All along, the UFWW bargaining team has said that no contract is better than
a bad contract. It now appears that there will be no contract until either
the administration changes its position or the administration changes.
Bargaining broke down last night over three familiar issues:
1. WORKLOAD‹Last week, the two bargaining teams reached a good tentative
agreement on teaching load that would ³continue stable teaching load
practices for faculty that maintain the historic departmental levels of
teaching.² Unfortunately, the administration continues to insist that
workload decisions be excluded from the grievance process. This would of
course make the workload agreement unenforceable and leave the
administration free to unilaterally raise workload without any real
consequences.
2. GRIEVANCE AND ARBITRATION‹We continue to be baffled as to why the
administration will not agree to a fair grievance process with binding
arbitration similar to those they have negotiated with every staff union on
this campus. Along with workload, they also want to exclude suspension
without pay and dismissal from the grievance process. In other words, the
administration would like to retain the right to suspend and/or dismiss
faculty without being held accountable to an unbiased arbitrator. They have
proposed an appeal process for suspension without pay and dismissal that
would leave the decision in the hands of a six member committee consisting
of three non-faculty members appointed by the administration and three
faculty members appointed by the union. The committee would be chaired by
the Board of Trustees Chair, who would have the tiebreaking vote, meaning
that the university administration would be the final arbiter of complaints
brought against the university. We continue to believe that the most honest
and fair way to resolve these cases would be through binding arbitration.
BUT, in the spirit of compromise and in the interests of reaching an
agreement, last night we proposed to accept their committee idea with the
small change that the tie-breaking chair be someone chosen mutually by the
administration and the union. The administration rejected this compromise.
We obviously cannot agree to an unfair and biased process where the decision
is always in the hands of the Board chair and three people beholden to him
or her.
3. SALARY‹The last proposal that the administration made on salary
increases was for a 3.2% one-time payment upon ratification and a 10%
increase in the fall of 2008. This is an improvement over previous
administration offers, but it would still leave us falling further behind
our peers. The last proposal from the UFWW was a 3.2% one-time payment upon
ratification, a 10% increase in the fall of 2008, and a 2% increase in
January of 2009. This is an extremely modest proposal and it would leave us
essentially treading water below the thirtieth percentile of our peers. If
the administration and the board of trustees want to continue to honestly
claim a salary goal of the 75th percentile of our peers--or even salaries
that are remotely competitive with those at similar universities--they must
at least agree to our proposal.
We entered negotiations yesterday ready to reach a fair agreement that would
strengthen the institution and create a context for future healthy
faculty-administration relations. The administration, despite their claims
that they wanted to reach agreement, arrived unwilling to compromise on
their stale and untenable positions. Insofar as those positions have any
reasoning behind them, they appear to be rooted in the desire to preserve
autocratic administrative control and to minimize the resources dedicated to
the academic functions of the university.
But whatever it is they may be thinking, it is clear what the
trustees and the administration are doing. They are jeopardizing the future
of this university over two issues on which they have already agreed in
principle and an amount of money that is less than two years of incoming
President Shepardıs annual salary.
The administrative bargaining team left last night with a vague
suggestion that they might get another proposal to us sometime. We will
keep you apprised of any new developments.
Sincerely,
The UFWW Bargaining Team