Dear colleagues,
First, we are pleased to hear that part-time faculty are beginning to receive updated contracts that include the cost-of-living increases we bargained. Some part-time faculty in the School of Education just received contracts with their first raise in over a decade!
Moving forward: Our most recent bargaining session has made it clear that we will need your help to make progress at the bargaining table. When we presented our proposals on job security to the administration in July, we were gratified to hear them respond that many of the issues our proposals addressed were also priorities for them, which they also hoped to make progress on through the bargaining process. We were looking forward to hearing the administration’s approach and seeing where we could find common ground.
So we were surprised and disappointed when they formally responded to our proposals last week. They rejected each of our proposals on Appointment and Renewal, Workload, Performance Evaluation, Promotion and Tenure, and Layoff and Recall. Their counterproposal is an expansive “Management Rights” article that says that every decision about all aspects of these areas of our jobs should be simply “vested exclusively in the Employer,” including (as part of a very long list) the exclusive right to “hire, transfer, promote, renew or non-renew, reappoint or non-reappoint, and grant tenure” and to “determine the duration of employment and length of appointment for all bargaining unit faculty members, including whether employees will be reappointed, and if so, the terms and conditions governing such reappointment.” That means, simply, that any decisions about our appointments, renewals, and tenure would be unilaterally made by the administration, with no recourse or right to appeal arbitrary or unfair decisions.
The core principle of our proposals is that if you are doing a satisfactory job and there is work for you to do, you should be able to keep doing it without constantly reapplying for your job. There are many ways to make progress on that goal, but at minimum it will require clear, enforceable, and transparent procedures for appointments and renewals that are not based on the arbitrary decisions of the administration. We voted to form a union precisely because of the urgent need to have a voice in these fundamental decisions about our jobs.
The Provost recently announced that 2022-23 is the “Year of Emotional Well-Being” at Pitt. Among the strongest contributors to faculty anxiety and stress is the fact that two-thirds of us don’t know what our economic future holds, because we have to constantly reapply for our jobs simply to continue working here. Our proposals would fix this, and meaningfully contribute to the emotional well-being of our community, by supporting stable and reliable jobs.
We do not expect that the administration would accept our proposals in full, but we do expect them to come to the table ready to bargain reasonable language that would establish clear standards and procedures for the length of our appointments, the renewal process, performance evaluations, promotion, and layoffs. Such policies are a normal part of every faculty union contract in North America. The agreements on COVID protections and part-time raises that we negotiated over the summer demonstrate that they are capable of negotiating productively when they feel pressure to find a solution. To get them to treat our contract as seriously as they treated these two MOUs, they will need a sense of urgency.
That's where you come in.
We need faculty from across the university to vocally and visibly support our collective effort to win better job security protections. The administration needs to know that this is a priority for all of us, and that we are committed to making real progress in this first contract. When we tell them, as a group, that we are not going to back down, they will be motivated to engage more productively, and to seek a reasonable agreement.
Members of the CAT will be reaching out to faculty across the university to ask you to participate in efforts to show the administration that we are standing together in affirming that our Job Security IS Emotional Well-Being, and that we are going to stand together to demand real improvements in this contract.
Sincerely,
Your bargaining committee
First, we are pleased to hear that part-time faculty are beginning to receive updated contracts that include the cost-of-living increases we bargained. Some part-time faculty in the School of Education just received contracts with their first raise in over a decade!
Moving forward: Our most recent bargaining session has made it clear that we will need your help to make progress at the bargaining table. When we presented our proposals on job security to the administration in July, we were gratified to hear them respond that many of the issues our proposals addressed were also priorities for them, which they also hoped to make progress on through the bargaining process. We were looking forward to hearing the administration’s approach and seeing where we could find common ground.
So we were surprised and disappointed when they formally responded to our proposals last week. They rejected each of our proposals on Appointment and Renewal, Workload, Performance Evaluation, Promotion and Tenure, and Layoff and Recall. Their counterproposal is an expansive “Management Rights” article that says that every decision about all aspects of these areas of our jobs should be simply “vested exclusively in the Employer,” including (as part of a very long list) the exclusive right to “hire, transfer, promote, renew or non-renew, reappoint or non-reappoint, and grant tenure” and to “determine the duration of employment and length of appointment for all bargaining unit faculty members, including whether employees will be reappointed, and if so, the terms and conditions governing such reappointment.” That means, simply, that any decisions about our appointments, renewals, and tenure would be unilaterally made by the administration, with no recourse or right to appeal arbitrary or unfair decisions.
The core principle of our proposals is that if you are doing a satisfactory job and there is work for you to do, you should be able to keep doing it without constantly reapplying for your job. There are many ways to make progress on that goal, but at minimum it will require clear, enforceable, and transparent procedures for appointments and renewals that are not based on the arbitrary decisions of the administration. We voted to form a union precisely because of the urgent need to have a voice in these fundamental decisions about our jobs.
The Provost recently announced that 2022-23 is the “Year of Emotional Well-Being” at Pitt. Among the strongest contributors to faculty anxiety and stress is the fact that two-thirds of us don’t know what our economic future holds, because we have to constantly reapply for our jobs simply to continue working here. Our proposals would fix this, and meaningfully contribute to the emotional well-being of our community, by supporting stable and reliable jobs.
We do not expect that the administration would accept our proposals in full, but we do expect them to come to the table ready to bargain reasonable language that would establish clear standards and procedures for the length of our appointments, the renewal process, performance evaluations, promotion, and layoffs. Such policies are a normal part of every faculty union contract in North America. The agreements on COVID protections and part-time raises that we negotiated over the summer demonstrate that they are capable of negotiating productively when they feel pressure to find a solution. To get them to treat our contract as seriously as they treated these two MOUs, they will need a sense of urgency.
That's where you come in.
We need faculty from across the university to vocally and visibly support our collective effort to win better job security protections. The administration needs to know that this is a priority for all of us, and that we are committed to making real progress in this first contract. When we tell them, as a group, that we are not going to back down, they will be motivated to engage more productively, and to seek a reasonable agreement.
Members of the CAT will be reaching out to faculty across the university to ask you to participate in efforts to show the administration that we are standing together in affirming that our Job Security IS Emotional Well-Being, and that we are going to stand together to demand real improvements in this contract.
Sincerely,
Your bargaining committee
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