Bargaining Session 12 Update (7.27.19)
The UAOSU bargaining team and the administration team met 9–5 on Saturday, July 27 in the LaSells Stewart Center. Thirteen faculty members observed the session.
This was the first session at which the new Assistant Provost for Academic Employee and Labor Relations Heather Horn acted as the administration’s lead negotiation, following the departure of their former lead negotiator.
The session was more productive than previous sessions. The teams tentatively agreed to four articles on boilerplate topics: No Strike, No Lockout; Separability; Labor–Management Meetings; and Availability of the Agreement. The communication between the teams improved with the replacement of the administration’s lead negotiator, but there remain many points of contention and many issues left to resolve.
The administration team proposed replacing our three-page article on Sexual Harassment, Bullying, and Discriminationwith a scanty section in their counterproposal on Non-Discrimination. Their minimalist paragraph gave the barest lip service to our proposal to give faculty meaningful input into processes addressing sexual harassment, bullying, and discrimination. Their proposal completely ignored our other proposals to establish informal processes for resolving conflicts and providing for remedial justice when possible, and to make sure that faculty who have endured a traumatic experience have the support they need to recover. Their reluctance was based on the specious excuse that discussing the process might violate individuals’ privacy: they want us to trust them to reform these processes whose weaknesses many faculty have experienced. This is unacceptable to us.
Overall, we have presented proposals on 47 articles and the administration has presented proposals on 12.
You can find a full exchange of proposals from Saturday’s session here.
The next bargaining session is 12–3 on Tuesday, August 13 in the LaSells Stewart Center.
We appreciate your support. You can find a full calendar of Summer Term bargaining sessions on our website.
In solidarity,