Faculty turnout was about 60 on zoom and another 60 in the room, plus some overflow in the hall. Pretty good, considering we’re a long way from ramping up the pressure.
The Admin team showed up 15 minutes late then drug a 15-minute break out for 35 minutes. I’d expected them to come back with a response to the union proposal, but they had nothing. So the faculty goes off into the summer with Scholz’s “Fuck You, my offer is nothing” as the last word from his Administration.
There will be some summer sessions, but with no substantive counter from Scholz this is headed for a strike sometime fall quarter.
Sounds strange. He seemed to be highly motivated and effective at Wisconsin in raising salaries. Growing the pie, as I keep saying. Collaborative. What is the deal at UO?
https://news.wisc.edu/faculty-salaries-advance-in-rankings/
Good find. I don’t understand his intransigence either. The obvious response to the union’s proposal would be “I agree with this goal. Now let’s work together to figure out how to get there and how long it will take.” Instead we get more highly-paid administrators and, for the faculty, a proposal for more real pay cuts. Does Jamie Moffitt really have that much credibility with him? Do UO presidents have to treat the faculty like dirt to stay on Uncle Phil’s good side?
Well, that’s disappointing.
At one point does this all start looking like Jamie Moffitt’s incompetence? She has had her hands in the financial decisions for a decade or longer, hasn’t she? And if the administration’s stance is to be believed, she hasn’t even gotten the university into a place where they can afford to stop the real wage losses for faculty?
It’s a good thing for Jamie that there’s little support for this position. The data clearly point to the university being able to afford real wage increases. Scholz and Co are just choosing to perpetuate losses.
Jamie: Stand up for yourself on this, maybe? It will be siding with faculty but, unlike Scholz, we won’t dog you for doing such a garbage job with the university’s finances. I think we’re one of the few groups on campus who think you’ve done your job well.
We must strike, to keep our pay from being cut, to be sure. But there are other reasons. The university doesn’t seem afraid of United Academics like it should be. A strike would change that. And also (and this is just personal), after so many years of demoralizing treatment by the university, I want to strike.
The SEIU bargaining team encountered the same rudeness re being late… and I think it was often more than 15 minutes.
I hear that demographics have the administration worried: after the Great Recession, the birthrate dropped and has continued to decline. That was 16 years ago, and we’re about to encounter the effect of fewer tuition-paying units:
https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/education/4398533-college-enrollment-could-take-a-big-hit-in-2025-heres-why/
HOWEVER, even if the pie is shrinking, we can still have a conversation about how to divvy up that pie more equitably. One would like to think that higher education wouldn’t model itself after the worst cutthroat capitalists, but it’s what a colleague refers to as the MBA-ification of education. Get in, get yours, get out.
Gotta wonder who they’ve got in mind for the East Campus plans: foreign students?
And they wonder why we don’t feel like we’re “flourishing.”