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Bargaining XIV: New union proposal trims ATB and equity, increases merit

Last updated on 06/05/2015

6/4/2015: Bargaining XIV:

Check the UAUO facebook blog here, I”m only blogging the end of the meeting today, missed the rest for class. Last session ended with this response from Dave Cecil, to the admin’s proposal for “intense negotiations”.

Regarding your idea of an intense session to resolve our differences, we can’t do that because we’re so far apart right now. If you had moved closer to our position, we could to that, but without more progress from you my members would not accept an intense negotiation.

The UO faculty last received raises on July 1, 2014. Last week the admins proposed that we wait 18 months for this:

Jan 1 2016:
1% ATB
0% Merit
0% Equity

And then wait another 12 months for this:

Jan 1 2017:
0% ATB
1.5% Merit pool by unit (But up to 20% held back at Dean’s discretion.)
0% Equity

I’m no algebra professor, but that’s total of 2.5% over two-and-a-half years. Nominal, not real. That was our administration’s response to the union’s proposal for

Jan 1 2016:
2.5% ATB
1.5% Merit
1.0% External equity pool, to be allocated across rank and dept. based on AAU public averages. No external equity raise from this pool to exceed 10%.

Jan 1 2017:
2.5% ATB
1.5% Merit
1.0% Internal equity pool for each department

Today, the union’s counter-proposal cuts a little of the ATB, bumps up the Merit a little, cuts the Equity a little:

Jan 2016:
2.0% ATB
1.5% Merit

Jan 2017:
2.0% ATB
1.75% Merit
1.25% Internal and external equity pool.

Salary at other AAU publics increased 3.4% this year. UO’s proposed raises have been delayed past the normal July 1 start date, until Jan 1 2016. Spread out over 2.5 years, the union proposal will mean we will lose ground relative to the AAU.

It’s going to be a long summer folks. But no new bargaining meetings until the first week in July.

Session is over but they’re still talking. Bill Brady makes the mistake of confusing the cost to UO of the PERS retirement package with its value to current UO employees. Here’s an easy way to keep it straight, Bill:

When the State of Oregon must jack up UO’s PERS payments in order to meet our obligation to cover the $550,000 a year PERS tab for Mike Bellotti and his wife, yes, that is a cost to UO.

But that cost is not in any fucking way whatsoever a benefit of any value to the UO faculty, with whom you are bargaining.

5/28/2015: Bargaining XIII: UO administration proposes to cut the faculty’s real wages

Average AAU pay is increasing at 3.4% a year, cost of living (for Portland) is increasing at about 2.4% a year, and Eugene house prices are increasing at about 3% a year.

The UO administration thinks the faculty should get a 0% raise for 2015, a 1% raise in 2016, and 1.5% for 2017.

And they’re taking back our long-promised $600 Chevy Van money. Bummer, dude. Come tonight at 6PM to 115 Lawrence to see the AAUP’s Howard Bunsis explain how much money UO really has, and how they are spending it.

Jan 1 2016:
1% ATB
0% Merit
0% Equity

Jan 1 2017:
0% ATB
1.5% Merit pool by unit (But up to 20% held back at Dean’s discretion.)
0% Equity

Minor increases in NTTF floors – from $36K to $36.8K. For PE, $24.5K. For RAs, $32.7K. Instead of dealing with compression via 8% raises for full profs after each good 6th year review, they only want to give 2% for reviews after the first.

Live blog:

Rumor has it they’re going to up their last offer of $600 Chevy Van money and a 1% merit pool that doesn’t even start until 2017 to “whatever faculty can carry out of the Duck’s $95M Hatfield Dowling Complex“.

History below the break, also check the UAUO facebook blog here, and don’t miss the Bunsis talk “Is UO Really Broke?” tonight at 6, 115 Lawrence. Open to the public:

Screen Shot 2015-05-28 at 2.24.09 PM

Cecil is warming things up by running circles around the admin team over Article 28 on parking. Done. All very good-natured on both sides, as is typical of these sessions.

Now he’s on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, Article 36. The union is not going to give in to the administration’s desire to be able to discipline faculty for what they are calling “discrimination” and “harassment”, even when the behavior doesn’t fall under the legal definitions of discrimination and harassment. Psaki brings up examples of past abuses of this looser standard by UO.

Now it’s academic classification – the union wants to end the use of “adjunct professor” on the grounds that it can hurt the job prospects of newly minted PhDs. For reasons that are unclear the administration wants to keep it.

Bill Brady presents Article 19: NTTF Review and Promotion, for the administration. The basic question is how long an NTTF must be here to be eligible for promotion. Both sides agree it’s 6 years, the question is how to handle part-timers and intermittent NTTF’s. Suppose we’ve got an expert teaching one specialized business course per year, every year for 6 years. Should they be allowed to go up for promotion and use the “Career” title? Union says yes, administration says no – years only count if 0.4 FTE or above. UAO bargaining team member Larry Wayte (Music – I gotta check out his History of the Blues course) brings up himself – 4 years at 0.375, full time next year. None of his first 4 years will count under the administration’s proposal.

3:09: Finally, on to economics:

They’re taking back the $600 Chevy Van money. Bummer.

Jan 1 2016:
1% ATB
0% Merit pool
0% Equity

Jan 1 2017:
0% ATB
1.5% Merit pool by unit (But up to 20% held back at Dean’s discretion.)
0% Equity

Minor increases in NTTF floors – from $36K to $36.8K. For PE, $24.5K. For RAs, $32.7K.

Instead of dealing with compression via 8% raises for full profs after each good 6th year review, they only want to give 2% for reviews after the first.

I’ve gotta go, read the UAUO facebook blog for more, here.

5/21/2015: Bargaining XII: Parking for jocks not profs, harassment, still no raises

They’re on parking. Check out this classic Daily Emerald story on how UO parking fees from faculty, staff, and students subsidized the Matt Court underground parking garage, here. Then there’s the athlete only parking lot Phil Knight made UO build as part of the Jock Box “gift”. More here, here, ad infinitum.

Now it’s Ethics and Professional Responsibility, Article 36. This was one of Sharon Rudnick and Tim Gleason’s favorite articles last time around. They wanted a loose definition of harassment, which would allow the administration to discipline faculty at their discretion. Cecil and Mauer insisted on using the standard definition of “illegal harassment”. Now Bill Brady and the admin team are trying to bring back the looser definition. What would count? Incivility – as defined by whom? Inappropriate sighing during faculty meetings? Don’t go after me for being ironic, it’s happened:

[Professor of English] Thomas Docherty was banned from the University of Warwick in January for allegedly giving off “negative vibes” and undermining the authority of the former head of his department.

The case against him included “inappropriate sighing”, “making ironic comments” and “projecting negative body language”.

In other news, the administration will make a response to the union’s raise proposal at next Thursday’s session. Be there.

5/14/2015: Bargaining XI: The admins have been telling President Schill that the *union* opposes merit pay?

Cocktail party version:

The faculty union’s initial proposal for 2015-17 pay included 6% for merit. The administration’s bargaining team response was 1%. And yet yesterday President Schill told the Senate that his understanding was that faculty union was opposed to merit pay. I wonder which administrator spun it that way?

Today the union came back with a proposal for 3% for merit. I wonder what the the admins new spin will be.

Overall, including ATB and equity, the union proposal is 5% for 2016 and 5% for 2017. Details at bottom.

5/14/2015: Bargaining in the Knight library collaboration room, 2-6PM Thursday. Check Luebke’s blog too.

Live-blog of the faculty union’s initial salary proposal from Feb is here,  It would have got faculty pay to the Lariviere target of the average AAU-public – with plenty of allowance for merit variation.

Our administration’s response was “sorry, we spent all that money on administrators”:

Screen Shot 2015-05-14 at 9.12.18 AM

Screen Shot 2015-05-14 at 9.12.04 AM

The pdf of the union’s February proposal is here. The NTTF and TTF proposals were similar, I’ll focus on the TTF:

July 2015:
2.5% ATB
2.0% Merit
1.0% Internal equity pool for each department
1.5% External equity pool, to be allocated across rank and dept. based on AAU public averages. No external equity raise from this pool to exceed 5%.

July 2016:
2.5% ATB
4.0% Merit

As you can see, the union put a substantial weight on merit. The largest weight. Over the two years, 6% for merit, 2.5% for equity, and 5% for across the board.

Based on his Senate comments yesterday, someone on the administration’s bargaining team seems to have drastically misinformed incoming President Michael Schill about the union’s objectives. He’d apparently been told it was the union that was opposed to merit. No.

On April 10th, the administration’s bargainers came back with a counter-proposal. It would eliminate all but 1% of the union’s proposed merit increases, and delay even that 1% until the last 6 months of the contract. PDF here:

Screen Shot 2015-05-14 at 2.12.39 PM

The administration also eliminated the ATB, and all the equity pool, replacing it with a onetime flat $600. What does that reveal about the administration’s supposed focus on merit?

On equity, the union’s proposal in February was focused on getting faculty to the AAU peer objective laid out by Richard Lariviere and Jim Bean, years ago. Here’s the TTF language:

Screen Shot 2015-05-14 at 2.21.02 PM

2:35 PM today. Cecil presents the union response to the administration’s 0%/1% counter:

Bill Brady says something odd about theApril 0%/1% not being a counter-proposal. He seems upset. Anyway, here’s the union counter to the admin’s counter:

Jan 2016:
2.5% ATB
1.5% Merit
1.0% External equity pool, to be allocated across rank and dept. based on AAU public averages. No external equity raise from this pool to exceed 10%.

Jan 2017:
2.5% ATB
1.5% Merit
1.0% Internal equity pool for each department

Cecil does a great great job explaining all this. The UAUO proposal should be on the website here, soon. (It’s article 26. It also includes 6 year review raises, floors for NTTF’s, etc.)

The admin team leaves for a brief caucus, comes back but with no response. WTF?

I’ve got to go, bargaining XII will be next Th at 2PM, meanwhile check Luebke’s blog.

17 Comments

  1. cdsinclair 05/14/2015

    I had to educate one of my anti-union colleagues on this very same lie. I wonder if there is a conscious effort to spread misinformation so as to keep the anti-union folks anti-union. (Though to be fair, most of my departmental colleagues fall into the “unions = Stalin!!!!!” camp and won’t be swayed by truth nor lies).

    • Outsider 05/14/2015

      Do anti-union faculty believe the UO’s offer is acceptable? That the UO fiscal priorities are in line with the university mission? Do these anti-union academics not see what the anti-intellectual conservative ideology and Republican Party are doing to the NSF, NASA, pell grants, state funding for universities, and on and on? Do they think standing on the sidelines will save academia? Or that their administrators will take care of it? A union can give academics political power in a time where grave issues are at stake for higher education. Amazingly myopic.

  2. SaveUofO 05/14/2015

    The self entitled administration will continue to run UofO into the ground. The disparity of pay between admin and faculty along with staff and GTFs is out of hand. Is there nothing that can be done to regulate this pay for admins? Who the hell determines how much an administrative position pays? You know you have a serious problem when the majority of your operational budget is seeing its way into the paychecks of administrators. The administration essentially gives themselves their own raises. Yet somehow we have trouble coming up with a measly $15,000.00 to help sexual assault victims. It is clear this administration’s only priority is lining their own pockets and dispensing with self important titles. Imagine how out of hand and out of control UofO will get if it is ever granted complete independence from the state. The UofO needs to be regulated back into the OUS.

  3. Dumpster fire 05/15/2015

    It’s easy to say that the union supports merit raises, but if they have to be on top of substantial ATB raises, then it’s just hot air.

    • Buzz 05/15/2015

      Dumpster fire, you make no sense. Why is it hot air to see the value in supporting merit AND across the board (AND equity)? Have you heard of inflation, increases in cost of living? Is rewarding excellence the only problem for faculty compensation at the UO? What about all of the faculty who have not been eligible for merit raises, most NTTF, until the union? Complex problems warrant smart solutions, not one-sized piecemeal talking points.

  4. Old Man 05/15/2015

    SaveUofO asks,”Who the hell determines how much an administrative position pays?” At the last Senate meeting, Interim President Scott Coltrane told us that the Market determines the salaries. I hope I am not the only one to recognize this answer as an obscenity under almost any circumstances, but especially when used to justify the salary discrepancy between yet another PRflak and a guardian of student safety.

    • Max Powers 05/15/2015

      One of the big problems you have with Admin pay is that everyone is seeing their position in a vacuum. They see what their position is and what the market is and they want to pay them that. If you don’t have a strong central HR department or an overarching compensation strategy, philosophy that maintains internal equity and common sense things can run wild.

      The other problem you have with that vacuum is the mentality that “a raise for a few people in my department is not a big deal because I have the budget and it is not a raise for a huge expensive group.” Bean counters don’t typically like to get in wars with Vice Presidents looking to give a raise here and there. They are fine “holding the line” against entire groups of employees where a 3% raise is a huge number. What they are not thinking about is that the raise here and the raise there in admin salaries adds up across campus to a big number.

    • thedude 05/28/2015

      So why can’t the market determine our salaries.

      Once we get compensation similar to AAU peers, then we can focus on annual contracts close to 2-3 percent (to keep up with peers) and generous retention.

      • Max Powers 05/29/2015

        “So why can’t the market determine our salaries. ”

        That is the real question isn’t it?

  5. Anon 05/21/2015

    We are maintaining a strike provision this time around, yes? (Follow up: Are there people organizing in preparation?)

  6. hnoest Uncle Bernie 05/22/2015

    The first graph doesn’t say it all, but it says a lot! “Administration” pay (which is really pay for administrators + non-teaching professional staff) has risen far, far faster than TT faculty pay. This is a scandal in itself!

    But it would be REALLY nice to add data for total teaching pay (for TTF, NTTF, and Adjuncts) to compare to total Administration. (I would add that a better comparison would be total compensation = salary + benefits, but let that pass for now; and for all I know, the graph gives total compensation, not salary.)

    Yup, how does total faculty pay compare with total administration pay over time? Which has been growing faster? My guess is administration has outstripped teaching — in line with the widely reported and almost indisputable national administrative bloat.

    If so, it should be brought out and hammered home constantly to the trustees, the press, and even the hapless Oregon state governnent.

    If not, that would be a real mark of distinction for UO, which deserves to be widely known and publicized. Where is the the high-priced UO public relations apparatus?

    Since the dysfunctional UO administration and the relevant UO “faculty governance” committees seem to be incapable of making and presenting this kind of elementary, common sense, obvious analysis, it looks like a job for uomatters!

      • honest Uncle Bernie 05/23/2015

        A forensic accountant would be able to figure it out, but it shouldn’t take one to do it. The administration could come up with the answer in a very short time, or at least it should. Whatever happened to the senate budget committee? The Register Guard? uomatters to the rescue?

  7. Dr. Funkenstein 05/26/2015

    I hate to sound petty about this, but this parking thing is simply stupid. We pay for the possibility of a parking space as it is, and we pay a lot more than students for the privilege. Is it too much to ask to have a few lots dedicated to faculty and staff? I mean, after all, we are employees and do need to come to work on a regular basis. I can’t see a lot of purpose for this other than an obvious attempt to humiliate the faculty by suggesting they don’t warrant even that basic accommodation.

  8. thedude 05/28/2015

    This offer is again laughable. This must be the admins setting up the new president to be a hero for all of us.

  9. Dr. Funkenstein 05/28/2015

    Yes, pretty lousy. I especially like the derisive way they addressed Dave’s concerns about potential favoritism with the Dean’s discretionary control over 20% and their desire to “shower superstars with money.” No reason to be concerned, not like there’s any past history or anything like that. Lawdy.

  10. dog 06/04/2015

    aren’t these 0.5% and 0.25% adjustments just in the noise?

    can’t they just flip some coins …

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