UAOSU Salary Bargaining Update

The UAOSU bargaining team and the administration team met 9:30–11 on Wednesday, April 14 on Zoom. 24 faculty members observed the session. Please read on for ways to share your thoughts on our shared priorities in this round of negotiations over wages.

During this session, the administration team gave a budget presentation and the UAOSU team asked follow-up questions, both during and after the presentation. As presented by the administration team, OSU revenue for the coming fiscal year (2021–2022) projects to be healthy overall, and certainly is much better than feared six months ago, when faculty salary reductions were still in place in order to shore-up the current-year budget.  

According to the presentation we received, state funding for next year is expected to be about $24.5M higher than initially projected. Student enrollment is looking to be up even compared to this year — a year in which enrollment was up over last year in spite of the pandemic. There’s projected to be $620M in Corvallis Education & General fund revenue, $37.5M more in revenue than the current year and $3.4M of that is not yet allocated. The budget for last year (2019–2020), the year that the COVID-19 pandemic began, projected revenue was at $596M. There’s $200M+ in the internal bank, too. In addition, many units find themselves with an increase in their reserve funds due to stronger-than-anticipated enrollment in the current year and because of cost-saving mechanisms. Overall budget losses outside of Education and General haven’t been as bad as feared and some stimulus money is available to cover some of those losses. The graph below shows budget and actual Corvallis Education & General revenue over the past few years. Things are looking up.

As we move forward in bargaining, your perspective matters. Our bargaining survey is open until 5pm today, so please take a few minutes to fill it out here: uaosu.org/survey.

In addition, we have an open session next week on Thursday, 4/22 from noon-1pm where you can learn more about this limited reopener and share in-depth comments. Register here. We would also love to see you and hear your thoughts at the Spring General Membership meeting on Thursday, April 22nd at 5 pm. Register here.

While we have bargaining sessions tentatively scheduled, we are also waiting on some information requests from the administration. Please check the Salary Bargaining page at https://www.uaosu.org/bargaining/salary-bargaining/ for the upcoming bargaining dates.

We appreciate your support. To help us secure the best possible contract, please talk to your colleagues about joining UAOSU. United, we can help make OSU an even better place to work and learn.

In solidarity,

Your bargaining team