Bargaining XXIII: Intellectual property

Art 52: Outside activities:
Davidson, Cecil, Bramhall point out some problems. Blandy and Gleason and Williams don’t even appear to have read this thing. Rudnick charged UO $300 an hour to write it, but she doesn’t seem to have read it either. What a waste of time great opportunity to pad the invoice with more billable hours. Cecil: Knows this cold and starts doing Rudnick’s work for her. Can you teach at UO and LCC? Wouldn’t that be  a competing institution and a conflict of interest? Blandy: I don’t think UO competes with LCC, my AAD classes have a much easier grade curve than LCC does.

Art 51: Intellectual Property:
Gleason tries to figure out what library space means in the article. Cecil and Rudnick explain, patiently. Do your homework Tim, or just keep quiet. Cecil: Who owns course notes? Rudnick: The university owns them but lets the faculty use them. This is current law. Pratt: Suppose you turn your class notes into a book or a textbook? Williams: You are in the COE and you right a book explaining an intervention – UO owns it. Pratt: Suppose you write a textbook? Williams: It would belong to UO but they could license it to you. Williams: I’d be in charge of deciding if you can use your notes for this purpose or if you need a license. Key is that there are not other copyright holders, e.g. a grad student. Cecil: UO could ask all professors for their notes and post them to be used for online courses? Williams: Can’t imagine that would happen. Davidson: Suppose I move to another university. Can I take my carefully prepared blackboard pages with me? Rudnick: You were paid by the university to prepare that material, and they own it. Williams: For copyright stuff, 50% goes to authors, 25% to department, 25% to UO. Gleason: Complicated because faculty typically work under the assumption that their work belongs to them. It doesn’t. That’s the law. University has never exercise these rights in the past, but they could. Green: So I can’t take blackboard with me to a new job, can I take handwritten notes? Rudnick: The notes belong to UO, but UO has never exercised those rights. Rudnick: Legally, UO would give you a license. I will look into some way to add a clause giving a license by default to these kinds of things. (The University’s team came in very poorly prepared to deal with these issues. Don’t they talk this stuff over before they bring their proposals to the table?) Cecil: Don’t worry, we’ll make a counter, we know that some rogue board of trustees could go wild and seize all these rights and we’ll protect the faculty from the university.

Cecil goes to town on a host of other issues with this proposal. Rudnick doesn’t have answers to them either. Davidson asks who owns posts on scholarly posts. Williams brings up question of professors putting out software under open-source licenses. We’d help people set up those agreements. Anderson: Suppose students take notes from my notes and sells them. Rudnick: I don’t students can do that. Rudnick, Williams have no idea.

Pratt: Can you explain section 10? No, they can’t. Green confuses them some more. I create courses here, move, write a textbook. Does UO have an interest? Gleason thinks not. Cecil: You write a book while at UO you grant UO the right to use it in the classroom royalty free.

Massive confusion on very important issues that are going to get more important quickly. Faculty team is doing a good job working this out. Rudnick seems amenable to changes.

Union’s turn:

Art 4: Policies and practices.
Cecil: Incorporates past policies and practices if published. Rudnick: My concern is the diffuse nature of practices – vary across departments. How does this apply if someone in another department gets disciplined for a practice that was never applied in that particular department. Cecil: I’d make a disparate argument. We just don’t want to write out all these practices from the contract. We know we’d have the burden of showing it was a well established practice. Rudnick: OK, this addresses a lot of The University’s concerns with your previous proposal.

Art 6: Dues Deduction: 
Cecil, Rudnick: We now have about 10 articles we’ve both agreed to, except that sticky “The University” nomenclature issue. This is one of them. (Amount of dues still to be determined.)

Art 9: Contracts:
Cecil: You need to give the faculty contracts. Rudnick: We don’t want dept chairs to make non-binding oral promises. Gleason: What substantive change does your deletion make? Cecil: Oral promises would be binding … Gleason’s confused, so am I. Cecil: Oral promises that you will get a contract, are binding.

Cecil: Gotta put job description and other terms of employment into contract. Rudnick: We were just trying to separate the notice of appointment from the list of conditions of employment. Your language requires the notice to include all that stuff to make the notice binding. Blandy: should include unusual conditions. I’m snoozing, sorry. Cecil’s on top of it, no worries.

Bunch of stuff about timely notice for adjuncts and instructors, career appointments. Cecil’s on it. Very productive discussion. Rudnick hasn’t lost it once, and only 22 minutes, or $110 billable to go.

Luebke’s got the scoop on the career NTTF issues here. Current UO policy gives a fair amount of protection, union is attempting to put it in contract, good debate.

Art 36: Strike and Lockout:
Cecil: Faculty with a sincerely held ethical belief can’t be required to do work replacing striking employees.

Art 43: Drug and Alcohol policy:
Cecil: Makes clear that the behavior has to affect the faculty members job to invoke discipline. Rudnick: When would it be OK to be under the influence while performing job responsibilities? Cecil: Dinner after a seminar. Rudnick: You can have a drink without being under the influence. Cecil: That’s our point! Rudnick: You’re right, we need to think about how to include your points and tone this down.

We will have economics counters for you next time. (Tuesday June 4th.)

Rudnick makes it! 4 hours at $300 per, without shouting at the faculty. Hearty congratulations all around.