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Bargaining III, 7/2/2020

Liveblog: Usual disclaimer: My opinion of what people said, meant to say, or should have said. Nothing is a quote unless in quotes. The link to register and watch is below.

Matella: Brad is working on budget projections now. He knows algebra! I’ll get you them soon.

Here’s what the faculty would get for accepting cuts:

Cecil: Need to pin down what you mean by pre-COVID levels. You mean the 0.1 contracts that were being give out then, e.g. to AEI? Also, people get lied to.

Matella: OK will take back to my team. I agree that heads and deans tell faculty things that are not true. This is why we need central control.

Matella: We want to keep flexibility to change FTE on the fly.

Cecil: We don’t want you to keep flexibility to change FTE on the fly. Reading this, you could have used the above to give *all* NTTF 0.1 contracts – and waited until September to do it.

Matella: But we’d have to write a memo justifying that.

Cecil: Right.

Matella: I don’t understand why you want to make it harder to reduce FTE than to lay people off.

Cecil: Nothing in your proposal keeps you from shifting all the risk from enrollment/funding problems to the NTTF/Career, as you did this spring. So, department could give you a three year contract at 1.0 FTE, then 90 days later reduce it to 0.1 FTE, after writing a memo.

Matella: OK, please come back to me with a counter.

Break til 11:15. They’re back.

TRP:

Matella: What would UAUO’s position be on the one-time buy out figure? 33%? Cecil: Enough to get some faculty to retire. You think 33% is going to excite people?

[Lots going on here. Admin wants to end the TRP permanently. Replace it with 2 temporary early retirement/buyout plans – offered for a limited time only. The idea is to get a spike in retirements/tenure relinquishment now. Matella believes that the current TRP does not incentivize early retirement – it’s just a bonus for people who are planning on retiring anyway.]

Cecil: So, if it’s a bonus for old TTF, why would we bargain it away for 33%?

Matella: Current TRP is very expensive – just look at what Brad’s getting.

Cecil: We have a shared interest in encouraging COVID retirements. But not in ending TRP.

Matella: PERS Tier 1’s already have a robust retirement plan (not true of ORP faculty, sadly.)

Matella: How about an ongoing incentive program, tied to employee’s place in their career? (Not sure it’s legal to do this by age, but perhaps by years in rank or something.

Cecil: Will you share model you used to cost out our previous incentive program. Matella: Yes.

Cecil: Are you also looking at early retirement for non-faculty? Matella: Yes, but not sure it’s workable or a cost saver.

Moving back to layoffs:

Cecil: Are you willing to consider some mechanism for financial criteria that does not involve some administrator saying we’re in financial crisis?

Matella: N0t sure.

Cecil: How do we distinguish between a real crisis and a decision to spend university E&G money on, say, wiring up the Phildo?

Break, back at 12:45.

[Sorry, live-blogging suspended for an hour or so, had to run to Jerry’s. Back now, they’re caucusing]

They’re back.

Matella: For the “panel”, we’re ok with two admins, two faculty, one neutral. Triggered by a complaint by a faculty member about contract rights – not academic judgement. Panel would review w/in 15 days. What were you thinking re the provost’s role?

Cecil: The panel would have to agree before a senior instructor could be laid off for financial reasons.

Matella: Gotta take that part back to the provost.

Cecil: Back to the wage cut. We will need information on the hold harmless level. We don’t want to agree to wage cuts, then discover you’ve blown $1.5M on wiring up the Phildo, or faculty tracking software.

 

Thursday, July 2, from 9:30 am to 5 pm (lunch break scheduled from 12 – 12:45; session may end early if there is not fruitful discussion):
https://aft.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_fA7tQgv7TUmzuLbYOO61aw

 

17 Comments

  1. Dog 07/02/2020

    So, no Christmas bonus this year ….

    • charlie 07/02/2020

      Quite possibly, no Christmas….

  2. Dog 07/02/2020

    And speaking of non-transparency – while we are updated daily on Covid in the community, which is good, we are being updated daily on where our enrollment stands now, relative to this time last year –
    for instance, if enrollment is currently say 10% down, I as someone that kind of wants to plan for future salary cuts, would like to know that now rather than learn about in late October.

    Can the union please push to make current enrollment numbers public information?

  3. Dog 07/02/2020

    Final comment on this TRP stuff;

    1. I am on TRP
    2. The only reason I am on TRP is continue having a research home, a lab, and benefits – really don’t need the salary all that much (I am Tier 1).
    3. So I don’t see any thing in the bullets about modification of TRP that allows little salary but full benefits – I think some faculty might go for that
    4. Maybe I am missing something …

    • honest Uncle Bernie 07/03/2020

      Can’t you have those things after you retire? Or is research funding then a problem?

      • Dog 07/03/2020

        research funding is a significant problem if your actually fully retired from an institution. You should know that. Some funding agencies won’t even give funding to PIs that are fully retired as well. I basically don’t get anything relative to Point 2 above if I am retired and I suspect you know that already. If I am fully retired,
        how can I then be the chair of a PHD student committee, for instance? If I am fully retired I can’t even login to Duckweb …
        If I can login to duckweb then I am clearly not fully retired …

  4. tiny elf 07/02/2020

    I agree with Dog on this. I’d find benefits much more attractive than salary. I’m Tier 2.

  5. thedude 07/02/2020

    So let me translate. If you’re not going to retire, and not a NTTF, you will pay for most of the costs for the union’s current bargaining positions. And the union is fine with that.

    WHy is nobody talking about the tuition guarantee and surplus it generates?

    • Anonymous 07/02/2020

      Agree this negotiation seems heavily skewed towards preferences of privileged tier 1 or 2 and NTTF

  6. Old Gray Mare 07/02/2020

    I agree with Dog. I’d find continuation of benefits until Medicare more useful than a salary buyout.

    • uomatters Post author | 07/02/2020

      Has the advantage of incentivizing faculty below 65 – and UO will save the most by getting them to give up tenure. Not much savings from getting a 75-year-old to retire a year or two before they planned.

      • Anonymous 07/02/2020

        agreed – really those past Medicare and still working full time (personally I no longer know any faculty in that position) are
        a separate class and should have a separate strategy and I suppose its really past the age off 66.5 when full social security benefits
        kick inn.

        • Peter Keyes 07/03/2020

          You must be in a very unusual situation. By my rough calculations, almost 40% of the faculty in my department are in this category (and I’ll be joining them next spring).

          • Anonymous 07/03/2020

            You mean that 40% of the faculty in the Department of Architecture or 66.5 years older and still no on TRP?

            I think that is the anomaly.

            My department (faculty size about 30) was at 10% last year but some have now gone to TRP so we are at 0% right now.

            • Peter Keyes 07/03/2020

              Nope, not past full social security age, past Medicare age of 65. And we’ve had four retirements in the past few years. We probably are the anomaly.

  7. Inquiring Minds 07/03/2020

    Pay cuts are the most demoralizing option and financially harmful. UO will never make it up to Employees and will always be behind on pay and retirement. This also hurts retention and recruitment the most.

    Look to boost retirement first. Like the healthcare extension and bonuses.
    Then combination of not filling positions and some Limited but necessary layoffs at all levels due to enrollment or lack of demand for that work. Paying some people not to work while others are working harder than ever isn’t right.

    Then minimal furloughs.

  8. Hart 07/03/2020

    “Matella: OK will take back to my team. I agree that heads and deans tell faculty things that are not true. This is why we need central control.”

    Hold the dang phone. Did she just assert that the lying is general coming from department heads? This is extremely not my experience. While I allow there may exist heads and deans or whatever who are jerks and who have some kind of weird agenda going in this conversations, my experience is that heads etc are trying answer questions while central folks are all working on how to make their “messaging” suit the theme words that represent our “brand,” even if doing so requires 138 white lies that taken together constitute gross misrepresentation which is, heroically, ON BRAND. Honestly, if branding as a way of understanding how we discuss basically anything about ourselves went out the window right this second it would be years too late.

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