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Bargaining XLI: Union strikes deal with "The University"

Breaking news: Union Takes the Goat

  • Faculty get average 12% raises (all in place by July 1, 2014, 10 months from now) 
  • $350 goat signing bonus (pro-rated by FTE)
  • Increases in sabbatical and promotion raises
  • Admins agree to leave Senate COI/COC (consulting) rules in place
  • Admins agree old IP policy stays unless union agrees to changes
  • Admins can’t snoop into email without rules, notification
  • Admins agree to a free speech policy that gives faculty the de facto (but not explicit) right to criticize UO policies and actions
  • Admins agree to serious new NTTF protections
  • President Gottfredson gets to call himself “The University” (of Nike, or of Oregon?)
  • Noted tobacco company litigator Sharon Rudnick and her consultants walk off with a cool $1M in student tuition, and she avoids a restraining order barring her from campus
My personal take on the raises: 

 These ~12% raises are substantial. About half will be in our paychecks when the contract is signed, the rest in July 2014. However these raises are not enough to get average UO salaries by rank and department to the levels of our comparators, as Lariviere intended to do by fall 2014. More on this later, but some info on what that will take is here. Obviously it is still the goal of the union to do this. Bargaining for the next contract’s raises, to start in summer 2015, will begin in January or so of 2015.

The union argued for more merit and equity money (which can be used to reward faculty in more productive/competitive departments). Gottfredson’s team fought against this to the bitter end, and won a pyrrhic victory on this point.

I suppose one possibility is that the administration would have given the faculty more money if we hadn’t unionized, but they are such bitter and petty people that instead they decided to punish us for our effrontery. If this is true, someone – not me – might argue unionization was a mistake.

Another possibility is that getting UO faculty pay to our comparators is simply not “job #1” for President Gottfredson, who has many other priorities. His initial offer – 1.5% retroactive for 2/3 of year 0, then 1.5% ATB and 2% for merit in year 1 – was a sincere best offer reflecting those priorities. The union team got us that, plus a bit more than he wanted to pay in year 2, plus sabbatical and promotion raises, etc. And a goat.

My view is that there’s more truth to the latter possibility. I’d remind everyone that getting these raises out of the administration took months of struggle and hard work by the faculty volunteers on the bargaining team, and the AAUP’s Mike Mauer and the AFT’s David Cecil. 

They did this in the face of determined resistance from the UO administration, including repeated refusals by VPFA Jamie Moffitt to provide basic data on UO’s financial picture and forecasts. President Gottfredson’s lawyer Randy Geller and Sharon Rudnick pulled a variety of cheap stunts, such as threatening to sabotage faculty consulting work, take away existing rights to intellectual property, and repeal the UO Senate’s free speech and academic freedom policies. 

I don’t think those tools are going to work for our administrators next time. 

Ratification vote scheduled for 10/8, details to come.





9/18/2013: Bargaining now, Wednesday, 10AM to ?, Room 101 Knight Library. Free Coffee.

Thursday’s session was quite the party, bring your colleagues.

9/16/2013 update: The free speech fight between President Gottfredson and his faculty has gone global. Colleen Flaherty at Inside Higher Ed broke the story on Thursday, then CUNY’s Corey Robin posted his take on his blog and on the popular Crooked Timber (tagline: Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made). He included a call to faculty worldwide to write President Gottfredson about this nastiness, and from the emails I’ve seen, they certainly have. The pro academic freedom Foundation for Individual Rights in Education blogged about it here, and Betsy Hammond of the Oregonian has a related story here. The latest updates on the admins anti free speech and academic freedom proposals are here. The language our administrators can’t live with?

“All University employees retain the right to address any matter of institutional policy or action without fear of institutional discipline or restraint.” 

The administration’s bizarre “open letter” accusing me of being anti-university is here. I don’t get a lot of visitors from Saudi Arabia, but I can understand why they’d be interested in this issue. Still nothing from North Korea though.

For Wednesday, items still on the table include salary, consulting, IP, free speech and NTTF contracts. The rumor from the crew planning the inaugural Faculty Club Goat Roast is that Scott Coltrane will be at the bargaining session, to answer your questions about his Sunday RG Op-Ed:

Bargaining should be a family friendly event this time. President Gottfredson’s lead negotiator Sharon Rudnick just received a prestigious international award for her work defending Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds from frivolous lawsuits filed by the families of their deceased customers, and should be in a happier than usual frame of mind. By our count Rudnick hasn’t threatened or grabbed any faculty since the 8/29 session, though someone might want to get a fact-check on that from Barbara Altmann at Monday’s head’s retreat.

PDFs of proposals submitted 9/12/2013 here.

Disclaimer: My respectful opinion of what people said, or were thinking but were too decent or well-paid to say. Nothing is a quote unless in quotes. If you don’t like my blog read Luebke’s.

Live Blog:

10:04: ~20 faculty so far. Free coffee and juice. Admin team includes Altmann, Blandy, Rudnick, Gleason and Grado. Waiting for the faculty side to come back for caucus.
10:21: They’re all here.

Art 14, appeals, admin counter. Rudnick didn’t bring enough copies for the crowd.

Rudnick: We won’t let union get involved in picking the promotion appeals committee. Provost’s call. (Problem is that it’s all insiders.)

Mauer: How about faculty nominate, provosts confirms?

Rudnick: We’d need to caucus.

Art 25, Termination w/o Cause, Admin counter.

Rudnick: We’re willing to agree no declaration of exigency and terminations w/o cause, because Jamie is so flush with liquid reserves. The well is full.

Lots of coffee over there too folks, have some courtesy of UO Matters.

Rudnick: The last termination of an NTTF was 1991, and there has apparently never been a termination of a tenured professor, though that Harbaugh guy is pushing the line.

Art 7, union counter on Academic Freedom, Free Speech.

The union counter includes explicit protection for the freedom “to engage in internal criticism, and to participate in public debate”. Also “The University Administration encourages and supports open, vigorous, and challenging debate …”

Mauer: We didn’t expect the administration to have such a problem with free speech. We appreciate that you finally backed off last week, after getting shredded in the press.

Rudnick and Altmann: Why did you take out the “con rispetto” part. Mauer: Whoops, you can put it back. (Big mistake, IMHO. This is way weaker than the April Senate policy Margie Paris wrote.)

10:47, Caucus break. So here’s some appropriate music: http://caucascapades.wordpress.com/

~40 faculty sitting here on the group W bench, having a great time talking about our special crimes.

11:53: They’re back

Mauer: Counter on Art 14, Appeal of tenure or promotion. We “At least one of the members shall be appointed from a list of nominees …” Rudnick: List of 3? Mauer: more than 1. Rudnick: 2.5. Mauer: at least 2. Rudnick: Deal.

Art 25, Termination w/o cause, union counter.

Mauer: Appreciate pledge not to declare financial exigency, want protections for other reasons for terminations. Adequate notice, demonstrable financial need, “legitimate academic need”.

AEI:

Cecil: We may wrap up bargaining today. For us, moving forward is difficult given what’s happening at AEI. 3-4 colleagues are not being renewed for reasons we don’t understand.

We want to let you know that why we are probably going to move off the Art 9 protections, but we hope we can find a way to bring these problems up in the future. If we can’t get you to agree with us on this, we at least hope that can get you to understand this issue. One of the AEI members moved to Eugene 5 years ago, got cancer, and is now being let go.

Rudnick: We hear you, we have met with AEI and we will continue to work with you on these issues. We have agreed to your language requiring explanations for terminations, and we will implement this for these terminations as a matter of professional respect.

12:11. Lunch break til 1:30.

1:41, the admins are back.

Rudnick: Art 25, somthing about NTTF extensions to one-year, Geller’s Ok with it.

Mauer: On overhead transparency, you have our proposal, counter?

Rudnick: We have heard the concerns about Kimberly Espy, we will facilitate a meeting with her, the union, and appropriate faculty.

Article 9, contracts:

Mauer: We understand you are not willing to commit to an expectation of continued employment. Our compromise language deals with length of contracts, library,

Rudnick: How about “shall have 3 year contracts”? Mauer: OK. Rudnick, we’ll need to caucus at next break.

Art 49, computers and information assets, union counter.

Mauer: 2.c. Admin must notify union if they take away email or network access.
Sec 7: Sticking point was “reasonable expectation of privacy” words which Geller gagged on. This language creates this expectation, without making Geller cry.  Requires admins to notify union in a timely manner if they start snooping around.

1:56 Rudnick to Gleason: “Are you OK Tim?” Caucus break so the admins can check.

2:10: They’re back, OK with the Art 9 contracts.

MAUER: We have a 3 part package. On the money, faculty are shamefully underpaid relative to peers, UO has the funds to fix this. But we recognize you have moved, acknowledged that UO has problems. It’s not enough, but you have made movement from your initial 5.5% take it or leave it to ~12%.

So, we could accept your last proposal, IF: You stop over-reaching on the IP. We want you to sign a formal MOU on this, establishing a committee and maintaining the status quo in the meantime. On consulting, you guys are insane. We propose you drop the whole thing and go back to the current Senate policy. Deal?

2:17 PM. Rudnick: We’re going to caucus.

2:30 They’re back, Rudnick takes the deal, says Gottfredson will too.

Salary:

92 Comments

  1. Anonymous 09/15/2013

    Coltrane op-ed was a joke, no?

  2. Anonymous 09/17/2013

    The Scott Coltrane I have worked with the past several years would not have written such crap. He had to agree to this dribble given his current role……. sad but true.

  3. Goat Committee 09/17/2013

    We’re still in the planning stages. If you have expertise with fire, knives, and goats, please email your qualifications to [email protected]

  4. Awesome0 09/18/2013

    And alas the union barely breaks even for the TTF. 11.8 over three years. We could have had roughly 3.5×3=10.5 with no union that (what the admins seem to be giving themselves). With dues at 1.25 percent that comes out to 11.75. The union has suck all the rents. The big winners, NTTF who have been awarded more job security (which they deserve), and raises for the first time ever perhaps,

    For the TTF

    1. It doesn’t seem like we have a guarantee of shared governance in the contract
    2. The salary increase, while nice, doesn’t suggest that we even had enough bargaining power to shift university policy in terms of setting up a long term plan to address the large salary gaps and does a little to reverse the tide. Any rents have been extracted through our union dues.
    3. A bunch of fighting over policies which were never in question before.

    So how is the union improving things for TTF, other than increasing the cost of higher NTTF which will cause the university to focus on hiring more TTFs or GTFs.

    I think I’m voting against the contract. Why should I vote for it??

    • Anonymous 09/18/2013

      While I too am disappointed in where things now seem to stand, do you think that the raise the admin offered pre-emptively would even had been offered had the union not come into existence? I don’t.

    • Awesome0 09/18/2013

      Even bringing me up to par with brand new asst profs would have been a 6 percent raise, and I was told this equity adjustment was in the works prior to the union forming.

    • Anonymous 09/18/2013

      I have to agree with Awesome0’s points. In the end, the battles over academic freedom and other policy issues that we had previously taken for granted ended up being a smokescreen to distract attention away from the fundamental economic issues and disparities. I’m voting “no” because I believe the union capitulated way too soon. Let’s get Mauer and Cecil back to the negotiating table after the proposed CBA is roundly rejected to push further.

    • Georgia O'Well 09/18/2013

      The University has always been at war with salary inequity.

  5. Awesome0 09/18/2013

    I mean shoot, before the union, the department head told me us older assistants would be bumped to match the newer assistants (roughly 6 percent) and associates would have been bumped 10 percent to match associate hires.

    Our equity pool to deal with that, 1.5 percent.

    Really really disappointed right now.

  6. Anonymous 09/18/2013

    The TTFs just got played. Take the union dues and run seems to be the strategy of the union negotiators. I’m definitely voting against this crappy deal.

  7. Anonymous 09/18/2013

    I am very dissapointed. Worked my butt off, got tenure last year… my raise was enough for a ticket to the movies. This deal sucks for me.

  8. Anonymous 09/18/2013

    So what happens if faculty vote not to accept the contract?

    • Keith Appleby 09/20/2013

      “So what happens if faculty vote not to accept the contract?”

      If faculty vote not to accept the contract, then it would mean that you would be sending the bargaining teams back to the table so you could get a better deal.

  9. Anonymous 09/18/2013

    This contract is shaping up to be a serious disappointment. Our administrators are goats’ asses.

  10. Awesome0 09/18/2013

    Coltrane wouldn’t have published the op-ed with numbers unless they were sure the union would accept the white flag was ready to fly a week ago. Mauer and Cecil have bigger (or newer) fish to go fry.

  11. Anonymous 09/18/2013

    The deal was the best probably we could have gotten. I agree that the NTTF are the winners–although there are crucial gains they wanted and didn’t get. But that was true from the beginning. It was the NTTF who most needed and wanted a union. Many TTF were fellow travellers who signed on as a way to express their many, various dissatisfactions, as well as out of genuine solidarity with NTTF.

    TTF get relatively little out of this, for sure, except a huge blow to morale as the admin threw all kinds of spanners into the negotiations unnecessarily (academic freedom, IP, nomenclature, governance, COI/COC).

    But to Awesome0 I would say that unless your Head put it into writing, his/her promises meant little. The admin has promised raises here on various occasions (e.g., Lariviere plan) only to renege. Some contingency always arises. Heads can offer the moon, at some vague point in the future, to any number of faculty they want to keep pacified enough to stay off the market. That doesn’t mean the raise would have actually ever wound up on your pocket.

    So I, for one, am glad to have any raise–and will give the union credit for security it. And there is no question that the bargaining team put in a lot of hard work, many hours, and their lawyers were good too.

    • Awesome0 09/18/2013

      Fuck this contract. Give the TTF their own union or none at all.

    • Anonymous 09/18/2013

      “Many TTF were fellow travellers who signed on as a way to express their many, various dissatisfactions, as well as out of genuine solidarity with NTTF.”

      I don’t know how many “many” is. I thought the point of collective bargaining was that everybody ends up better off if we band together. That’s how the union was sold to us — not as a speech act or a charity for NTTFs. Many TTFs signed on with that expectation. Many TTFs opposed a single union for TTFs and NTTFs but then hoped they’d turn out to be wrong.

      If your goal is to drive a wedge between TTFs and NTTFs, remarks like the one above couldn’t be calculated better. If the union wants broad support for this contract, they better explain to us how we are all better off collectively.

    • Anonymous 09/18/2013

      Just to clarify, in making the statement you quote, I had no goal and there was no calculation. Just my assessment. Please do not take it as representing any point of view other than mine individually. And since I’m not one of the TTF who signed a card last year, I may be wrong about the motivations of those who did. That’s just my sense of the sentiments I heard.

  12. Anonymous 09/18/2013

    I’d like to second the comment from Anonymous about the deal being best probable. Admin, heads, and deans have made noises for years about compression, equity, inversion being addressed…on the horizon. Inconsistencies in promises across schools and departments for the 11 years I have been at UO. The contract pulls back the curtain on OZ.

  13. Anonymous 09/18/2013

    I’ve already heard some grumbling from NTTFs about this deal. I don’t know if that’s representative of the broader sentiment.

    I’m a TTF and I’m not exactly jumping up and down. As Awesome0 says, for TTFs the raises are the only meaningful thing to come out of this process. Obviously we’ll never know what would have happened if there hadn’t been a union. But there was plenty of talk of CAS being ready to go through with its old raise plan. Are these so-so raises, minus dues, enough of a real gain that the union deserves credit for them? Hard to say.

    Why are the raises the only meaningful thing? Because most of the bullet points at the top of the post are about how the union got the administration to agree not to do stupid stuff they probably never would have suggested except as a strategic position in negotiation. Which contributes to the impression that the union got out-maneuvered. The more they try to claim them as victories, the stronger that impression will be.

    • Anonymous 09/18/2013

      I’m funding-contingent NTTF and from where I’m sitting, these ARE important victories. By getting them to put the “status quo” into writing, they are now bound by law to obey it, combined with other parts of this contract that force them to actually put statements and reasons for certain actions into writing. Something I think this blog has provided ample evidence that the Administration is practically allergic to.

      As for the raises? Yeah, I’m a little disappointed too, but I’ll take a little disappointment over another year of smiling sadly as my PI believes empty promises from upstairs about being allowed to give raises.

    • UO Matters 09/18/2013

      The Senate white paper was in what, 2000? It had no effect on pay. The union has been far more effective.

      The admin dug in their heels. The union’s threat point was a strike. Tough to pull off for a new union.

      On salary, obviously UO has more money. We get 5% now, 6.5% more starting summer 2014. Bargaining starts again in 18 months, we keep getting that 6.5% in the contract, compounded, and after 4-5 years we’ll be close to comparators.

    • Anonymous 09/18/2013

      The possibility of a strike should at least have been put to a vote. Most TTF I know were ready to strike. We’ll never know now if a strike (esp. if one had been scheduled to coincide with the SEIU’s strike on the first day of classes) might’ve made a difference. I’m afraid that holding out hope for the next bargaining session is wishful thinking.

    • Anonymous 09/18/2013

      I hope funding-contingent NTTFs still have jobs after these raises given how grim the grant landscape is right now.

  14. Anonymous 09/18/2013

    After reading about the union’s capitulation, I’m ready for a union card-burning ceremony and goat roast.

    • Anonymous 09/18/2013

      Don’t burn your card just yet. You’ll need to hang on to it (or sign up and get one, if you don’t have one yet) in order to vote on the contract.

  15. Anonymous 09/18/2013

    The gains in this contract are not just raises, but also processes that will create transparency and accountability for administration, in places where there were none before. Documentation and grievances will give us more bargaining power for the second contract. Without this contract, I don’t see how we will improve the UO.

  16. Anonymous 09/18/2013

    All that dust kicked up for this?

  17. Anonymous 09/18/2013

    The union has done more for the faculty in a year than the Senate has ever done.

  18. Anonymous 09/18/2013

    A 12% increase, all within 10 months? I’ll take that deal.

    • Anonymous 09/18/2013

      12% average. I must be bad at math because I still haven’t figured out what they mean by average in this context.

    • Anonymous 09/18/2013

      Precise raise depends on merit and equity distributions.

    • vlad 09/19/2013

      Is it right to assume that individual departments or schools are free to make additional (individual) merit/equity increases should they coose to do so and have the means? I remember early on something about the union only setting floors or minima in the contract. Can someone close to the union clarify this point? If no othermerit/euity adjustments can be made at dept/college levels, then contract would be less attractive. Thanks for any clarification.

    • Three-Toed Sloth 09/19/2013

      Yes. That is correct. Take promotion increases: some units give out 10%. What’s changed is that now, all will give out at least 8%. Same goes for the targets of poaching who go to their deans, looking for counter-offers.

    • UO Matters 09/20/2013

      Thanks for clarification, Sloth. That’s my understanding too. These raises are floors, not ceilings. There are no prohibitions against giving larger raises.

      However, the policies for doing so do have to be transparent, and the admins agreed to let the union participate in determining the allocation of the pitifully small amount of equity money that JH agreed to leave in the contract.

      If Gottfredson decided to add additional merit or equity money, and then allocate it in a secret fashion, I think it’s possible that the union could file a grievance. The probability of these joint events, weighted by the likely amount of money, seems unlikely to feed a goat for more than a few days.

      And to “shocked”: I don’t think this will happen, but of course I’ll check the data for faculty in and out of the BU, and for administrators, as well as keep an eye out for new administrative bloat.

  19. Anonymous 09/18/2013

    I’ve been here for many a long year and I’ve never seen a raise half this substantial. There have been promises about compression and equity and comparators and all that for years. It never changes. The only thing that’s different this time? The union. I never thought I’d see a raise of more than 2% in my lifetime. I’m amazed at all the grumbling. Did anyone actually think we’d get *more*? I’m amazed we got this much.

    • Anonymous 09/18/2013

      I’ve been here for a while and have received several raises more than 2% (non-promotion). I wonder what the difference is.

    • Anonymous 09/18/2013

      I’m in the humanities. Would that be it?

  20. awesome0 09/18/2013

    I have had a bit to reflect. I can live with 5 to 6 annually as the new normal. The onus falls on us to get external offers to deal with equity, as it is obvious that won’t be the focus of future contracts. Of course along with the support of department heads and other colleagues to go to bat for us with the dean’s.

    • Severinus de Monzambano 09/18/2013

      I have to disagree with you, awesom0. It is not at all clear that equity “won’t be the focus of future contracts.” If I had to guess, and at this point it would be pure speculation of course, I would expect that equity would be on the agenda of every negotiation until we bring ourselves up from the bottom of the heap among our comparators. But of course the only way to make sure that happens is to get involved and stay involved.

    • Anonymous 09/18/2013

      Hmmm. Maybe. I’m not at all sure 5-6% annual will be the new normal. That seems to me wishful thinking.

    • Three-Toed Sloth 09/20/2013

      Yes. That is wishful thinking. But our likelihood of getting will be directly proportional to energy that bargaining unit members pour into making it happen. If we all sit back and let the usual suspects handle everything, we won’t get as much as we want.

  21. Anonymous 09/19/2013

    Dog says

    I offer my perspective on all of this below

    1. That the nttf came out better than the TTF was an expected outcome

    2. I do not believe the ttf have gained much from this process other than a free one term sabattical

    3. Had we gotten 3.5% raises on may 2012,13,14 that would be 10.87% by July 1 2014 – the union did not improve upon this

    4. While a 12% raise in just ten months sounds really good – you have already gone 28 months without any raise

    5. The first senate white paper came out in 1998 and was revised in 2000 – in 2000 JTM isuued significant raises which were larger than those the union has achieved. Since 2000 ofcourse things have gone down hill in terms of faculty ccompensation

    6. The size of the merit raise pool is a joke and might force some heads to give zero percent raises so that some faculty get four percent merit. This just causes more internal politics and stress

    • UO Matters 09/19/2013

      The union argued for more merit and equity money (which can be used to reward faculty in more productive departments). Gottfredson’s team fought against this to the bitter end.

      I suppose one possibility is that his administration would have given the faculty more money if we hadn’t unionized, but they are bitter and petty people, who wanted to punish us for our effrontery.

      Another possibility is that getting UO faculty pay to our comparators is simply not “job #1” for President Gottfredson, that his initial 5.5% offer was a sincere best offer, and that the union team then got us that, plus a bit more than he wanted to pay in year 2, plus sabbaticals and promotion raises etc. And a goat.

      My view is that there’s more truth to the latter possibility. I’d remind everyone that doing this took months of struggle and hard work by the volunteers on the bargaining team, in the face of determined resistance from the UO administration.

    • Anonymous 09/19/2013

      On point 3: Gottfredson wasn’t offering anything like 3 years of 3.5 until after the union had been applying pressure for months. There’s no reason to believe any raise of that sort would have been forthcoming; it would likely have just been more closed door spoils doled out to the well connected.

      On point 4: A fair chunk of this money will be retroactive, covering the period of the negotiations.

    • Anonymous 09/19/2013

      dog says

      I think its 1.5% and retroactive to Jan 1 2013 – that would be more of of
      small chunk.

      I also think one’s perspective on this overall result depends on whether
      or not your in CAS – I think faculty outside of CAS probably benefited more
      from this process compared to faculty inside of CAS – unless, of course, your
      a CAS assistant professor that already is paid above the average of your
      peer comparators- that profile also benefited.

    • Severinus de Monzambano 09/19/2013

      I would add that “heads” will no longer be in a position “to give zero percent so that some faculty get four percent merit.” This is not a zero-sum game. Instead, departments will have to generate criteria for estimating merit, and in fact have been doing so for several months now, in anticipation of this outcome. The criteria will be applied, and the merit increases apportioned accordingly. It will be, in other words, a transparent process. Achieving this has been one of the principal aims of United Academics all along, quite apart from the particular numbers in any particular contract.

    • Anonymous 09/19/2013

      Well yea, it is a zero-sum game. That’s kinda’ the point.

    • awesome0 09/19/2013

      Just so we’re straight we were never offered 3 years at 3.5. We were offered 2 years at 5 (1.5 plus 3.5). The admin never budged from that number. All they ever changed was the goat and equity in fy15 and full prof review bumps. They held there guns on the take it or live it offer from Feb. I think fy15 brings an important precedent that we need to continue.

    • Anonymous 09/19/2013

      Dog says

      To be more clear. My 3.5% x 3 hypothesis is the trajectory I believe we were on before the union thing. I understand that after the union thing that offer never appeared. Remember phase 2 equity – for CAS –was suppose to happen on Jan 1 — the money was available for this but by then union negotiations were commencing and so that process was cancelled.

    • Awesome0 09/19/2013

      Fair enough. I agree as that seems to be the raises the admins are giving themselves. We would have got about the same IMHO.

      I’m bummed about the CAS equity rumored cancellation, but hopefully given the fact that some departments in CAS face huge external equity problems despite being very productive, those departments will get an allocation of equity beyond 1.5 percent. But figuring out that stuff is beyond my pay grade.

      But the sabbatical policy is a welcome change. As is the post tenure bump, even though that stuff won’t affect me for several years.

    • Severinus de Monzambano 09/19/2013

      Dog’s 3 x 3.5% hypothesis takes us into some pretty speculative terrain. It’s a widely held belief that this was headed our way; but it’s also the case that administrations typically hold out the prospect of big raises in order to head off unionization. I haven’t any idea whether this was Johnson Hall’s calculation, but if it was they would have been working out of the standard playbook. What we do know is that when it came to negotiating a contractually binding raise, on which they could not renege unilaterally, the administration’s offer was a lot lower – 5% over two years, as awesome0 says.

      As for zero-sums: under the new arrangement, department heads will not be getting sum for merit increases, to distribute as they see fit, but a pledge to reward faculty according predetermined, departmental criteria for merit increases, whatever they may be, and whatever the fiscal outcome.

  22. Anonymous 09/19/2013

    This is a victory, period. I have been here more than a dozen years and have seen 5 raises and only a few that ever approached a cost of living. I am sure there is more to this deal than UOM’s bullet points above, which are real gains for a lot of people. I look forward to seeing the whole contract.

  23. Anonymous 09/19/2013

    At least two things are clear.

    1) the union negotiators are owed a thank you by all.
    2) the faculty are owed an apology by the administrators.

    Take the money, however small, and adopt 6 percent raises as the new norm.

  24. Anonymous 09/19/2013

    Dear Dog and the other Grumblers:
    What is wrong with you? You actually think that the Faculty would have gotten raises in ’12, ’13, ’14 without the union? What planet do you live on because you certainly don’t work at UO. The revolving door of Presidents had no intention of giving raises after Lariviere was booted. And even those raises, at least in CAS and some other colleges, only went to the most egregious cases of internal compression. They did virtually nothing to solve the equity problem. The current Admin didn’t even want to address and equity problem….at all….ever. The White Paper was meaningless to them. Every year the admin becomes more bloated and causes the Operating Budget to balloon. Then they say that they don’t have money to give raises. I’ve been hearing this since at least 2008. They pay themselves as the comparators’ rates but not us.

    Further the raises for major “post-tenure” review for Fulls is huge. There are ton around campus who never even heard of it, let alone got it. The one quarter 100% paid sabbatical may not mean anything to you, but there are a ton of associates who can’t afford any sabbatical –why? Because we don’t pay them enough! The union are the people who pointed out to the Admins how ridiculous it was to tell people, “do more research,” but not pay enough for even a quarter of sabbatical. Even more astonishing, it was the union that point out to them that they should actually “budget” for sabbaticals….pretty much from the moment an assistant is hired.

    Six weeks paid maternity may mean nothing to you, but it means an awful lot to the Assistants and Associates who have children and need to go an entire quarter without being paid.

    Knowing how your department is governed and having a say in how merit raises are decided, also may not mean anything to you…maybe you are all full profs and have known for ages how things “are done” in your dept. But I’ve been here for 10 years and I never saw the merit guidelines that were on file in the Dean’s office for my department until we had reviews this year. And BTW, they were ridiculous, and no one in our dept had ever seen them. We tried to fix them fast for the reviews, but now the Contract affords us the opportunity to really spend some time to figure them out and to get everyone’s input.

    The Admins have FINALLY had to be more transparent in how they behave…I don’t know about you…maybe you have special pull up top…but a lot of faculty don’t…and if the union did nothing more but get us more transparency and force the Admins to let us know what policies are and aren’t…or even have a faculty handbook to which we can refer…then I’m all for it.

    Good job union. I hate joining things but this has convinced me.

    • Anonymous 09/19/2013

      Dog

      1. As of fall 2011 PTR raises were $4000 (prior to that they were $2000)

      2. As of fall 2012 Promotion raises to full were 10% – now they are 8%

      3. The previous sabbatical compensation was 85% for one term which works out
      to 5% reduction in 9 months academic salary

      4. I believe, but can not prove, that within CAS there was a fully developed
      staged equity raise plan with Phase I starting in May 2011. I believe the
      union formation issue interrupted this plan. So yes, I do believe that within
      CAS there was an aggressive equity raise plan involving annual equity raises.

    • Anonymous 09/19/2013

      Both Dog and “Dear-Dog” Anonymous are right!!

    • Anonymous 09/19/2013

      Dog says

      I am not grumbling tho the perception is otherwise. I am simply stating that I Don,t believe the TTF gained significantly from this very protracted process – this might be a minority opinion

    • Anonymous 09/19/2013

      I share Dog’s skepticism about benefits to the TTF. Perhaps I’m being obtuse, but I was dumbfounded that the union declined to make a final counterproposal. What in the hell did they have to lose? Moreover, given the recent disclosure at the provost’s retreat that there was, indeed, a significant surplus (as we had suspected all along), the union negotiators folded too quickly IMHO.

    • UO Matters 09/19/2013

      Bargaining for the next contract starts in 14 months. As a union member you will have the right to vote for officers and representatives, and help us extract a better deal from President Gottfredson and whatever lackey he next hires to represent him at the bargaining table.

  25. Anonymous 09/19/2013

    I appreciate your general take on this UOM. You are among those who invested quite a bit of valuable service to the university over the last year, and it should be recognized.

    • Anonymous 09/20/2013

      And you are the professors that are supposed to be teaching critical thinking.

  26. Texas Guy 09/19/2013

    Hear hear, UO Matters has done yeoman work in informing us all.

    • Anonymous 09/19/2013

      Seconded! However painful to watch unfold, I’m grateful UOM gave us all a window on the negotiations. The wee bit of commentary and sarcasm was a small price to pay. Beats the patronizing b.s. the admin calls summarizing.

      Hearty thanks to UOM!

    • Anonymous 09/19/2013

      “The wee bit of commentary and sarcasm” was part of the upside for me, not a price to be paid at all.

      Moreover, the back and forth provides retired interim-provosts an accessible publishing outlet.

    • Anonymous 09/19/2013

      Ditto. Between UOM and Luebke, the reportage has almost made up for the times I couldn’t be in the room(s).

  27. Anonymous 09/19/2013

    I wholeheartedly agree that UOM has provided both valuable and entertaining commentary and information through this.

    • Oryx 09/20/2013

      Strongly agree — good job, UOM!

  28. Awesome0 09/19/2013

    If the union really wants us to ratify the contract, they will prorate the dues by the amount of the raises passed. FY14 they get 5/12*whatever dues are, and in FY15 they get the full dues.

    I think that would be the most fair. Anyone on the committees trying to drum support for ratification, this would go a long way to help appease some of the TTF who feel a little anti-climatic about the final economic proposal, and ultimately were angered by the tricks the admin tried regarding consulting and IP at the least minute, and were surprised that these scare tactics seemed to work.

    I appreciate your hard work.

    Now its time to get the support of the TTF and the NTTF.

    Prorate the dues, would be seen rightfully as an olive branch to those who were disappointed by the final outcome. Then I’d feel more optimistic and would considered voting to sign the proposed contract as is.

    And if you attempt to tax dues retroactively for last year….I don’t think you even want to go there, I hope.

    • UO Matters 09/19/2013

      I’ll be blunt, since I’m pretty sure you’re not a UO administrator who will try and discipline me for being disrespectful.

      Jim Bean will probably get $320K+ this coming year for doing jack. Mike Bullis and other deadwood admins still more. Let’s call it $1.5M for now, but I’ll have an exact number soon. Add the $1M that Gottfredson just blew on Rudnick and her consultants. And we’re still giving the jocks $3.5M+ in subsidies for athletics, which now has a $90M budget. The Senate just voted to try and get that and another $2M back from them. Then there’s $2.4M for the White Stag lease, still more for operations in Portland and the admins up there, and on and on and on and on.

      But you really think the relevant margin is the $1.25M or so in union dues? I don’t. Let’s work together to figure out how to use the union and the Senate to go after the money that our administration pisses away, and get UO back on its academic track.

    • Awesome0 09/19/2013

      Fair enough, and it didn’t seem at all disrespectful.

      I’ll go back to collecting some samples of beachfront soil to do my part to reduce costs for AD.

  29. UO Matters 09/19/2013

    My department is hiring this Winter. I came in at market, then got screwed for years. I’m looking forward to telling candidates that we’ve now got a union that cares about merit and equity, just negotiated decent raises, and is prepared to go to bat to keep their pay close to comparator levels.

    I’m expecting a few questions about IP, consulting, that U of Nike nonsense, and maybe even academic freedom. It would be great if I could say that sure, we’ve had a few issues, but our President just fired the General Counsel that was at the root of the trouble.

    So how about it, President Gottfredson?

  30. Anonymous 09/19/2013

    I’m disappointed at a few of the things we didn’t get (especially for NTTFs–I’m tenured now but was NTTF elsewhere in the past), but as an initial outing this has been more than acceptable–and it’s hardly the last contract. Kudos to the team for getting admin to agree to a “definitional” modification of the nomenclature thing. My concern is that we have rewarded the admin’s taking of hostages in IP, consulting, and free speech–or at least that’s how they may see it. Now that a contract exists, it should be harder for them to take those things as hostages again, but one never knows.

    As far as pay, well, my department promised me a boost to the salary of later hires (we were “frozen” just after my arrival) and so did our College, but they never did a damn thing about it. All the plans and promises amounted to bupkis for five years, and the only raises I got were tiny (we’re talking “partial goat” here) boosts from an anemic merit pool. So I am happy the union has this in writing now, so I can stop watching my real wages keep losing ground against inflation.

  31. Deb Merskin 09/19/2013

    Let’s be sure NOT to punish our amazing Bargaining Team – these incredible people have been at the table since at least last November (and behind the scenes with dozen others) doing their absolute best to get us the best deal they could. They have been meeting days and days and weeks and months for no pay (unlike the administrators and outside attorney who were paid very well) for being there. Please do not blame our team for what the UO wouldn’t budge on. We’ve got no chance for any reasonable expectation of privacy, intellectual property protections, or any transparency without this contract. We have to start somewhere and compared to where we were we should be cheering. There is more work to do, yes, but look how far we have come!!!

    • UO Matters 09/19/2013

      Yes. I spent about 160 hours on snarky blogging about the bargaining sessions. For comparison, the faculty BT people did that plus maybe 2-4 hours of prep work on research, proposal drafts, etc for each hour at the table.

      To paraphrase Dave Hubin, the faculty union bargaining team has now written most of UO’s missing faculty handbook for our administration. That’s missing handbook and poorly documented policies been a sore spot for our accreditors. When Dave prepares UO’s next accreditation self-study report, the union contract will have a prominent place, and make the administration’s work much easier.

  32. Anonymous 09/19/2013

    Does anyone know how this affects TTF not in the BU (science PIs, law)? Do they have separate raise schemes or will follow along with this deal?

    • Anonymous 09/20/2013

      Undoubtedly non-BU raises are at the discretion of the administration. Perhaps if they are as petty as UOM makes them out to be, we’ll get bigger raises!

    • Three-Toed Sloth 09/20/2013

      It remains to be seen. Anonymous Above is correct that the contract does not cover non-BU members, and Anonymous Below is also correct that admin would be insane not to extend the raises to all faculty. It remains to be seen whether or not the salary bump doled out to non-BU members when bargaining began will be subtracted from the increases given from here on out. As I indicated in a response to vlad, nothing in the contract forbids individual faculty from getting increases above and beyond the CBA. The contract also allows units that give more than 8% promotion bumps to continue doing so, if they want. This matter was discussed thoroughly at the bargaining table.

    • Anonymous 09/20/2013

      I would be shocked if they didn’t increase salaries more for those outside the BU.

    • Anonymous 09/20/2013

      If that happens, the PI’s will have only United Academics to thank.

    • Anonymous 09/20/2013

      … and we will no even more, that our administrators are pigs. Wait, I mean… goats.

    • Anonymous 09/20/2013

      I am a PI, and I am thankful to the United Academics for their work on behalf of NTTF. While losing the ability to make some salary decisions will be sometimes problematic, it pales in comparison to now being able to increase the pay of valued workers in the lab. I have found it frustrating that we budget mandated salary increases in our grants and then are told we cannot use that money to actually pay higher salaries as budgeted.

  33. Anonymous 09/19/2013

    Last anon and vlad above ask good specific, questions. Anyone close to union have answers? If so, Thanks. If not, ??

    • Anonymous 09/20/2013

      I believe admin will give the same raises to all faculty. They would be crazy not to.

  34. vlad 09/20/2013

    why crazy? individual depts and schools may have good ideas for tackling their most acute problems (e.g., depts farthest away from comparators at particular ranks). If so, is not obvious to me how would addressing them would be crazy. Not every dean and dept head on campus is at the abysmally low average level of competence and judgement in JH.

    • Anonymous 09/20/2013

      Vlad, I really meant they’d be crazy to give less to non-BU members. I truly believe they, JH, will begin to behave more transparently, fairly and rationally. I said more, not completely.

    • UO Matters 09/20/2013

      Faith is a wonderful thing. I’ll start believing when I see Randy Geller packing up his office.

  35. Anonymous 09/20/2013

    Kudos to the faculty who showed up to put the pressure on and many more for the all volunteer faculty bargaining team. Imagine what would have been accomplished if even 40% of those who stood to gain showed up? Yes, there are small economic gains, but codifying university policy into an agreement ensures it is consistently applied, and is now enforced with teeth!

  36. Anonymous 09/20/2013

    I like the fact that this contract creates the expectation of 6% annual raises until we get to peers. Please tell me we’ll bargain for a goat next contract too?

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