We achieved a major victory at the bargaining table today! We will have language in our new Collective Bargaining Agreement governing summer pay rates. From now on, faculty who teach in the summer will be paid 2.5% of their annual salary rate per credit (this is the historic rate of pay—basically 10% of salary for a 4 credit class). We will no longer have to worry about being paid a cut-rate salary if we teach during the summer.
Over the past three summers, our members were hit with last-minute course cancellations, reduced opportunities to teach and pay cuts. The administration was able to get away with this because we had no language in our contract protecting summer pay. Last year, AAUP launched a mini-organizing campaign around Summer Session. Thanks to all of you who participated in our surveys and focus groups and made your voices heard. Without your willingness to stand-up, we would not have been able to achieve this win.
We will release a joint announcement about our Summer Session tentative agreement soon. We still need to finalize the contract language. The teams have conceptually agreed that:
- Summer session pay rates will be 2.5% of annual salary rate/credit (restoring historic rates of pay)
- The administration will collect data about course cancellations, the mix of faculty (full-time, part-time, tenure and non-tenure track etc.) teaching during summer session and the number and distribution of sections offered.
- If we agree to a longer contract, there will be a mid-contract reopener (bargaining over limited contract articles, like salary) on summer session, so we can negotiate additional language protecting our members, if needed.
After the Summer Session agreement, we started discussing Academic Professional issues. We spent some time educating the administration about the diverse roles our Academic Professionals play at the university and the critical contributions they make to our community. We also shared stories from our listening sessions that highlighted some of the issues that APs face. Did you know that nearly one third of our Academic Professional staff suffer from salary inversion; they make less money than those with less experience?
We began identifying framing questions that will help guide our discussions about AP issues. Administration and AAUP have identified the following issues:
- Lack of promotional opportunities and skewed pay structures
- Workload and scheduling challenges, including how this relates to new Department of Labor standards that will make many APs overtime-eligible
- Ability to participate in decisions that affect AP working conditions
- Job security and evaluations
We meet again on Monday, November 9th from 8-1. We’ll continue to discuss AP issues.