Portland, OR: The American Association of University Professors of Portland State University (PSU-AAUP) rallied today for a fair contract that defends quality, affordable higher education. Nearly 1000 people attended the rally, including students who organized a class walkout, community members, and other campus workers. Faculty declared impasse on Monday after 10 months of stalled negotiations with the Administration, allowing for a potential strike in the Spring term if no agreement is reached. read more >

Hundreds of teachers, students and other supporters picketed the University of Illinois’ at Chicago campus Tuesday as part of a two-day strike called by UIC United Faculty, the union representing more than 1,100 tenured and nontenured faculty members. read more >

PSU-AAUP to Formally Declare Impasse on Monday, Feb 24th Monday morning, we'll send a Declaration of Impasse to Oregon's Employment Relations Board. We'll announce it to the press, and invite them to our Info Picket and Rally on Thursday, Feb 27th, 11 - 1. read more >

The PSU Admin decided to play hardball with us this year, creating a crisis atmosphere with talk of a $15m "structural deficit" and elimination of 20% of programs by following DIckeson's program prioritization model, while pushing to strip entire articles - and big sections of others- from the contract. Although the Admin two months later reduced the $15m to $7.5M, and recently stated that only half that need come from academic budgets, academic units are still supposed to - Come up with 6% budget cut scenarios, and - Teach Summer Session with one-third the budgets available when Summer Session was independent, while "producing as much SCH" as ever. read more >

New England Center for Investigative Reporting 2/6/2014 The number of non-academic administrative and professional employees at U.S. colleges and universities has more than doubled in the last 25 years, vastly outpacing the growth in the number of students or faculty, according to an analysis of federal figures. read more >

NEWS: Point-by-Point Refutation of PSU Admin's Weak, Jan 30th Response to PSU-AAUP's Open Letter Outlining Our Reasons for Skepticism of the Admin Case for a $15 Million "Structural Deficit." read more >

The spin machine is in full gear at PSU - in the Admin's Thursday e-mail blast, on the Budget website, and in Pres Wiewel's remarks to PSU's incoming Board. read more >

Adjuncts are over-worked, underpaid and have little job security. It's an injustice, and it hurts higher education read more >

Just today, Jan 27th, we finished our 5th day-long mediation session, and can tell you that mediation - in the form prescribed by Oregon's Employment Relations Board - is an EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING exercise of communicating through a third party with no experience or knowledge of the University. read more >

Friday, 1/24/14 Over 100 students, faculty, and academic professionals of the Portland State community gathered for a presentation on the budget by Howard Bunsis, Professor of Accounting and Chair, National AAUP Collective Bargaining Congress. read more >

On January 20, The PSU Vanguard ran an article titled “Strikes on the Horizon?” gathers local unions and student organizations to discuss potential strike read more >

News: Will We Have to Strike? Current Status of Bargaining read more >

A Recent New York Times Article discusses the working life of Adjunct Professors read more >

We are resorting to a provocative ad in the Vanguard because we haven’t been able to obtain answers to our questions about the apparently flawed case for a structural deficit in PSU’s budget, despite weeks of asking in multiple forums. President Wiewel has been calling for big academic cuts for Fall 2014, asserting a structural deficit of $15 million, including recently at the City Club on Dec. 13th. The case presented for a structural deficit is questionable, based on * Figures that differ from those reported by the Oregon State Board of Higher Ed, and * A budget that fails to prioritize academics, spending too much on administration and “auxiliaries.” read more >

Margaret Butler, long-time Executive Director of Portland's Jobs with Justice, will start as AAUP-Oregon's first Executive Coordinator on January 21, 2015. read more >

Why Run a Provocative Ad in the Vanguard? Because we're not getting any answers, after weeks of asking. On Tuesday, Jan 14, we're running a provocative, full-page ad in the Vanguard, with an overview of the reasons that the PSU-AAUP is skeptical of the "structural deficit" in PSU's budget, and the case for serious cuts to the budgets of academic units. read more >

What's Going On at PSU? 2013 Felt Like a Series of Crises Created to Shift Spending from Academics, Undermine Faculty Power & AAUP read more >

No Progress in Mediation, What Now? Two days of mediation Dec 18th & 19th yielded nothing but worse “offers” from the PSU Administration, and no explanations for the glaring discrepancies in the “case” for the budget cuts. read more >

We sat through 16 hours of mediation on Weds and Thurs, experiencing in concentrated and clarified form President Wiewel's idea of "negotiations:" read more >

It's the end of the year, grades will soon be in, and while this week we are headed into mediation and the Administration is demanding a plan from Departments to cut 1/5th of the Summer Session budget without reducing SCH, it's a good time to take a - short - break from thinking about everything that should be better at PSU than it is, and think about what we collectively are managing to accomplish, despite everything. read more >