BARGAINING UPDATE
March 16, 2023
Takeaways:
Dear colleagues,
We met with the administration on Thursday of last week, as well as this Monday and Tuesday, for full-day bargaining sessions. We spent these three long days exchanging proposals and making progress on Discipline & Discharge and Grievance & Arbitration, and we were pleased that the administration finally showed that they, too, can respond to proposals on the same day—an issue that had been seriously delaying bargaining in the past. But we did not receive a counterproposal on compensation as we have been asking for. We were also anticipating counterproposals from the administration on Appointments & Renewals, Tenure & Promotion, Governance, and Academic Freedom, and we did not receive any of those.
We made progress on two key procedural articles.
These are the core procedural protections in a union contract, and we are pleased to be making progress toward agreements on both.
On Thursday we also presented a counterproposal on Workloads. As we said last month, the administration’s proposal does include new requirements for individual job descriptions and unit-level workload policies, which are important improvements that will increase transparency and create more consistent expectations, creating baseline protections against unreasonable assignments. We discussed the other areas of our Workloads policy that we are asking the administration to consider, including stronger protections against workload increases, fair treatment for part-time faculty, and pathways for part-time faculty to increase their workloads if desired, including to full-time. We are looking forward to a counterproposal from the administration addressing these issues.
We are pleased that the administration agreed to meet for three full days of bargaining this month. However, for these sessions to be as productive as possible, the administration needs to match the Union’s level of effort between bargaining sessions and show up to the table with counterproposals.
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!
- We are making progress towards agreements on Discipline & Discharge and Grievance & Arbitration, two key procedural articles that will create important new protections and establish a fair process for resolving disputes.
- We continue to push for stronger definitions of workloads and against workload increases.
- We are heartened by progress made during this month’s bargaining sessions but continue to wait for a counterproposal on compensation as well as new counterproposals from the administration on important articles such as Appointments & Renewals, Tenure & Promotion, Shared Governance, and Academic Freedom.
Dear colleagues,
We met with the administration on Thursday of last week, as well as this Monday and Tuesday, for full-day bargaining sessions. We spent these three long days exchanging proposals and making progress on Discipline & Discharge and Grievance & Arbitration, and we were pleased that the administration finally showed that they, too, can respond to proposals on the same day—an issue that had been seriously delaying bargaining in the past. But we did not receive a counterproposal on compensation as we have been asking for. We were also anticipating counterproposals from the administration on Appointments & Renewals, Tenure & Promotion, Governance, and Academic Freedom, and we did not receive any of those.
We made progress on two key procedural articles.
- Discipline & Discharge: We appear to be in agreement on the key element of “just cause” protections for discipline. Just cause means, among other things, that we can only be disciplined if an administrator has real evidence of misconduct, and any discipline must be proportional to the misconduct.
- Grievance & Arbitration: We appear to be in agreement on binding neutral arbitration in the grievance procedure. Unlike current Pitt appeal processes that end with a Dean, the Provost, or the Chancellor having the last word in a dispute, a grievance procedure with arbitration means that if the union or any faculty member ever have disputes with the administration there will be a process for resolving these disputes that culminates in a neutral third-party arbitrator reviewing the facts and making a determination.
These are the core procedural protections in a union contract, and we are pleased to be making progress toward agreements on both.
On Thursday we also presented a counterproposal on Workloads. As we said last month, the administration’s proposal does include new requirements for individual job descriptions and unit-level workload policies, which are important improvements that will increase transparency and create more consistent expectations, creating baseline protections against unreasonable assignments. We discussed the other areas of our Workloads policy that we are asking the administration to consider, including stronger protections against workload increases, fair treatment for part-time faculty, and pathways for part-time faculty to increase their workloads if desired, including to full-time. We are looking forward to a counterproposal from the administration addressing these issues.
We are pleased that the administration agreed to meet for three full days of bargaining this month. However, for these sessions to be as productive as possible, the administration needs to match the Union’s level of effort between bargaining sessions and show up to the table with counterproposals.
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!
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