Hi All!
Things have slowed down a bit, as they do during the summer, but not ground to complete halt!
Did you know that UO Faculty are eligible for paid parental leave? or that EOU and SOU faculty can donate sick leave to colleagues with serious medical issues? or that Fixed Term Faculty at SOU have the job security of 3-year rolling contracts? We plan to bargain job security for fixed-term faculty members in the form of indefinite contracts, paid parental leave, academic quality and other issues, on Tuesday, August 6th, from Noon to 3:00, in Market Center Building, Room 650.
Noon to 12:30 is likely to be dedicated to an open caucus session, rather than formal bargaining. Come along to any part of the session that you can attend!
PSU-AAUP has consulted with Faculty Senate leadership to nominate a faculty member to serve on a PSU Institutional Board, and has also nominated a faculty member to sit on the newly configured Higher Education Coordinating Committee.
The Governor will decide if the faculty member of PSU's new Board will be a voting member, as urged by both the PSU Faculty Senate and PSU-AAUP, and as has been the practice on the State Board of Higher Education.
PSU cut more than 50 classes, just as the summer session was starting, leaving students and faculty in the lurch.
PSU appears to have no clear policy about when it will cut classes, or with what notice, and has not compensated faculty for their time spent preparing courses and reserved for teaching at PSU this summer. According to The Oregonian's front page article on June 21st, Provost Andrews and CLAS Dean Beatty said that "PSU can instead pack the would-be summer students into the course during the regular year, making the class bigger and adding zero additional expenses." Dean Beatty is quoted as adding "PSU professors can't be told they must teach an additional class but they also can't refuse to see their student loads increase." Apparently academic quality and student progress don't bear consideration.
Meanwhile, Portland Public Schools district administrators bargaining with the K-12 teachers seem to be following the same playbook as the PSU Administration, stating that they don't want to bargain "permissive language" that improves quality, working conditions, professional decision-making and a focus on "educating the whole child," according to Gwen Sullivan, President of the Portland Association of Teachers ; the district has proposed gutting the contract, red-lining 30 pages.
PSU-AAUP's attorney says that this broad-brush approach to "permissive language" betrays a real ignorance about the smooth workings of labor relations, jettisoning years of joint work building a workable contract, and treating "permissive language" as if it didn't belong in the contract rather than recognizing it as the creation of both sides looking to build ways of working well together. In our own bargaining sessions, PSU Administrators aren't pointing to any examples of problems created by permissive contract language in the past, or denying that it's best practice for evaluations to be both interactive and developmental.
The Bargaining Support Team's Strike Strategy Committee has convened a Summer Reading Group.
If you're interested in participating, please contact us here
Best,
Mary King,
President, PSU-AAUP