length, and workloads were the top non-economic contract priorities for faculty at every campus and school.
Yesterday, we were very proud to present a group of proposals focused on these priorities to the administration. These proposals are at the core of our vision for this contract. We know that our jobs can be more secure and more fair, and that by creating transparent and enforceable procedures for contract lengths, renewals, and workloads, we will be freed to focus on our core work of teaching, research, service, librarianship, and clinical work, without having to worry about whether we’ll still have our jobs next semester or next year.
Our proposals say, simply, that for all faculty, including part-timers, if you are doing a satisfactory job and there is work for you to do, you should be able to keep doing it. The large majority of faculty at Pitt are on short-term renewable contracts, a system developed generations ago for a small number of temporary faculty. We all know the many reasons this demeans us and makes our work harder, and we know that a simpler, more humane system for appointing two thirds of the faculty is possible.
There should be fair and transparent procedures in place to confirm that faculty are doing a satisfactory job, and sometimes financial emergencies or other shocks may mean that there isn’t work for all of us.
But it is inefficient, unfair, and disrespectful to require us to reapply for our jobs constantly. We can and should have longer contracts, and the process of renewing our contracts should be transparent, fair, and straightforward.
The proposals we presented yesterday would also protect and strengthen tenure, establish new rights and fair procedures when faculty are laid off, and create consistent and flexible standards for promotion that respect the wide range of jobs we have in different schools.
We all know the many harms of short-term contracts, but a major one is that they erode academic freedom, another top priority from the bargaining survey. When we know that our chair or dean has total discretion to cancel our contract next term or next year, it makes it harder for us to pursue controversial lines of research, to teach challenging materials, and to speak up in committees and in shared governance, because the risk of angering the wrong person is too high.
Our proposals would also require that our assignments be reasonable and clearly specified, so that faculty are empowered to say “no” when asked to take on excessive work, and so we can see and respond when work is being unfairly distributed among different faculty.
The current system of short-term contracts has been building for decades to a crisis point. We have an opportunity now to fix this broken system, in a way that will make our jobs better and free up resources across the university to focus on our shared academic mission.
We will need your help to achieve this vision. If you haven’t done so yet, now is the perfect time to join our Communication and Action Team. The work of this team is vital to maintaining good communication between the broader faculty and those of us on the bargaining committee and to facilitating collective actions that will show the administration that we are organized, united, and ready to stand up for better working conditions.
We look forward to standing side by side with you as we work to make Pitt a better place to teach students, do research, serve library patrons, and care for patients.
In solidarity,
Your bargaining committee
|
