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Union’s take on bargaining progress, Altmann’s ghostwriter

2/25/2013: My live-blogging of the bargaining sessions is mostly sober, but not that reflective:

Rudnick seems to be scheming to weaken the Faculty Personnel Committee. Check out last year’s FPC report, chaired by Mike Russo, here. It includes three pages on issues with current procedures, here. Looks like considerable overlap with the issues the union has identified. Also see the last page: Acting Provost Lorraine Davis refused to meet and discuss cases where he over-rules the FPC, and the FPC has concerns about recent decisions to give particular administrators academic tenure even though they have no recent research output. (Thanks to Russo for correction in comments – it was Davis, not Bean last year.Bean was on sabbatical, how could I forget? See here for a bit about Jim Bean’s past intransigence on this issue.)

The faculty union has posted their take on last week here. A snippet?

Tenure and Promotion:

The Administration trumpeted its counter-proposal on Tenure and Promotion this week as cementing current policy-and they cast our quite mild departures from current policy as patronizing to the faculty and bizarre.[1] Actually, our proposal followed current practice very closely, except for some instances where we tried to solve real problems we heard about repeatedly from faculty. We were alarmed to see that the administration made an ominous departure from current policy in proposing to eliminate the PTRAC (Promotion, Tenure, Retention Appeal Committee), a Senate committee also called for in the Oregon Administrative Rules (OAR’s), which our proposal preserves. The need for a faculty committee that can review personnel decisions by the Provost strikes us as essential. By rejecting our Article 14, which provides for an appeals committee of faculty, the administration is impinging on shared governance and violating accepted standards of faculty involvement in tenure and promotion. We will work to ensure that faculty and peer review are central to the process.

We’re concerned that the Administration announced about the Oregon Administrative Rules (OARs), to which we refer in many of our proposals,

“We are trying to avoid reference to OARs because we are moving toward an independent board….They are going to be moot.”

I still haven’t heard if Gottfredson and Rudnick have succeeded in moving the sessions on salary off campus, to make it more difficult for the faculty to find out what is really going on.

Likewise, still no response from Dave Hubin to my efforts to find out who is ghostwriting for Barbara Altmann on the administration’s blog. I would have thought there are hundreds of ghostwriters out there and all you have to do to find one is search for ‘ghostwriters nyc‘ online. Therefore, trying to find that person is like finding a needle in a haystack. That public records request is now more than a month old:

Initial Request Date: 01/23/2013
Status: Requesting/Reviewing Records

this is a public records request for

1) the names and contact information of all of the editors and writers for the website http://uo-ua.uoregon.edu/.

2) all notes for and drafts of the post identified as Negotiation Update #3January 21, 2013with names of the authors/editors of each document.

3) a copy of any emails showing who read/commented on/approved this post before publication.

10 Comments

  1. Anonymous 02/25/2013

    Why defend PTR decisions in more than one forum?

  2. Anonymous 02/26/2013

    Why would you think Altmann has a ghostwriter?

    • Anonymous 02/26/2013

      Because the admin said she isn’t writing those posts.

    • Anonymous 02/26/2013

      Why does it matter who is writing the posts?

    • Anonymous 02/26/2013

      UO-M’s assumption, so I presume, is that the blog is the admin mouthpiece and they’ve put Altmann’s name and photo on it to make it seem sort of faculty-friendly, since among the JH crew Altmann is regarded as popular with faculty, including those active in the union. UO-M is assuming there’s some sinister in what he considers a subterfuge.

      But I agree with Anon: it really doesn’t matter. JH can’t be using BA’s name and image without her permission. If she’s allowed that under duress or willingly–whether or not she’s also writing the blog; whether or not anybody admits it–matters little.

      It would simplify things if she just said “yes, I write that” or “the blog represents a collective view which it’s my job to convey”. But it doesn’t matter.

      We have regular statements about the negotiations from one side–JH with BA’s picture–and from the other–UA, anonymously written–and in the middle (?) we have UO-M’s version.

      Would there be a point in questioning whether UO-M is the actual author of the versions here?!

  3. Anonymous 02/26/2013

    The union’s “take” is carefully crafted.

    • Anonymous 02/26/2013

      Would you prefer it be carelessly crafted? What’s your point?

    • Anonymous 02/26/2013

      Luminous prose.

    • Anonymous 02/26/2013

      “carefully crafted” is surely a compliment; would be if I’d written something

    • Anonymous 02/26/2013

      Altmann is a specialist in Medieval French poetry….

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