3.30 Bargaining Update and 4.3 BoT!

Published by Megan on

In This Update

JOIN US OVER ZOOM FOR THE FRIDAY, APRIL 3RD BOARD OF TRUSTEES MEETING

As you may know, the next Board of Trustees meeting will be held virtually over Zoom on Friday, April 3rd. At the last BoT in January, over 30 UAOSU members gave testimony and delivered the Fair Contract Petition signed by hundreds of us. It is crucial that we show our strength as a union at this critical moment in our negotiation process in order to win our contract by the end of Spring Term!

In order to make our presence known, we are asking attendees to:

  • Change their Zoom profile pictures to the Strength in Unity sign
  • Change their Zoom name to add UAOSU at the beginning (for example, UAOSU Jane Doe)
  • If chat is enabled, say hello to the room from a ‘Proud UAOSU member’ (for example, “Hi, this is Jane Doe, proud UAOSU member!”)

Please find a tutorial on how to make these changes to your Zoom profile here.

Can we count on you to join us by Zooming into the BoT meeting at 10am on Friday, April 3rd? Please confirm your attendance by clicking here.

BARGAINING UPDATE

We held our second Zoom bargaining session on Monday, March 30. We have mostly worked out the kinks involved with bargaining over this platform and hope you’ll Zoom in to join us for our next session Wednesday, April 8 11am-2pm. We plan to have the Zoom link ready to circulate on Monday.

The Administration team offered counter proposals on Appointment & Reappointment and Position Descriptions & Workload. These two articles are responsive to pieces of the package of seven articles (and two letters of agreement) we proposed on March 25. We hope to receive responses to our Promotion & Tenure article and two letters of agreement at our next session. Once we’ve received these, we will have the Administration’s full package and be ready to counter-propose. We are hopeful that we can reach agreement on this large section of the contract in the next session or two.

The Administration’s proposals made some movement toward providing additional security and stability for faculty. Importantly, they have finally agreed that soft money funded faculty will receive notice of appointment renewal and nonrenewal on the same schedule as other faculty. They have also agreed that faculty will generally receive a one term notice of their course assignment and that units who routinely fail to do so will be in violation of the contract.  

While we are getting closer to agreement on these articles, there remain a few key improvements that need to be secured before we’re ready to sign.The Administration has still not committed to limiting nonrenewal of promoted fixed-term faculty to reasons of performance, funding, or program reorganization. This leaves even the longest serving, highest performing fixed-term faculty vulnerable to capricious nonrenewal. The Administration also will not commit to continuing the practice of three year appointments for Senior Instructors II or to expanding three year appointments to all fixed-term faculty who have been promoted twice. Finally, while the Administration has committed to language that would require colleges and units to have policies for providing course releases to pre-tenure faculty, their proposal would not prevent a unit or college from providing for NO release, as long as they articulated this practice in policy.

We were disappointed to hear from the Administration team that they do not intend to bring a proposal on Compensation until May. We are eager to reach resolution on this first contract to provide greater stability in these uncertain times. We have significant concerns that a two month turn around to respond to our Compensation proposal will make that difficult to accomplish. We need your help to push this process along! We’ll be back at work bargaining over these issues, Promotion & Tenure, Grievance, Arbitration, and Retrenchment (Layoff Protections) next Wednesday. Please join and help us secure these important wins.  

REGISTER TO OBSERVE BARGAINING ON MONDAY, MARCH 30

The next bargaining session is 11–2 on Wednesday, April 8 on Zoom. Register to observe the Wednesday bargaining session here. We plan to be live streaming the joint session at 11am and again at 1:30pm, with time for caucusing between.

Even if you can only join the meeting for half an hour, your attendance matters: show the administration that faculty are watching this process.We appreciate your support. You can find a full calendar of bargaining sessions on our website.

Categories: bargaining