Our affiliation fees to National AAUP help support the organization’s work on national level issues of importance to PSU-AAUP members. For example, recent work of National AAUP includes supporting a United Academics of the University Oregon member’s gender pay equity lawsuit and funding organizing at not-yet-union institutions, OSU faculty being a very recent example. Organizing OSU is important for OSU faculty, but it also helps PSU faculty because as OSU faculty raise their pay and benefits through collective bargaining it provides a strong comparator for us in our bargaining. In 2014, when we almost went on strike, National AAUP sent organizers here to support our contract campaign. National AAUP has been the academy’s most prominent defender against attacks on shared governance and academic freedom for over a hundred years. National AAUP is the author of the Redbook, a compilation of best practices in higher education that touch faculty interests that have become the gold standard at most colleges and universities in the US. Several PSU-AAUP members have leadership roles in National AAUP.
At AAUP’s annual meeting in June 2019, the delegates approved the reorganization that combines National AAUP (the professional 501c4 organization) and the National AAUP Collective Bargaining Congress (the 501c5 labor union). In addition, the AAUP annual meeting approved an affiliation fee increase effective January 1, 2020 for all AAUP chapters. In accordance with PSU-AAUP Bylaws Article 9, PSU-AAUP dues will rise by 0.028% to cover this increase (from 1.107% to 1.135%) effective January 1, 2020. This small investment, an average of about $17 per year, by each of us, will continue to give us a strong national presence as united faculty and academic professionals.