President’s Weekly Message: PSU-AAUP Bargaining and News-September 17, 2013

Welcome Back!  There's lot's of news, so we'll get a longer Fall Newsletter out to you in a few days.

Meanwhile, in bargaining on Sept. 10th, the Administration backed off their proposal to yank AP evaluations into the black box of HR.  They agreed to leave the AP evaluation procedure spelled out in the contract, allowing for clarity, transparency, participation and a developmental perspective.  No other big progress to report.

The next bargaining session has been shifted to Friday, Oct. 4th, from Noon to 3, on the 6th floor of the Market Center Building.

U of O faculty are close to finalizing their first union contract, represented jointly by AAUP and AFT, and are looking at raises of about 6% in each of the next two years.  The innovative idea is to get them closer to their peers at other universities, to ease hiring and retention.  There's a thought!  We're still stuck at the 10th percentile of PhD granting universities, and last among our specific comparators as figured by the Oregon University System.

Our clerical, administrative and facilities colleagues, represented by SEIU and bargaining with OUS, have voted to authorize their bargaining team to call a strike as soon as the first day of school, Sept. 30th, if need be.  The best thing we can do at this moment is to come out to join them for a rally at noon on Friday, Sept. 20th in the Urban Plaza.

We'll keep you posted with updates as to what we can do to help.   Come spend your lunch hour with us, PSU students, part-time faculty and SEIU, Together 4 PSU, on Friday, if you can!

PSU-AAUP has hired Marissa Johnson, to help us stay in close communication.  She's a Viking, most recently working for Rep. Michael Dembrow, higher ed's champion in the Oregon Legislature.  More on Marissa in our upcoming newsletter - hopefully you'll meet her soon!

Don't forget that we're kicking off a Membership Drive when the school year starts!  You can get a head start now, by talking to your new colleagues about how much better off we all are if everyone joins the PSU-AAUP.  As well as that incentive, we'll send you a $10 gift certificate at Fred's or Powell's for each person you sign up, and dinner for two if you sign up more new members than anyone else!  Just put your name in the upper right-hand corner of the new member form when you send it in to Tita at AAUP .  Here are some talking points, to help with that conversation.

Watch for news next week:  it looks like the PSU Administration is going after the tenure system.  A tenure-track faculty member with consistently strong reviews has been let go, "for budgetary reasons" at the same time her department is hiring.  Add this to a faculty with more and more people on short-term contract and we'll lose the long, proud tradition of academically-focused, faculty-run universities to become just another management-run business selling whatever it can.  More on this in the Fall newsletter.

Best,

Mary King, President, PSU-AAUP