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Bargaining session XX and Union rally

Your Guarantee of Truthiness: All bargaining posts fact-checked by Randy Geller, HLGR and their lobbyist and public relations consultant, Marla Rae.

Union rally in support of faculty bargaining team, 12:00 Tuesday, on the Knight Library steps. Details here:

The United Academics Contract Action Team is calling on all faculty to greet the negotiating teams as they conclude next Tuesday’s bargaining session (May 7) at Noon at the northwest entrance to Knight Library. Together, we’ll send 2 clear messages: 

To our Faculty negotiators: YOU HAVE OUR SUPPORT. 

To the Administration negotiators: Failing to listen to faculty and foot dragging at the bargaining table is unacceptable.

Be there – rumor is that AD Rob Mullens will send the Oregon Duck to do a pushup for every 1% raise our team is able to extract from the admins, in solidarity with the academic side. Thanks Rob, and Go Ducks!

Bargaining starts at 8:00 AM, 122 Library, open to all. Coffee courtesy of UO Matters. Journalism dean Tim Gleason is bringing the Grand Marnier, but might be running late.

5/7/2013 Live-Blog: My take on what people said or meant to say. Nothing is a quote unless in quotes.


Prologue, from last meeting:

  • Rudnick: Your proposal cost $26 million dollars and that’s totally unrealistic! We don’t have the money any more! These problems developed over the many years of Dave Frohnmayer’s faulty leadership and they cannot be resolved in the 24 months of this contract! There is no $26 million dollars! (Which works out to 3% of UO budget, tops. Admin’s are offering 1.5%)
  • So far:

Original admin proposal:
2013: 1.5% ATB, retro to 1/1/2013
2014: 1.5% ATB, 2% Merit, No equity
2015: There’s another year to the contract? Whoops.

Union counter:
2013: 1.5% ATB, retro to 9/16/2012
2014: 1.5% ATB, 2% Merit, 3% Equity
2015: 4.0% ATB, 4% Merit, 1% Equity
NTTF floors.
10% promotion raises. 

Admin counter-counter
2013: 1.5% ATB, retro to 1/1/2013.
2014: 1.5% ATB, 2% Merit, No equity.
2015: 1.5% ATB, 3.5% Merit, No equity.
No money for floors, but a committee to set them?
No change in promotion raises.

Union counter^3: ? See below.

Mauer to Rudnick: You told us President Gottfredson was offended by the faculty attempt to meet with him in person to discuss the slow pace of his team’s bargaining. Mauer reads through timeline about the many attempts to set up a meeting. After bitching us out about this last session, Rudnick ignores his attempt to correct the record. She’s not making Gottfredson look good here.

Rudnick: Release time for faculty doing union work. No university policy or rate on buyouts. Offering 2.5 FTE each year, plus an extra 2.0 FTE for contract negotiations.

Health and safety:
Rudnick manages to drag Gottfredson’s failure to respond to the request for a meeting with the faculty into OSHA compliance. Bizarre. Cecil: Why don’t you want to put workplace violence prevention into the contract? You’re saying we should just trust you? Rudnick, no, I’m not saying you should trust us. Psaki: This is a simple paragraph to solve a real problem by providing a central place to report safety issues. What’s the problem. Rudnick: We just don’t want it in the contract. Green discusses the seriousness of a recent issue with a potentially violent student and how badly it was handled. Rudnick: There’s a committee. Problem solved! Trust us.

Facilities and support: Admin counter.
Rudnick: Everyone in the bargaining unit gets access to a shared desk. Gleason opens mouth, says one sentence, comes across as a complete jerk. Blandy keeps quiet. Lots of back and forth about office space for adjuncts. Plenty of space for the jocks, of course:

Break. They’re back.

Rudnick: Art 1, admin counter on Union recognition. We thought about this and ran up some billable hours, but basically it’s the same as before.

Admin counter on professional development.

Admin counter on Art 25: Termination Without Cause for Financial Circumstances or Reorganization.
Rudnick: Applies to NTTF and TTF.

Rudnick: We are not going to enshrine the UO Senate in the CBA. I understand that Rob Kyr will be here on Th to try and change our minds. Cecil: Can your mind be changed? Rudnick: No. Gleason and Blandy just sit there. So much for shared governance.

Mauer: What would the process be to terminate a program? Rudnick: Doug? Blandy: Senate committees. Bramhall: I know of colleges that have ended programs without going through Senate.

Sorry, this is boring as hell. Meanwhile Blandy’s Gleason’s got a new “support our troops” sticker on his topless beamer:

Hope we get to the counter on raises soon.

Mauer: Lets get to the salary counter, so you can absorb it and respond Th. Rudnick: OK

Union counter-counter-counter
2013: 1.5% ATB, retro to 9/16/2012.
2014: 3% ATB, 2% Merit, 2.5% Equity.
2015: 1.5% ATB, 3.5% Merit, 1% Equity.
2014: 3% of current NTTF salary in a pool for floors.
10% raises for promotions.

Mauer: Keep the merit and equity pools separate for TTF and NTTF. Where was your promotion offer? Rudnick: You’re right, there was none, it’s coming. Mauer: Requires policy and monitoring for retention raises. Rudnick: OK, we’ll consider it.

For TTF, this scales back the union’s overall proposal from 17% to 15%, with a slight acceleration in timing. Note that because of the FY labeling scheme, 2014 starts 7/1/2013, etc.


Art 21: Union counter on fringe benefits.
$500 voucher for child/elder care for >= 0.5 FTE. Idea is to reduce cost of job candidate visits, talks, conferences, for faculty with families.

Art 22: Union counter on Health Insurance:
$1 million pool to go towards health care benefits for those w/ less than 0.5 FTE. Given Obamacare, best not to spell out specifics.

Art 23: Union counter on retirement benefits:

Sorry, gotta go teach. Have a great rally!

Thanks to Awesome0 for photo:

16 Comments

  1. Anonymous 05/07/2013

    Is there an echo echo echo in the bargaining room?

  2. Anonymous 05/07/2013

    Geez, couldn’t the Administration come up with a few million $$$ for faculty salaries by cutting back on the lavish remodels of the executive suites, their double digit raises, Beamer perks, away game perks, etc? These savings, plus cutting out the Athletic Dept subsidies, would make up a good percentage of the $26M needed for faculty salaries.

    And at what, about $300/hr (?), it is in Rudnick’s best interest to drag this out as long as she can…

  3. Awesome0 05/07/2013

    I say the union counter with their original proposal, as that is what in the admin did (the only new item is proposed merit pool for FY14, which is year they didn’t originally propose).

    What would game theorist say, tit for tat?

  4. Awesome0 05/07/2013

    Office or desk….not necessarily both…

  5. Three-Toed Sloth 05/07/2013

    So it really comes down to this, does it? Rudnick will never, ever “enshrine” the Senate in the CBA? In an earlier session she said her resistance to incorporating the Constitution was a matter of principle — obviously Geller’s, not “hers” — and now we know what it is. I guess they really, truly do not want to be constrained by “shared” governance after all.

  6. Awesome0 05/07/2013

    Rudnick wants this to hurry long, wants to clear the building before the rally gets going….

  7. The Truth 05/07/2013

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    • UO Matters 05/07/2013

      Now now, let’s keep it clean. She did try to move them to the old ORI building, which would have right on my way to work.

    • The Truth 05/07/2013

      Hey, I kept it to one curse word!

    • UO Matters 05/07/2013

      Yeah, but it was a bit too gratuitous. Sorry, revise and resubmit.

    • Anonymous 05/08/2013

      Let the record show that UOM just saved Sharon Rudnick from her deserved ridicule. That’s grace right there. Unmerited favour.

    • The Truth 05/08/2013

      Re-submitting with less direct language.

  8. Anonymous 05/07/2013

    “Green discusses the seriousness of a recent issue with a potentially violent student and how badly it was handled.”

    Anyone have more information on this? What was Green referring to?

  9. The Truth 05/08/2013

    “Sorry, gotta go teach. Have a great rally!”

    I’m surprised that The Administration (what they deserve to be called, whatever the fuck that whiner Rudnick thinks) hasn’t tried to deliberately schedule bargaining sessions at times where UOMatters is teaching, to prevent him from blogging and embarrassing them by virtue of exposing their glaring incompetence and unpreparedness.

    One curse word, and no gratuitous insults (unless one counts terming Rudnick a whiner, but that’s just calling a spade a spade from my perspective).

    • The Editor 05/08/2013

      Thank you for your resubmission. We have now received 2 referee reports. Referee #1 was surprised that you have now used “whiner” to describe Ms Rudnick. He felt that the empirical evidence justified considerably stronger language, although he did not offer specific suggestions. Referee #2 said he liked the paper and felt it should be published as is. Having considered both reports, and read your work carefully myself, I am willing to publish it conditional on minor revisions strengthening the description. I urge you to consider terms such as “arrogant”, “overpriced”, “annoying”, “ignorant of the basic principles of negotiation”, “mercenary to a fault”, “damaging to the university”, “makes Gottfredson look stupid for paying her” and “disastrous”.

      Please submit revisions within 7 days. I do not feel it will be necessary to send this back to the referees, and you can consider this to be a conditional acceptance, subject to the above changes.

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