A Letter of Agreement (LOA #8) between PSU-Administration and PSU-AAUP, which is part of our 2016-2019 Collective Bargaining Agreement, articulated a joint commitment to laying the foundations for a long-standing PSU-AAUP priority of creating for academic professionals (APs), a career ladder analogous to what exists for faculty.
PSU established a Classification and Compensation Study in summer 2016 that was intended to provide the groundwork for a system of academic professional classifications with compensation ladders. By spring 2018, we were expecting to have usable results and to be in bargaining over a classification and compensation system for APs. However, two years into that project, in the spring of this year, PSU-AAUP became frustrated with the poor performance and lack of results of that study. We informed PSU that this lack of progress was unacceptable and a breach of commitment we made in our 2016 Letter of Agreement. We had no choice but to give PSU an ultimatum: either we “re-set” and get this work on a fast track, or PSU-AAUP would have to organize our members around this issue.
PSU has taken our concerns seriously and accepted to the “re-set” of the AP Classification & Compensation Study — a re-set that addresses all of the deficiencies that we identified in the previous process. We had a first meeting on June 21, and all agreed, at the urging of PSU-AAUP, to the following basic conditions: PSU-AAUP will be an integral part of the process, in a way we had not; and, the study must have “deliverables” (i.e., findings that we can verify and which can inform bargaining) by April 2019, in time for us to use as we start to bargain our successor Collective Bargaining Agreement.
TWM 7-9-18