Member News Fall 2016
Welcome back. Here's what your chapter has been doing since spring.
#President's Message #IPDAs Membership and Organizing Unit Rep Trainings Membership Meetings Conversation Series Distinguished Professor Donated Sick Leave Bank Modification of Appendix E2 Internal and External Market Equity Comparators NTTF Evaluation Policy and Procedures Elimination of GSE Proposal Development Coordinator/Proposal Editor SBA Course Cap Policy Misuse of Administrative Leave Post Tenure Review Guidelines Violation Return from Leave Directives Sabbatical Leave Layoff of GSE PDC/PE position Johnnies Poultry Warnings Annual Audit National AAUP Dues Increase Political Endorsements and Support #Measure 97 #About CBA
Presidents Message
Welcome Academic Year 2016-17!
José Padín, President
Another academic year has begun, and our union is again ready to play a vital role representing faculty and academic professionals!
Our member-leaders —all volunteers! — will be representing PSU faculty and academic professionals on quite a few consequential fronts. A partial list of our important work this year includes:
• Search for a new PSU President. PSU-AAUP is participating in the search committee.
• New evaluation system for non-tenure track (NTT) faculty. In the last contract we made a historic gain for the economic security and academic freedom of our colleagues off the tenure track — access to continuous appointments. We are currently working on an evaluation system that institutionalizes a fair system of peer review for these continuous contracts.
• External pay equity. We are part of a campus work group working with an external consultant to develop a new group of comparator universities, and a methodology, to guide PSU movement towards equity with other universities. High time! — we must make a decisive move from bottom decile of the pay distribution for PhD granting institutions.
• Internal pay equity. We are also working on developing a methodology to identify and remedy internal pay inequities at PSU.
• Towards Career Ladders for Academic Professionals. We are part of a work group, and a study, that we hope moves us closer to something like step system for academic professionals PSU-AAUP has sought for years; a system for academic professionals that rewards long-term retention of talent with prospects for a internal career ladder at PSU.
• State-Level Advocacy. PSU-AAUP member leaders — all volunteers! — are very active, alongside colleagues at other Oregon universities, on statewide action through our Oregon Conference of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP-OR). The priorities of our work at a statewide level for this year are organized into four areas:
- Ethical Priorities for University Budgets
- Strategies for Redressing Racial Inequities
- Best-Practices for Stakeholder-Board of Trustee Relations at Public Universities
- Articulating the faculty and academic professional voice for quality, affordable, higher education and taking it to public decision-makers in the state legislature, the Governor’s office, and the Higher Education Coordinating Commission.
Please continue reading below, as Kellie Gallagher (IELP faculty), our Vice-President for Membership and Organizing, has an exciting program of PSU-AAUP Campus Conversations planned for this academic year.
Welcome back for what should be an exciting new year.
Revised Collective Bargaining Agreement is Here
The Collective Bargaining Agreement is a living document that changes with time. The last published document captures the basic agreement executed with a term and an expiration date. The Negotiating team meets and negotiates, however, during the entire term of the agreement. When we reach agreement, we consummate those agreements in MOUs that become appertenant to the executed Collective Bargaining Agreement. The above link is that latest version, with the MOUs executed since ratification at the end of the agreement. We will notified members each time there is an amended agreement.
Individual Professional Development Accounts (IPDA) are funded and available for use
The IPDAs were funded on July 1. To access your IPDA, members should send a request in writing to their supervisor explaining in detail how you wish to use the allocated funds. Include with the request any documentation that explains the requested expense or activity.
The supervisor approves the request, then forwards the request to the Dean’s office. The Dean is the gatekeeper on all IPDAs.
Should you have difficulty accessing your IPDA, contact Phil Lesch.
Membership and Organizing
By Kellie Gallagher, Vice President Membership and Organizing
I’d like to extend a warm welcome back, and I hope this message finds you rested and ready for the 2016-2017 Academic Year. I’m looking forward to the exciting events we have planned for the upcoming year. For your convenience, each term has been scheduled by week consistently throughout the year.
Week 3 and Week 7- Unit Rep/Action Team Meetings
As usual, we will have two Unit Rep/Action Team Meetings Fall Term, and one per term in Winter and Spring. These meetings will focus on active training and practical tips to help strengthen our network and improve communication. We will have two meeting options for Week 3 and two meeting options for Week 7 in order to accommodate varying schedules. We are always looking for more Unit Reps, so if you are interested or know someone who might be, please don’t hesitate to contact me. No experience necessary!
Fall 2016
Week 3: 10/10 or 10/11
Week 7: 11/8 or 11/9
Winter Week 3: 1/24 or 1/25
Spring Week 3: 4/18 or 4/19
Week 5- Membership Meetings
We will also have our once per term Membership Meeting in Week 5, which will be focused on updating membership on the most pressing issues of the moment and collecting your thoughts about any issues that may be on your mind.
Fall Week 5: 10/25
Winter Week 5: 2/8
Spring Week 5: 5/2
Week 6 and Week 8- Conversation Series
Finally, this year I’m excited to introduce a twice a term Conversation Series. Fall Term the topics will be Women in the Workplace (11/2) and Racial Justice in the Workplace (11/16). This series and the topics addressed evolved from feedback received last year at membership meetings. The hope is that a dialogue is established and that practical avenues of action are identified. We are currently seeking member volunteers with expertise in these areas to help facilitate the conversations. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you are interested in volunteering your expertise to these events.
Fall
Week 6: Women in the Workplace (11/2)
Week 8: Racial Justice in the Workplace (11/16)
Winter
Week 6: LGBTQ Persons in the Workplace (2/15)
Week 8: Parents in the Workplace (3/1)
Spring
Week 6: Persons with Disabilities in the Workplace (5/10)
Week 8: International Persons in the Workplace (5/24)
Again, I wish you a warm welcome back, and please don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions, comments, concerns, or if you would like to learn more about how you can make a difference with PSU AAUP!
Collective Bargaining
Distinguished Professor Designation- No agreement reached
The PSU-AAUP Negotiating Team met with administration in July to discuss creating the Distinguished professor designation. These sessions were after the PSU-AAUP Negotiating Team held a forum with faculty members with the rank of full professor regarding their interest in this matter. The Negotiating team also learned the following:
1. “Distinguished Professor” was prescribed specifically as a rank in the 2015 PSU strategic plan;
2. PSU Standard 580-020-0005 provides for “Distinguished Professor” as a rank; and
3. The process the faculty described at the June 3 professor forum looked far more like a process for attainment of a rank, with a peer development and review process, than the proposal set forth by Lisa Zurk.
On July 27 the team emailed a counter proposal to administration that PSU-AAUP and OAA jointly request the faculty senate create an ad hoc committee to develop guidelines for promotion to a new rank of Distinguished Professor. On September 26 the administration advised that they were withdrawing their proposal for a distinguished professor designation and that the Provost would advise faculty senate that we were unable to reach agreement on creating the designation.
PSU-AAUP remains willing to jointly propose with the administration the creation of a new rank of Distinguished Professor.
Article 32 Donated Sick Leave Bank Modification
In July the Negotiating team met with the administration to address a procedural problem in the language in Article 32 Section 2. Human Resources determined that it could not implement the language as agreed; there was no way to track the “pledge” process we created. In July we consummated an MOU that provided for donated sick leave bank hours to be deducted from the members department at the time of donation. An index account was set up to track the donated sick leave hours once they were converted to dollars. The MOU is here.
Modification of Appendix E2 in the Collective Bargaining Agreement
The Administration requested two modifications to Appendix E2- the job description for Fixed term faculty.
1. Change in the title of the ranks affected to Non-Tenure Track Faculty so they could use the template for all non-Tenure track faculty hires, and
2. The addition of Key Cultural competencies that have inserted in job descriptions for Tenure track and academic professional hires.
The Negotiating team meet with administration in August. The team offered to agree to the change in the title for ranks affected. The Negotiating team did not, however, agree to add the key cultural competencies. The team is very supportive of the idea of having all members be culturally competent and having that as a requirement, but they couldn’t agree to the ones proposed for the following reasons:
1. They were developed by OGDI management without any faculty input;
2. The competencies, as written, are overly broad; and
3. The competencies, as written, do not describe expectations that can be evaluated, rewarded, or disciplined.
The Negotiating team offered to enter into a more specific dialog about cultural competencies that could be applied to all employees. We are awaiting the administration’s response to that offer.
We generated an MOU that modified the title of Appendix E2 and signed it. We are waiting for the Administration to sign and finalize it.
Update September 30, 2016. The Administration signed the MOU, and it is fully executed.
Internal and External Market Equity Comparators
In the CBA PSU-AAUP and the Administration agreed to meet to determine how to develop a comparator set of external institutions, and internal benchmarks for upcoming external and internal equity adjustments. A subset of the Negotiating Team met with Administration twice in August and decided to send out a Request for Quote (RFQ) from an external consultant to develop the methodology for both the external and internal equity study, and then provide us with the external and internal comparators. PSU-AAUP provided HR a substantive revision to the scope of work in the RFQ. The administration accepted most of the revision. The RFQ is nearly complete and is expected to go out by mid-October for completion of the project before the end of the year.
New Non-Tenure Track Evaluation Policy and Procedures in the Promotion and Tenure Guidelines
On June 6 the Faculty Senate approved the procedure for the review of NTTF before, at the point of, and after continuous appointment. This procedure was the work of the NTTF review task force, which was created and implemented during bargaining in Letter of Agreement #5.
As usual, PSU-AAUP submitted its Demand to Bargaining pursuant to Article 14 Section 3 where PSU-AAUP has the right to provide input into criteria in the Promotion and Tenure Guidelines, and to negotiate procedures.
The Negotiating team met once with administration to discuss several issues with the procedure that was adopted by the faculty senate. The Negotiating team is finished working on its revision draft and the MOU and sent it back to the administration. We have a follow up negotiation session scheduled for mid October. We understand that departments have to develop their guidelines from our final document, so we are addressing this as high priority. We are currently projecting that the final version will go to ratification of the membership (all non-tenure track AAUP members) around the end of October.
Elimination of the GSE Proposal Development Coordinator/Proposal Editor (PDC/PE) Position
In June the Graduate School of Education provided notice of layoff to its PDC/PE. In addition to filing a grievance about technical violations in the layoff, PSU-AAUP filed a Demand to Bargain the decision and the effects of the decision to eliminate proposal development support for GSE faculty members. Proposal development support has been a key support for GSE faculty members in their pursuit of external funding since 2005. With a proposal developer on staff, funded proposals in GSE went from approximately 3-4 per year to more than 25 per year and research expenditures have grown from $2.2 million to more than $7 million. Administration cites “lack of work” as justification for the elimination of the position. However, as a majority of experienced senior faculty have retired and the new faculty hired have limited experience in developing federal grant proposals, the amount of work is in fact growing. In addition to the reduced number of proposals, the reduced quality of proposals from new applicants without support could damage the GSE reputation with federal agencies and reduce the number of points each proposal currently earns for having this resource.
To PSU-AAUP, ultimately, what the layoff means is that all research development support exclusive of the RSP budget disappears and full responsibility for the proposal reverts back to the faculty member.
We expect this change to have a significant adverse impact on GSE faculty members in the number of grants funded per year, and how those funded grants will be evaluated in post tenure review or promotion and tenure for junior faculty.
The PSU-AAUP Negotiating team met with the administration in September to present our concerns. We will meet again in early October to hear the administration’s response and continue the discussion.
SBA Course Cap Policy
The School of Business has promulgated a policy that appears to increase class size, and faculty workload by 30 to 50% based upon the school’s need to convert sections to the larger classrooms in the new SBA building. A Demand to Bargain was sent at the end of September and we expect to begin bargaining soon.
Grievances
Misuse of Administrative Leave
In August, 2 faculty members were placed on administrative leave with pay while they were being investigated by the Office of Internal Audit for potential violations of the Financial Irregularity policy. PSU-AAUP filed a grievance under Article 28 Division A of the CBA seeking expedited resolution of the matter. PSU-AAUP formally protested a similar misuse of administrative leave in 2015- that grievance was approved for arbitration and PSU-AAUP issued a demand to arbitrate which we immediately placed in abeyance so we could attempt to negotiate a resolution. Negotiations stalled after two sessions due to our inability to meet while participating in Interest Based Bargaining on the 2015-19 CBA.
PSU-AAUP and Administration participated in the first session in September. We agreed to pick where we left off last year in bargaining the matter, and we have a follow up session soon after the commencement of term.
Post Tenure Review Guidelines violation
A faculty member underwent Post Tenure Review and was found by their Department Chair equivalent to “not meet standards” under research, but to meet standards overall. The criteria used for the research standard was publication record. In accordance with the policy, the faculty member sought to appeal the decision that she did not meet research standards to the Provost. The Provost, however, refused to hear the appeal, stating that the appeal process did not apply if the faculty member overall met standards. We disagree. PSU-AAUP filed a Division B grievance commencing at Step Two with the Provost challenging her unwillingness to hear the appeal, and also challenging the publication record as the criteria for meeting the standard for research.
PSU-AAUP’s position is that the publication record cannot be a criterion for satisfactory productivity in research because: 1. The PTR guidelines measure engagement, not output; 2. Publication is outside the faculty member’s control and the PTR guidelines require criteria that are within the faculty member’s control; and 3. If a separate standard is going to be established for each subarea of the Post Tenure Review, then each subarea is subject to appeal or challenge pursuant to the guidelines.
The grievance was denied at Step Two and is scheduled for review at Step Three- the President’s office in October.
Return from Leave Directives change working conditions for NTTF-I
Two ranked instructional nontenure track faculty members who were placed on leave and then brought back from leave were issued directives that fundamentally changed their working conditions: they were expected to be present on campus during normal business hours unless they were out on approved leave or approved travel, or unless they had a telecommuting agreement to work off campus. This is the first instance that a ranked instructional nontenure track faculty member were given restrictions of this nature and a violation of past practice. PSU-AAUP sees this as a potential threat to all NTTF-I who currently have flexibility around their schedules and do not have a requirement to have a telecommuting agreement. PSU-AAUP filed a Division A grievance seeking expedited dispute resolution. We are awaiting the grievance meeting.
Sabbatical Leave Policy
In spring 2016 PSU-AAUP were made aware of 2013 memo to Department Chairs that was not previously provided to PSU-AAUP that changed the eligibility for sabbatical leave: it discontinued the use of multi-year sabbaticals, and allowed departments to deny sabbatical applications based upon financial hardship. PSU-AAUP filed a Division A grievance and a demand to bargain on the sabbatical leave changes. We immediately put the grievance in abeyance to facilitate negotiations. PSU-AAUP met with administration in spring and summer, and we agreed that PSU-AAUP would negotiate a new sabbatical leave policy without the restrictions that were mysteriously added in the 2013 memo. The first draft has been created, and we are seeking a follow up meeting to finalize the policy with the idea that eventually all policy about sabbatical leaves will be put in Article 33 of the CBA.
Layoff of the GSE Proposal Development Coordinator/Proposal Editor (PDC/PE) position
The explanation for layoff of the GSE PDC/PE position, which is required by Article 17 Section 5, contained a factually inaccurate explanation. Absent a legitimate business reason for the layoff, the layoff may be unjustified. PSU-AAUP filed a Division B grievance at Step One as well as a demand to bargain the effects of the layoff, which was a transfer of work from the GSE PDC/PE onto the GSE’s newest faculty members. In effect this constitutes an elimination of support for faculty members seeking external funding. The GSE PDC/PE has been very successful in helping faculty members succeed in obtaining grants, with a success rate much higher than the national average. The PSU-AAUP Negotiating team and administration met once and we expect to continue bargaining, and hear the administration’s formal response to our “effects” concerns in the beginning of October.
Association Business
Executive Council jumps in with OEA and the Oregon AFL-CIO to do amicus brief on “Johnnie’s Poultry Warnings” for SEIU Local 503 in PECBA ULP Case No UP-048-14
PSU-AAUP joined the Oregon Education Association (OEA) and the Oregon AFL-CIO to contribute an amicus brief in the above Unfair Practice Charge.
The issue was whether the Oregon Employment Relations Board (ERB) should adopt a long standing NLRB rule that requires employers to give their employees certain assurances (called “Johnnie’s Poultry Warnings”) when they are being interviewed by the employer and who are potential witnesses in an unfair practice case. The Administrative Law Judge’s recommendation to the ERB was to NOT adopt the rule. Amicus briefs were needed to help persuade the full board to adopt the rule.
Under the NLRB rule, the employer must tell the employee:
1. The purpose of questioning,
2. That the employee is not required to participate, and
3. That there will be no reprisals for refusing to participate.
This is an important issue for all labor unions, and the ALJ’s recommendation to NOT adopt Johnnie’s Poultry warnings leaves all employees in public service vulnerable to retaliation and reprisals if they do not agree to testify on the employer’s behalf in unfair practice cases.
The brief was completed in July and presented to the Board. We await the ERB’s decision. The brief is here.
Update September 30. The ERB decision is in. Unfortunately, the ERB majority essentially punted on the issue. They decided “not to decide” whether PECBA requires Johnnie’s Poultry warnings, because under the facts of this particular case, they found that the NLRB’s Johnnie’s Poultry rule would not have applied (because the employees who were interrogated were not questioned about their own protected activity). Member Weyand dissented, because he believes the Board should have addressed the question of whether PECBA requires such warnings anyway, and he would have answered that question affirmatively. Because the majority chose not to address the issue, it remains unclear whether public employers in Oregon must provide such warnings or not.
2016 Annual Audit is Complete
The annual independent audit of the Association’s financial statements is complete. We passed our audit with no issues. The Auditors report and financial statements, and the Auditors Statement of Expenses and Allocation of Expenses between Chargeable Expenses and Non-chargeable expenses are available for member review in the AAUP office. Please contact Phil Lesch to arrange a time to review the statements.
National AAUP dues increase announced
At its annual meeting in June, National AAUP announced a dues increase of 2.0305% effective January 1, 2017. Pursuant to AAUP Bylaws Section 7, PSU-AAUP dues will increase to 1.051% effective January 1, 2017. At the annual meeting the AAUP Collective Bargaining Congress (AAUP-CBC) announced its dues would not increase in 2017. The final dues for PSU-AAUP for 2017 will be 1.051%.
Legislative and Political Action
At its July meeting the Executive Council voted to support the recommendation of the legislative committee to endorse and support the following candidates for State Office:
Diego Hernandez
Barbara Smith Warner
Rob Nosse
Karin Power
Mark Meek
Janeen Sallman
Shari Malstrom
Teresa Alonso Leon
Kathleen Taylor
Lew Frederick
Jennifer Williamson
Tina Kotek
Ginny Burdick
Janelle Bynum
Susan McLain
Julie Fahey
Pam Marsh
Mark Reynolds
Gena Goodman-Campbell
Brad Avakian
Kate Brown
Michael Dembrow
Tobias Read
Executive Council Endorses Measure 97
The Executive Council has been aware of Measure 97 since it was Initiative Petition 28, prior to signature gathering. The Executive Council endorsed this initiative on October 29, 2015.
PSU-AAUP’s support for Measure 97 is based on several objectives: first, that Oregon’s tax system become more sustainable, fair, and adequate to support essential services and second, that it be sufficient to ensure that public education’s share is robust and enduring.
Measure 97 will enhance Oregon’s General Fund by an estimated $5 billion per biennium – enough to ensure the adequacy of funding for education, health care, and senior services. Our college entrants will be better prepared for university studies if they are able to have the public K-12 schools envisioned by the Quality Education Model, which this initiative will ensure.