Summary of the Tentative Agreement

The Executive Council has approved the Tentative Agreement and has referred it to the membership for ratification. You will receive a ratification ballot in your PDX mailbox soon. The ballot will stay open until Monday April 4, 2016 11:55 PM. The negotiating team is attempting to schedule a member Q&A for the Tentative Agreement during the first week of spring term. If you do not receive an email from Election buddy.com with voting instructions, please contact Phil Lesch.

Summary of changes to PSU & PSU-AAUP Collective Bargaining Agreement
November 2015- November 2019

• Establishment of a Sick Leave Bank. Members who donate three hours of unused sick leave become eligible to withdraw up to 30 days of paid leave to cover a catastrophic illness, to care for a family member or to take parental leave.
• Non-tenure track instructional faculty, with at least six years of experience, will now be employed on Continuous Appointments rather than fixed-term contracts. Current NTTF who have reached seniority and have evidence of satisfactory evaluation will have their contracts converted to a continuous appointment with job security protections. A new evaluation system for NTTF will be constructed that provides for reviews before, at, and after the award of continuous appointments. Fixed-term appointments will still be used, but only for limited, temporary hires.
• Summer session salaries are now part of the Collective Bargaining Agreement. Faculty must be paid historic rates (2.5% of annual salary rate/credit hour).   Assignment of summer work and cancellation of classes will be monitored.
• An academic professional classification/compensation study will be commissioned and paid for by the PSU administration. The study will reorganize the current AP job families and compensation structure and create pathways for AP promotion and pay structures that recognize and reward experience and expertise.  Study results will be bargained and both parties must come to agreement before changes are implemented.
• Academic Professionals should not be assigned unreasonable and excessive workloads. AP workloads should approximate 2080 hours per year, which is about forty hours per week.  If hours or job duties exceed this average, the AP should receive a reduction in hours or workload within a reasonable time frame.  APs are professionals and should not have to provide an hour by hour accounting of their workday. There is a new labor/management resolution process academic professionals who have unreasonable workloads can use to get relief.  The process terminates in arbitration.
• Academic professional employment status was clarified. APs can be let go if they receive sanctions warranting termination, in cases of retrenchment, or if there is a change in departmental needs or programmatic requirements.
• Twelve month AAUP represented employees will not have to use vacation day during University closures.
• The Transfer of Tenure Home procedure was finalized and will be an addendum to the contract.
• All AAUP members will receive Individual Professional Development Accounts with guaranteed, annual allocations that can be used to pay for conferences, travel, professional memberships, licensure, equipment, training and more. IPDA money can accumulate in your account for up to four years.  Starting in AY 2016/17, Tenure-related faculty will receive $1000, NTTF $600 and APs $500 each year to spend on professional development activities for the life of the contract.
• Sabbatical pay rates will increase to: 85% for one term (no change), 80% for two terms and 75% for three. These changes will be instituted in the 2017/18 academic year.
• Research NTTF are eligible for continuous appointments, if their employing unit has a strong track record of being able to consistently fund their position.
• A Bridge Funding pool will be established in September 2016. This pool will temporarily fund research positions if there is an unanticipated funding lull or gap.  The/initial pool will be $70,000.  Additional funding for the pool will be determined after its pilot year.
• Faculty Enhancement Grants will remain funded at $650,000 annually and will go up to $675,000 during the 2018/19 academic year.
• Cost of living increases will be guaranteed for the life of the contract. COLAs will be pegged to the annual CPI-U rate (Consumer Price Index for the Portland/Salem metropolitan area) and will be awarded in January/February of each year.  The COLA will be no less than 1.5%/year and will be capped at 3.5%.  The initial COLA will be 2% and will be retroactive to January/February 2016.
• Market equity adjustments for tenure-related faculty will occur annually starting in 2017. Salary pools funded at 0.75%, 0.80% and 0.90% each year through 2019 will be allocated according to market equity formula used in earlier contracts.
• Post-tenure review pay increases will continue at the same rate through 2019.
• Internal/external market equity adjustments for non-tenure track faculty will occur annually starting in 2017. Salary pools funded at 0.75%, 0.80% and 0.90% each year through 2019 will be allocated to address problems with internal equity (i.e. recognizing years of service, providing pay bumps for faculty hired at ranks without promotional opportunities) and with external equity (lower than market rate salaries).
• Length of service adjustments for Academic Professionals will occur in January 2017. APs with 3-5 years of service will receive a salary increase of $500. 5-7 years $1200, 7-10 years $1600, 10-15 years $1800, and more than 15 years of service $2000.  Salary pools of 0.80% and 0.90% will be set aside in 2018 and 2019 to help fund the implementation of the class/comp study.  If bargaining over the study is not complete, APs will receive this money as an across the board adjustment.
• Economic agreements could be renegotiated if there is a fundamental change in the budget picture at PSU. Changes such as a higher state funding allocation or major PERS increases could trigger a reopener on economics.
• We agreed to a four-year contract. There will be limited reopeners in 2017.  The contract will expire in November 2019.

Questions about the TA can be directed to Leanne Serbulo, VP Collective Bargaining or any member of the bargaining team.

Sincerely,

PSU-AAUP negotiating team:
Leanne Serbulo, Gina Greco, David Hansen, Anh Ly, Michael Clark, James Woods, Pam Miller, and Phil Lesch