Good news from yesterday’s bargaining session…
- We signed off on a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that protects faculty who will be joining the new PSU/OHSU School of Public Health. Affected faculty will now vote to ratify this MOU.
- We also agreed to a Transfer of Tenure Home policy which will become part of our new contract.
- PSU administration will provide money for post-tenure review pay increases for all five quintiles (all faculty eligible for post-tenure review over the next couple of years). The pay increase will remain the same for all five groups scheduled to undergo post-tenure review. This was part of the MOU that our membership ratified in September.
We began yesterday’s session by listing all of the bargaining issues we want to discuss in these negotiations and putting a time frame around them. We categorized issues as short (we can resolve in less than one session), medium (we’ll need 1-3 sessions) or long (we’ll need to devote 4 or more sessions to the issue). We agreed to tackle a few short issues during our next session and to prioritize a medium-term issue next: summer session. As most AAUP members know, we’ve seen drastic cuts to summer session pay and class offerings in recent years.
We reviewed the contract language on improving job security for non-tenure track instructors (NTTF) by establishing a system of continuous appointments. We also reviewed language for letters of agreement that ask Faculty Senate to address emeritus status and evaluation and review guidelines for NTTF. In the next session, we will officially “TA” (tentatively agree) upon these documents, meaning they’ll be part of our next Collective Bargaining Agreement.
In the afternoon, we began using the Interest-Based Bargaining Process to discuss Summer Session issues. We came up with a framing question to guide our discussion: How do we compensate faculty during summer session in a way that is equitable, predictable and sustainable, while considering students’ needs? This question will drive our discussions and help us frame options for resolving this issue.
If you’ve been concerned about the loss of summer session offerings or pay, we encourage you to join us at our next bargaining session. We have a few contract language issues we need to deal with in the morning, but we should be well into the summer session discussion by the afternoon. We meet next Friday, October 23rd from 10:00-4:00 in Smith 323.
Thanks to everyone who joined us yesterday to observe bargaining and attend the lunchtime discussion. Your presence reminds the PSU administration that the issues we’re negotiating are deeply important to faculty across the university.