Check it out at https://strengthenuo.org. Instead of the whining and obfuscation you’ll find on President Scholz’s website, the union has directly relevant data, for example:
Back of the envelope, if Scholz had the stones to cut his admin costs back to the 2015-21 average there’d be enough to give faculty a 10% raise this year even with no revenue growth. I can’t imagine why Jamie Moffitt didn’t want that info posted.
Also the union site has a much nicer design, almost like someone cared. So how much of your union dues did our Union Bosses spend on putting this together? I asked them, and of course put the same question about UO to Carol Keese, UO’s VP for Communications, both at 3:26PM today. 15 minutes later I got this from the union:
From: Kristy Hammond <[email protected]>Subject: Re: public records request, strengthinguo.org costsDate: January 8, 2025 at 3:41:08 PM PSTTo: Bill Harbaugh <[email protected]>Cc: Chris Sinclair <[email protected]>Professor Harbaugh,The website at https://strengthenuo.org was created by faculty members over the holiday break. The website hosting and domain were purchased for one year’s time and cost $142.05. Please let me know if there is any additional information that might be useful. I would be happy to send you the receipts:)Warmest regards,Kristy HammondOperations DirectorUnited Academics, AAUP-AFT Local 3209
Let’s see how long it takes VP Keese to tell us how much UO spent. An airline bottle of scotch for the best guess. (Sorry Kevin Reed, since you’re in charge of the public records office and get to determine how long they’ll stall, you can’t play.)
It’s not hard, nor expensive to build a website. Especially when the content is already there.
The United Academics Bargaining team has done an excellent job of laying out the arguments. Our Economics Team has done an excellent job at analyzing and presenting the data. The content was already there.
It does take time. Time that could have gone into research, or preparing for winter term classes. And not just my time. Lots of faculty time has gone into a contract campaign that could have been avoided by honest budgeting and preparing for the inevitable cost of inflation. But the administration only sees the dollars on their spreadsheets. They don’t worry about the cost of lost productivity due to our financial uncertainty, or the cost in faculty time necessary to build a credible strike threat (the labor is the same whether we have to strike or not). They just want their dollars to stay in the same columns on their spreadsheet.
The money to pay us fair raises is there. They have to spin financial doom and gloom to get more money from the legislature. This is why they budgeted for an 18% increase in out-of-state students for the year. When they inevitably missed this ridiculous target they got the deficit necessary to plead poverty. Responsible fiduciaries don’t count their out-of-state ducklings before they hatch.
But we get a veto on their budget, at least the part that involves our salaries. If it comes to it, I hope we exercise it.