BARGAINING UPDATE
September 20, 2023
Historic win for part-time faculty! Join us at the Board of Trustees meeting next Friday to keep up the pressure for better pay
Takeaways:
We met with the administration yesterday and tentatively agreed to a major article addressing job security for part-time faculty. Job security was your top non-economic priority in the bargaining survey, and across higher education the “adjunct crisis” has created major problems and very few solutions for decades now. This TA marks a historic victory for our union in achieving transformative improvements. Under this agreement, part-time faculty appointments, after a probationary period, will be “presumptively renewable,” which means that unless specific circumstances apply—primarily demonstrable lack of work—part-time faculty will have an enforceable right to continue in their positions without having to reapply for their jobs every semester, or having to wait anxiously for the start of the semester to know if they will have a job.
We have said from the start of this process that if you are doing a good job and there is work for you to do, you should be able to keep your job without hassle or fear. This agreement fully achieves that goal for part-time faculty. It further protects our jobs by significantly increasing the notice requirements for part-time faculty whose appointments will not be renewed, ending the practice of keeping continuing faculty waiting until the last minute to know if they will have work. This article also requires the administration to offer additional work to current part-time faculty before soliciting outside candidates, so that those of us who want more work will be first in line for it.
We are also making substantial progress negotiating the other core job security articles in our contract, covering full-time non-tenure stream, tenure stream, and tenured faculty, and we hope to finalize these articles soon. It is important to remember that none of these tentative agreements will take effect until we have ratified a full contract. In order to have a full contract for the members of the union to vote on, the administration must engage with us on economic issues.
As of our Tuesday bargaining session, it has been exactly a year since we presented our compensation proposals. The progress we are making on core non-economic articles means that the administration is no longer able to plausibly argue for delaying economic bargaining. We pushed them on this at the table, but we need your help to demonstrate the importance of fair pay for all Pitt faculty.
As we turn our attention to compensation, benefits, leaves, and research support, we need to make sure that the decision-makers at Pitt know that we are united and unwavering in our commitment to our economic priorities: raising the salaries of our lowest paid members, providing real cost of living adjustments that account for inflation, rewarding faculty for experience and promotions, and creating a mechanism for faculty to receive market, equity, and merit-based salary adjustments.
Join us outside of the Board of Trustees meeting next Friday, September 29, at 10:30am in the William Pitt Union lobby to communicate directly to the Trustees that our pay has been falling behind for years and now is the time to fix it.
Let us know if you will join us here.
Our power comes from all of you. We could not have made these gains in job security without you. Together we can win fair pay for all Pitt faculty!
In solidarity,
Your bargaining committee
Tyler Bickford (chair), Professor, English, Oakland
Nicholas Bircher, Part-time Professor, Nurse Anesthesia, Oakland
Chloe Dufour, 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
Megan O’Brien, Master Teacher, Falk Laboratory School, Oakland
Sabrina Robinson, Part-time Instructor, Slavic, 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 tentatively agreed to an article that will create transformative new job security protections for part-time faculty.
- We still have not received a counter for the compensation proposal we presented to the administration exactly a year ago.
- Join us on Friday, September 29, at 10:30am in the William Pitt Union lobby to tell the Board of Trustees that our pay has been falling behind for years and now is the time to fix it! RSVP here.
We met with the administration yesterday and tentatively agreed to a major article addressing job security for part-time faculty. Job security was your top non-economic priority in the bargaining survey, and across higher education the “adjunct crisis” has created major problems and very few solutions for decades now. This TA marks a historic victory for our union in achieving transformative improvements. Under this agreement, part-time faculty appointments, after a probationary period, will be “presumptively renewable,” which means that unless specific circumstances apply—primarily demonstrable lack of work—part-time faculty will have an enforceable right to continue in their positions without having to reapply for their jobs every semester, or having to wait anxiously for the start of the semester to know if they will have a job.
We have said from the start of this process that if you are doing a good job and there is work for you to do, you should be able to keep your job without hassle or fear. This agreement fully achieves that goal for part-time faculty. It further protects our jobs by significantly increasing the notice requirements for part-time faculty whose appointments will not be renewed, ending the practice of keeping continuing faculty waiting until the last minute to know if they will have work. This article also requires the administration to offer additional work to current part-time faculty before soliciting outside candidates, so that those of us who want more work will be first in line for it.
We are also making substantial progress negotiating the other core job security articles in our contract, covering full-time non-tenure stream, tenure stream, and tenured faculty, and we hope to finalize these articles soon. It is important to remember that none of these tentative agreements will take effect until we have ratified a full contract. In order to have a full contract for the members of the union to vote on, the administration must engage with us on economic issues.
As of our Tuesday bargaining session, it has been exactly a year since we presented our compensation proposals. The progress we are making on core non-economic articles means that the administration is no longer able to plausibly argue for delaying economic bargaining. We pushed them on this at the table, but we need your help to demonstrate the importance of fair pay for all Pitt faculty.
As we turn our attention to compensation, benefits, leaves, and research support, we need to make sure that the decision-makers at Pitt know that we are united and unwavering in our commitment to our economic priorities: raising the salaries of our lowest paid members, providing real cost of living adjustments that account for inflation, rewarding faculty for experience and promotions, and creating a mechanism for faculty to receive market, equity, and merit-based salary adjustments.
Join us outside of the Board of Trustees meeting next Friday, September 29, at 10:30am in the William Pitt Union lobby to communicate directly to the Trustees that our pay has been falling behind for years and now is the time to fix it.
Let us know if you will join us here.
Our power comes from all of you. We could not have made these gains in job security without you. Together we can win fair pay for all Pitt faculty!
In solidarity,
Your bargaining committee
Tyler Bickford (chair), Professor, English, Oakland
Nicholas Bircher, Part-time Professor, Nurse Anesthesia, Oakland
Chloe Dufour, 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
Megan O’Brien, Master Teacher, Falk Laboratory School, Oakland
Sabrina Robinson, Part-time Instructor, Slavic, 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
- Status of bargaining
- Get in touch with your Council rep
- Get involved with the Communication and Action Team
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