On July 14 we reported that we filed a grievance about the removal of the Portland Streetcar benefit.
On August 4, 2017 the University declared that they did not believe the Division A grievance would resolve the issues associated with the expiring contract with the Portland Streetcar and requested interim bargaining instead. While the University previously said they did not intend to subsidize PSU-AAUP members in the new Portland Streetcar contract, they did assure us that they would maintain the status quo until interim bargaining was complete (they are legally obligated to do so)
PSU-AAUP responded "Not so fast." We can agree that the Article 7 Consultation didn't or couldn't resolve the matter. But PSU-AAUP still has the right to take the matter to arbitration. If we prevailed in arbitration, they would have to maintain the status quo until the next agreement was reached.
We are now reviewing the matter for arbitration. Our deadline to submit the Demand to Arbitrate is September 8. On August 5 we submitted an addendum to our July 14 information request. When I come back from vacation I will send out a poll to all members to get a sense of member usage of the streetcar and the lifestyle decisions that members made about commuting to PSU with the free streetcar benefit.