Word from the faculty club hot-tub is that Gottfredson has pulled Tim Gleason from the admin bargaining team and replaced him with Chip Kelly. I’ll be in 450 Lillis at 8 AM live blogging, just in case it’s true.
Live Blog: Usual disclaimer applies.
No Gleason! No Geller. Rudnick’s helper lawyer is back, anyone know her name? No Chip either though.
Rudnick: Don’t need Gleason, let’s start. Art 10, Assignment of Prof Responsibilities passes out redlined version, new title. Faculty cannot determine their workload. My faculty chair will be interested to here that! More details …
Gleason appears – still no Kelly.
Mauer: Is the stuff in the preamble grievable? No. Sec 2: Many things that are current practice, which admin likes, but does not want in contract. Therefore this will not be grievable. Rudnick: We don’t want the CBA to be a legally enforceable policy document. Whoa. But she agrees these are mandatory subjects for bargaining, as Mauer points out. Rudnick: Don’t want too muh specificity in contract. Pratt: Department’s should make assignment. Blandy: With consultation with dean’s, provost. Pratt: We want every dept to have their own written policy. Rudnick: Fine, but we don’t want it in the CBA and grievable. Rudnick: Will not allow the faculty to build their own workload policy. Have input, but ultimate decision rests with dean and provost. Cecil: This gives admin the right to change anyone’s work assignment at any time?? So there will be a general written job duties piece, then specific duties could change. Seems reasonable. If they were assigned duties outside written part, they could grieve? Rudnick: Let me think on that.
Sec 7: Rudnick: We want to make clear that faculty must be available for the entire term. Blandy: If you want to leave for 4 weeks to do research, we will want you to take leave. WTF? Rudnick: Doesn’t mean you have to be here, just “available”. She thinks current practice is that faculty are not available when students are gone. She finally gets to the nut: faculty take off winter and spring breaks. She wants them to be “available”. What does that mean? Available on skype? Answering email? Available to come back to Eugene for a meeting at 24 hours notice?
Blandy: E.g. problem scheduling a defense because fac is out of town. (Yes this is a problem. On the other hand, plenty of faculty are “available” not just answering email, but working with graduate students, doing research, doing meetings, all summer for zero pay.)
Pratt: Yes, this can be a problem. Faculty have problems with what admins do too – e.g. assignments. So, we’re going to write sections for that too – which you have taken out.
Green: Faculty get evaluated and get tenure, promotion based on research. Which for many people teaching 5 classes and doing service happens entirely during the summer.
Me: This section need work. Bramhall: This language is so ad hoc, puts burden on the dean’s to do this individually. Pratt: We want procedures to establish department specific policies. E.g. tenure and promotion.
Rudnick: We see this as consultation with the faculty, approval by provost. We do not view ourselves as adverse. Differences are in details. Poor me, we are working so hard to cooperate… with you … We’re all in this together… Where did this speech come from all of a sudden? Bramhall: We have a long history of administrative decisions that have been very bad. Of course we are skeptical.
Rudnick: We will not agree to let the faculty make these administrative decisions. Consult, yes.
Green, Pratt: We want more explicit department policies on workload, etc.
Mauer: Move on to rest of sections.
Rudnick: Sec 8, overload. (Admin’s get this pretty regularly). E.g. Dean asks someone to teach something extra, attend a working group where your expertise is needed. Regular committee work or teaching additional sections are not overload unless Provost says they are but provost has to follow rules. Regular load is 5 and you teach 6, that would be overload. Refusal to grant overload would not be grievable. Cecil: This would lead to worries about favoritism. Need transparency to build some trust here, make this grievable. I agree – this will lead admins to make less capricious decisions.
Mauer: Why is Sec 8 here given that Sec 10 says there’s no recourse? Rudnick: Because … but I get point about grievability.
Caucus Break
Rudnick: Admins are OK with rule for departmental faculty to develop their own workload policy, with dean/provost approval. Mauer: Deal – draft it for us please.
Pratt: Sec 8: It’s too vague. Take example of an extension class, where would it fall? Extra advising load? Rudnick: We’ll fix that. We’ll do a revised counterproposal. Mauer: Good.
Rudnick: That’s all we have to present. We are working on other stuff but we are not prepared.
Mauer: We are prepared with more proposals.
Article 5, Union Rights: Union can communicate with members at work… Sec 4, information, routine … Sec 5, union gets report on tenure and promotion decisions (remember when Tomlin and Bean tried to hide that?) Union and Admin will have rules for communicating, given past problems. Pratt: e.g. lack of faculty participation in legislature’s achievement contracts with university. Blandy: Why does it say union, not bargaining unit members. (So, what about law, science PI’s? Doesn’t exclude them.) Rudnick: Is notion that union reps can meet members anytime so long as it doesn’t interfere with regular faculty duties? Mauer: Faculty are professionals, won’t interfere. Rudnick: Do you intend to comply with UO policies, charges for use of meeting rooms and services. Mauer: We are not an outside organization, we are an official part of the UO community. Rudnick: Could be clearer. Sec 4., information: you want this every month eve if it doesn’t change? (Moot – if it doesn’t change, just say it didn’t change) Gleason: Term by term maybe? Cecil: Data sucks. Me: Tell me about it. It’s January, JP Monroe hasn’t even posted the count of faculty numbers from September yet. She’ll look into what this all means. Rudnick is clearly nervous about having to release data – as well she should! Mauer: We will want the data needed to implement agreement. Rudnick: What does “equal partner” in development of program and policies mean? (I’m thinking about Geller and Mullens’s drug policy here…) Pratt: Back to achievement compacts process, which had very little faculty input. Cecil: We’re not trying to exceed state requirements, just make sure we actually get a real chance to participate.
Article 6: Dues Deduction
Mauer: Usual stuff, employer processes deductions including fair share deductions, allows for religious exemptions (! state law). Voluntary political action contributions. Same as in GTFF deal. Rudnick: OK, need a form for the political stuff and a signature will required. Cecil: Of course.
Article 19: Personnel files
Faculty get access, can add shit. Mauer: from OAR’s, puts those procedures in contract. Rudnick: OK
Article 31: Release Time
Wake up people! This will give the union the resources needed to participate in shared governance in a way that the Senate should have, but which Hubin and the administration have starved it of. Union wants 5 FTE release time units for officers etc., 4 more for negotiations, union can purchase 5-20 additional course releases. Mauer: All reasonable, standard. Gleason: Who would these people be? Mauer: Example: People charged with processing grievances. Gleason: You’re talking about 25 courses. How will affect departments? Mauer: Elected officials, will change, we will give notice. Gleason: Suppose 3 people are all from same department. Me: Admin pulls people out of teaching research jobs all the time. Mauer: There will be negotiations, we will be responsible. E.g. look at people on the bargaining team – all still doing their regular jobs. (Meanwhile, I’m looking across the table at two admins doing this for pretty substantial pay, not to mention Rudnick!) Rudnick: Concern about how this might affect smaller depts, admin might want limits. Reasonable.
Article 40: Negotiation of Sucessor Agreement:
This first agreement will be for 2 years. If we don’t get agreement by June 1, ratification won’t be until faculty return from summer. Something about rules for ratification vote. If no new agreement, old one continues in force.
Rudnick: We have lots to think about. We will be prepared next Tue with our revised article. Mauer: Not too much left for us to present. Ball’s in admin’s court, mostly.
All done til next Tu.
Glad to hear you’ve accepted the challenge.
This is a tricky endeavor and we expect Kelly in a bargaining team to be like Rambo or Mighty Mouse leading a squadron. Hope you’ve activated your contingency blog plan just in case. You’ll need to arrive before zero dark thirty since he likes to set his clock about an hour earlier than planned. And remember – expect to listen from his right side since his speaking is stereo challenged. Mission-next-to-impossible will provide a ‘fast talking’ decoder equipped with prevaricating language cues, New Hampshire version. Do be aware he has a distinct aversion to microphones and direct questions.
Good luck. Sincerely.
PS. If he reaches an indecision spell and seems to go vacant, don’t panic. He’ll hit the reboot button within seconds, reach overdrive in minutes and then be running away again as usual. Knowing this should give you just enough time to blog about any collateral damage.
You scare me. Sincerely. Maybe I’ll just sleep in.
The Big Balls Bargaining Team!
PSS on the ‘big balls’ theme: word is he stuffs.
Wow. Rudnick really has no idea how a university operates.
You have no idea how collective bargaining “works.”
Article 6: Dues Deduction: Mauer: Usual stuff [don’t worry your little heads], employer processes deduction [“the employer did it”] including fair share deductions [unvoluntary financial equivalent of dues from faculty who don’t want to be union members], allows for religious exemptions (! state law). Voluntary political action contributions. [in addition to union’s political contributions] Same as in GTFF deal [Oh that makes it all right]. Rudnick: OK, need a form for the political stuff and a signature will required. Cecil: Of course.[“My job is done here. The rest is gravy.”]
Article 31: Release Time [How the union gets the university to pay its own employees to do the union’s work.] Yeah, those feather-bedding admins really want to be here listening to this self-interested bullshit instead of doing their own work. Of course, they don’t have much choice.
‘Strangely fertilising, in the long run, does a wasted effort of attention often prove. It all depends on how the attention has been cheated, has been squandered. There are high-handed insolent frauds, and there are insidious sneaking ones. And there is, I fear, even on the most designing artist’s part, always witless enough good faith, always anxious enough desire, to fail to guard him against their deceits.’ – Henry James, Preface to The Portrait of a Lady
So one could get out of the PAC part of dues stuff due to religious objections?
PAC stuff is always optional
The union makes political contributions funded by dues, separate from any voluntary PAC contributions. A fair share member may object to “non-representational” expenses, which arguably include political contributions, but the “opt-out” process is a joke.
I would think that release time to work for the union should be paid out of union dues.
The admins were worried that the union would also ask for free bowl game junkets for their officers like Gleason et al got.
That’s funny, right there, I don’t care who you are.
So’s this. Under Section 7 in the Contracts article admin proposed, Faculty will be required to “be available” during all periods of their contract, even when students aren’t in session.
But if Espy, Gleason, et al have autoresponders on their email accounts while doing “recruiting” business for the UO during the Fiesta Bowl, faculty should not have the same availability expectations from admin.
Comment of the week. Contact me for your coffee cup. And see the latest Beangram:
1-10-13 Provost’s Message
January 10, 2013 • PROVOST’S WEBSITE • FORWARD THIS EMAIL
Colleagues,
Happy New Year and welcome back! I hope you enjoyed the holidays and had a chance to relax and catch up with friends and family.
‘There are immense and flagrant dangers that are but sordid and squalid ones, as we feel, tainting with their quality the very defiances they provoke; while there are common amd covert ones, that “look like nothing” and that can be but inwardly and [spiritually] dealt with, which involve the sharpest hazards to life and honour and the highest instant decisions and intrepidies of action.’ -Henry James, Preface to The American
And that is why I have never made it through a single novel by Henry James.
The “faculty cannot determine their own workload” part confuses me. Since I’ve been here (1995), the number and titles of my yearly course assignments have been decided by me and 3-4 colleagues after a lively discussion/argument/fight/whatever you want to call it. “So, what do YOU want to teach?” Are there other departments where the course assignments come down from above?
Yes, there are other departments where many decisions that might more traditionally be considered to fall under “faculty governance” come down from above.
We are becoming a widget factory run by administrators rather than a place of higher learning led by those best qualified to lead a place of higher learning.
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2013/01/08/essay-flaws-treating-higher-education-widget-factory
Welcome to the community college world of unionized faculty! Ike! Ike! Ike!
You have really not been paying attention if you think this wasn’t happening long before the union came along. Don’t confuse cause and effect here.
Academic workers unite!
in some colleges at least,departments have for years had the option to draft their own workload policies, subject to approval.some have used that option well and run amazingly effective and collaborative departments. Others have not been able to agree even among themselves. don’t see a CBA working magic through inherent disagreements within some departments, but might push depts w/ lots of instructors to be more methodical. Also the ‘time away from campus’ has been a mostly settled issue for some time in some college policies. the admin statements (not just rudnick’s) reflect ignorance of how this issue as been made workable in some parts of campus.
That was then and this is now.
Maybe not magic, but the union has proposed to keep this in departments with some boundaries to protect those who might be more subject to the abuses of capricious admins. Admin has suggested this power rests solely with Provost or designee and has objected to faculty, through faculty governance, having any say in the policies.
Enforceable written contracts can preserve dormant legal rights of both parties.
… or assert them.