Leanne Serbulo, VP of Collective Bargaining
We finally finished ground rules! (View the final draft here.) Completed at yesterday’s session, this set of rules will guide AAUP’s negotiations with the administration in the weeks and months ahead. It may not feel like much progress is being made at the bargaining table, but according to Janet Gillman, the state conciliator who facilitates our sessions, the Interest-Based Bargaining (IBB) process requires a lot of front loading. We hope this initial investment of time will lead to productive discussions on key issues for AAUP members.
We spent a lot of time talking about data at yesterday’s session. Trying to get information from the administration, especially about finances and budget, has been an ongoing frustration for our union. You may remember last year’s negotiations when both AAUP and Faculty Senate demanded that the administration open the books. If we want the IBB process to work, then we need transparency about how our university operates.
We agreed to establish a financial subgroup that will be “provided access to verifiable data.” The subgroup will include members of both bargaining teams and will soon begin examining the FY 15/16 budget. We also agreed that a representative of the university’s budget office will attend an upcoming bargaining session to present the FY 15/16 budget and answer questions. I encourage you to attend and observe future bargaining sessions. As soon as we know the date and time of the budget presentation, we’ll post it on this blog.
From here on out, we’ll bargain over key issues for AAUP members. We’ll discuss the Family Friendly Task Force’s Leave Bank proposal at our next session on June 15th, 10am-4pm, SMSU 236. This proposal would allow our members to donate up to 3 hours of unused sick/vacation to a Leave Bank. Participating members could then withdraw up to 30 days paid leave time if they have an unexpected illness or life-changing event and have not accumulated enough paid time off to cover it.
Keep checking imagineportlandstate.com for more information about which issues will be discussed at upcoming bargaining sessions.