3/24/2012: The faculty union organizers have now put up a long post that gives the next steps. Worth reading it all, here. I am disappointed that they left out the April 4 deadline for faculty that are opposed to submit letters or a petition. A link to one petition, arguing TTFs should not be part of the bargaining unit, is here.
Briefly:
By March 28th, the UO administration must send an official list of faculty to the ERB so cards can be verified. The UO administration has until March 28th to provide the ERB a list of all those faculty members who could potentially belong to the bargaining unit. The ERB appoints an agent to check the signed cards we submitted against that official list to verify that the cards are valid. Our cards remain confidential from the UO administration.
By April 4th, the UO administration must file any challenges to United Academic’s bargaining unit definition. The UO administration has until April 4th to file any challenge to the composition of the proposed bargaining unit.
By April 4th, United Academics must file any challenge to the official list submitted to the ERB by the UO administration. We have until April 4th to review the list the UO administration sent the ERB and file any challenge to that official list of employees — to object to omissions or additions, or to any attempts to redefine the bargaining unit via this list.
During this process of list submission, card verification and potential challenges, the specific number of faculty considered to be in the bargaining unit will remain in a state of flux. Based upon our best estimates of the number of eligible faculty, we are confident that a clear majority of our colleagues support forming a union.
By April 4th, UO faculty members could submit signatures and a petition to the ERB for an mail-in election: If some UO faculty members want to, they have the right to gather hard-copy signatures from 30 percent of the faculty included in the proposed bargaining unit and present a separate petition to the ERB to override the card-check process and trigger an election.
The online petition that is currently underway at the link above is about excluding TTF’s from a union and it is *not* a petition for a secret ballot election. I have heard such a petition is being organized and I will post it here, but 30% of the entire proposed bargaining unit seems like a tough hurdle, especially if it really has to be hard-copy signatures.
Maybe I missed it, but has there been a statement from the union organizers regarding the rationale of why law school faculty are excluded?
The union organizers say to ask the law faculty, and I for one am waiting for a collegial response that is not just legalistic and self-serving.
P.S. (from anon 9:33) — I’d like a collegial response from the _law faculty_.
It seems the onus is on the Union organizers, not the law faculty, to explain the choice of bargaining unit. We should not be expected to ask the secretarial staff why they aren’t included in the union organizers’ bargaining unit.
I guess this implies it is self-serving to opt out of the union (in ones’s best interest). If that’s true, why is everyone else rushing to join it!
Lots of us are not rushing to join it.
Furthermore, for those who are rushing to joint it, I’d recommend they have a conversation with the very large collection of unionized state workers with higher education. They should ask those people how they’ve liked their wage freezes and furloughs the last few years.
I would assume it is because working on campus entails a broad range of activities and priorities, and therefore, amazingly enough, we aren’t all the same. So while “everyone” (meaning something higher than 50%) is rushing to join it, others may not find it appealing.