Announcements:
Save the Date! April 3, Public Hearing on PSU's Direction, 7 - 9 pm
Testimony in front of Panelists: State Sen Michael Dembrow, former State Sen Avel Gordly, Rev. David Wheeler, State Rep Jennifer Williamson and - hopefully - a rep from the Oregon Student Association, in PSU's Native Center.
Faculty Senate to Vote on Resolution Calling for Retention of Contract Protections
for unwritten work rules and Promotion & Tenure Guidelines for Fixed-Term and Tenure-Line Faculty. Encourage Senators to support this resolution! http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~mpj/districts/districts2013.pdf
Positive Reception for PSU-AAUP Speakers to Incoming PSU Board of Trustees
Board members perked up and asked questions, shook hands, at the end of a long day on March 12th.
Call Now for Tickets for Inner-City Blues Festival! Saturday, April 5th
PSU-AAUP supports Health Care for All Oregon - 10 free tickets available: First come, First served! Call Tita: 5-4414
News - More on Each Below:
1. Nearly 800 PSU-AAUP Members Participated in Strike Authorization Vote - 94% Voted YES
2. Admin Response: SPIN + Questionable Threats - More Coming!
3. What Might we Gain by Striking, or Coming Close to a Strike?
4. A Plan to Win!
Stunning Turnout for Strike Authorization Vote!
Nearly 800 PSU-AAUP members, (796 to be precise) or 83% of the membership, participated in the Strike Authorization Vote last week! 94% voted YES, to authorize a strike, if need be.
Sample TV News Coverage: http://www.kptv.com/story/24963543/psu-professors-vote-to-authorize-a-strike
That's a remarkable mandate, representing the strength of feeling on campus that PSU is going in the wrong direction, as it continues to hack away at academic budgets while increasing spending on administration, real estate and other secondary activities.
OUS figures show that the proportion of the PSU budget spent on Instruction has fallen 6 percentage points, from nearly 39% to nearly 33% over the past 7 years alone. That's a 15% decrease - see the chart at the end of this message to see where the money went.
Admin Response: SPIN & Questionable Threats - More Coming!
In mediation on Friday, rather than recognize the Strike Authorization vote's overwhelming referendum on the Admin "offers" to
- strip out key protections from the contract,
- cut real pay,
- make only token improvements in the proportion of fixed-term faculty on multi-year contracts, and
- make no progress on planning for academic quality goals,
the Admin bargaining team said they would only move if the PSU-AAUP moved first….
NO, we moved - that's what a strike authorization vote is!
We've made several offers to compromise in previous mediation sessions, all uniformly greeted with the response that it was not movement at all, and no reciprocation.
Now, they're playing games, instead,
- making threats to lock people out of their labs, cut off e-mail access and hire substitute instructors. Admin Strike FAQs are just boiler plate from legal consultants who worked with the school district, and appear to be unfamiliar with both our contract and the legal environment of higher ed. It'd be insane to lock people out of their labs, the contract protects e-mail access and it's impossible to replace hundreds of us, on short notice, mid-term for an indefinite amount of time. Will students stick around for classes taught by managers?
- spinning like mad to misrepresent what's going on: announcing to the whole campus, including all 30,000 students, that PSU-AAUP left bargaining at noon on Friday as if we'd walked out early rather than because Mediation was SCHEDULED DAYS AHEAD OF TIME TO END AT NOON, due to teaching obligations! Then going on to assert that PSU-AAUP should make the next concession to demonstrate "good faith' - why? Because they say so, rather than demonstrating good faith themselves by doing something other than re-packaging the same offers they've been making for weeks….
- threatening PSUFA, which represents PSU's part-time faculty, with legal action for advising people NOT to take struck work, as if they were intimidating or coercing their members.
- using legal bluff and bluster to allege that our Final Offer was improper, a charge that has been soundly repudiated by our own attorneys.
Why not try actually sitting down and talking about the issues, face to face, instead of wasting everybody's time and PSU students' money on lawyers and consultants????
Prepare yourselves - it's almost bound to get worse before it gets better.
Question anything they send out! Does this seem likely? Why would the PSU-AAUP bargaining team have left at noon, perhaps to teach? Can this threat really be carried out? Wouldn't it be self-destructive? And remember, it's illegal to retaliate against anyone for striking.
Be ready to help your students, who may be put in a tough position. Chairs have been directed to line up grad students to replace us in our courses. Grad students will be obliged to continuing teaching their own courses, if we strike, but neither students nor adjuncts need agree to teach ours.
Talk to your own Chair, now charged with finding replacement instructors. They need not leap to the task...
What Might We Gain by Striking? Or Coming Close to a Strike?
It's time to think bigger! We may have an opportunity to go beyond the kinds of proposals currently on the table. Wouldn't PSU be better off with
A large proportion of fixed-term faculty on multi-year contracts?
A step system of automatic annual raises for APs to reward experience?
A program of 25 new tenure-track lines a year for 5 years?
Funding for travel to a conference a year?
We're in a Long Campaign, to improve PSU and public higher ed; what we don't get this round, we should continue to push for in a strategic plan.
A Plan to Win!
Not only are more mediation sessions being scheduled, but all of the PSU-AAUP committees are planning like crazy this week, working with resource people from national AAUP and other unions.
If you'd like to help with
- Building the Face-2-Face Network,
- Campaign Events Planning,
- Strike Planning,
- Friendraising & Fundraising,
- Writing Op-eds and Letters to the Editor, or
- Anything else!
Please let me know, and I'll put you in touch with Committee Chairs.
And we'll be letting you know about Spring Break Strike Camp, for a day during Spring Break.
We'd rather not strike, but if we have to….we'll do it up right! And have a good time doing it, too!
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Chart Translation:
Upper Admin is termed "Institutional Support," and it's remarkable to see a perceptible increase in a budget of this size.
"Auxiliaries" includes Athletics, the money spent on losses of the University Place Hotel and the Broadway Bldg, as well as the Business Incubator.
Interest is debt service on our real estate projects.