EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

• Today your UAOSU bargaining team secured salary increases for academic years 2021-2024 and equity adjustments for AY 2024. The agreed-upon figures represent a foundation for faculty salary increases, and these numbers may increase based on the financial health of the institution.
• Before eligible faculty members can enjoy these salary increases, our members must ratify this agreement. Details for the ratification will be coming soon.
• Progress over campus reopening negotiations has been less encouraging. The administration appears to be unwilling to implement any of the lessons learned over the past 18 months, and their proposals continue to stake out positions that prioritize administrative fiat over the health and safety of students, staff, and faculty. We believe faculty should have the right to require masks and other reasonable health and safety practices in their labs and classrooms and to transfer to remote work if required to isolate or quarantine.
• Your membership empowers us to negotiate better pay and safer working conditions for you and your colleagues, and we appreciate your support. If you haven’t had a chance, you can join your union at uaosu.org/join.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Campus Reopening Bargaining Session – Tuesday September 21st 9:30-10:30am (register here)

Info Session on Salary Agreement – Wednesday September 22nd 4-5pm (register here)

Info Session on Salary Agreement – Thursday September 23rd 12-1pm (register here)

FULL UPDATE

Salary bargaining

Your UAOSU bargaining team and the administration team met from 9:00–10:00am on Wednesday, September 15 on Zoom. Thank you to those members who were able to attend the session.

We are excited to announce that we have successfully negotiated salary increases for academic years 2021-2024. All returning faculty members who have received a satisfactory performance review will be eligible for the standard increase each year, and meritorious faculty will be eligible for additional increases in academic years 2022-2024. If you are unsure about your eligibility, or if your supervisor has erroneously told you that you are not eligible, please contact us at info@uaosu.org.

We were also successful in getting the administration to commit to a 0.5% equity pool to begin to address salary inequities. During Fiscal Year 2024 (academic year 2023-4), the administration will establish a pool equivalent to at least 0.5% of the total salary pool of bargaining unit employees for addressing equity. The agreement emphasizes this is a starting point, and that this dedicated money doesn’t preclude other measures to address inequities.

Since the administration team has made vague references to behind the scenes efforts to address inequities, we wanted to make sure they are transparent in their guidelines for distributing the pool and that UAOSU is part of this process. They have agreed to meet with us at least three times during academic year 2022-2023 so that we can provide recommendations about the appropriate distribution of the equity pool prior to implementation. The administration will provide reports to our union of how those distributions were made, and for what reasons.

In order for either of these additions to the contract to take effect, they must be ratified by you, our members. We will be sending out another email soon with information about how you can vote to ratify these exciting salary increases. This vote will be for members only, so if you haven’t had a chance, we encourage you to join your union at uaosu.org/join.

Campus reopening bargaining

The UAOSU bargaining team and the administration team met 9:30–10:30 on Tuesday, September 14 on Zoom.

At the beginning of the session, the administration team handed back two counterproposals:

• Face Coverings Requirement: The administration made no movement on this proposal, refusing to offer any concession to the safety of students or faculty. While UAOSU has requested simply that the mask mandate requiring students to wear masks indoors be extended to the end of fall term, the administration team inexplicably asserts that this prevents them from responding to public health conditions. When it was pointed out that the current lax enforcement of the mask mandate at athletic events raises concerns about the spread of COVID on campus, they claimed to have no knowledge of athletic events, asserting that this has no bearing on COVID risk in the classroom.
• Vaccination Rate: The administration continues to demonstrate a reluctance to provide useful information that would inform public health concerns at the classroom level. In the time that elapsed since our previous bargaining session, the administration has revised the vaccination program to include a weekly testing requirement for unvaccinated students and faculty; however, their bargaining team can give few definitive answers about how this testing requirement will be enforced, or how instructors will be informed if they have a situation where non-compliance may be posing a classroom health risk.

The UAOSU bargaining team also presented a proposal at the bargaining session:

• Immediate transition to remote work: While we know that many faculty are eager to return to campus and perform their work in person, OSU’s isolation and quarantine program may require any faculty member to remain off-campus for weeks at a time. Furthermore, faculty with children or other family members in their household may be required to isolate even if they are not ill and are able to work. This proposal is intended to address situations in which faculty may be required by public health and university guidelines to remain off-campus by allowing them to switch to remote work, if possible, while they are isolating. Although this proposal was intended to provide an optional middle ground that would allow for remote work in emergency situations while keeping classes in-person outside of those emergency situations, the administration’s bargaining team offered some surprising pushback. They indicated that this guarantee of remote work infringed on management’s right to determine the best course of action. We continue to hope for a more reasoned response from the administration team in future sessions.

We crafted the Immediate transition to remote work proposal, in part, as a response to numerous reports we have received from faculty indicating that requests for remote or flexible work arrangements are being mishandled. Although we have reached an agreement with the administration regarding how these requests are to be handled by the supervisors of bargaining unit members, many members are being inappropriately referred to the Equal Opportunity & Access (EOA) office to ask for accommodations. If you have made a request for a remote or flexible work arrangement and been denied, we want to hear from you. Please contact us at info@uaosu.org.

The next bargaining session is 9:30–10:30am on Tuesday, September 21 on Zoom (register here). Even if you can only drop by for half an hour, your attendance matters: show the administration that you care about a safe and respectful return to onsite work as the school year begins.

We appreciate your support.

In solidarity,

Your bargaining team