Updated 3/18/2012: The union organizers tell me they are reluctant to release this information for fear the administration will use it against them, but they tell me they are aware of people’s concern’s and are thinking about how to address them. One informed TTF writes in the comments:
… let me be clear that even though I am union supporter, I am not representing any official union position.
Everything is in flux right now – the cards have been submitted, the ERB has notified the administration, the administration will post that notification, the administration will then have two weeks to respond. A small delegation from the organizing committee was supposed to meet with the President last week to discuss where things were going, and to begin to feel out whether we could cooperate. That meeting was cancelled, with no reason given. That was too bad, but certainly well within the administration’s rights. It’s also understandable – probably they need some time to get a handle on what is happening, and figure out the best course to pursue, before they meet with us or make an official challenge. So we accept that the administration is being a little cagey; to my way of thinking, the union would have to be out of its collective mind to behave any differently. I may agree that the union should release a more detailed breakdown of the vote, and I might make that argument at an organizing committee meeting. But I certainly don’t think those numbers should be released right now, for the reasons I cited above.
FWIW, my read is that no one in the administration really cares if there is a faculty union so long as they can continue to use tuition money to pay for their beamers, football game junkets, and golden parachutes. My guess is they don’t put up much of a fight. I also don’t buy the argument this will make it harder for us to hire a good president. First, we’ve seen the folly of relying on charismatic leadership. We are on our own. Second, my definition of a good president is one who wants to cooperate with the faculty and help us achieve our goals. If such a person exists I don’t think a faculty union will scare them off.
3/17/2012: The complete report is here from an email survey done by two UO professors, of the entire pop of UO tenure track faculty (including law?). They have a 50% response rate, with 18% supporting a union. The union organizing committee is reporting that more than 50% of TTF’s signed cards supporting the union.
While the complete survey report lists some caveats, the results are hard to reconcile with what the union reports. The state ERB has told me that they will not break out votes by TTF, etc:
The petition itself will be available to the public on our website. The petition will probably give an estimated number of employees covered by the petition. When the showing of interest is checked, the only information I would release is the percentage of those signing, no other information. We are a small agency and would not have adequate staffing to go beyond that. The petitioner might release more detailed information.
I think the union organizers should release information on the percentage of TTF’s, NTTF’s and OR’s, cross tabbed by >= 0.5 FTE and < 0.5 FTE, that signed cards. By college would also be interesting. There’s plenty of support out there for the union, but also plenty of opposition and suspicion. The union needs to address those concerns head on if they want to broaden their support. Fortunately there’s an easy rule for gaining trust: look at how Randy Geller and Johnson Hall behave, and then do the opposite.
A logical interpretation of recent polling results:
Of the 50% of the TTF who participated in the Hurwit / Tublitz poll, 70.6% were opposed to the union.
Of the more than 50% of the TTF who participated in the UAUO poll, 100% were in favor of the union.
Therefore, somewhere between 50.1% of the faculty and 64.8% of the TTF are in favor of the union.
Seems clear to me.
Makes sense if the poll was extremely skewed towards those against the union… which doesn’t make sense at all. I agree with UO Matters – this doesn’t add up.
I also agree with UOMatters: “There’s plenty of support out there for the union, but also plenty of opposition and suspicion. The union needs to address those concerns head on if they want to broaden their support.”
– I’m growing skeptical of the claim of 50%+ of TTF
– I don’t like how the law school was allowed to get of the union and haven’t heard a satisfactory explanation as to why
– I’m really uncomfortable with starting a union with no idea of what it’s going to do beforehand. Maybe this is a “chicken and egg” problem but I’m still uncomfortable.
Maybe now that the organizers have 50%+ cards signed they don’t care about colleagues like me?
Re “seems clear to me”:
There are 740 TTFs, according to Tublitz’s survey report. So for the union to have majority support among TTFs, you’d need 371 to sign cards.
Of the 361 TTFs who answered the survey question above, 65 (18%) gave a response consistent with signing a union card.
Therefore of the 379 TTFs who did not answer the survey question above, 306 (81%) would have needed to have signed a card in order to reach a majority (65 + 306 = 371).
So here’s the question: given that there was 18% support among respondents, do you believe there was 81% support among non-respondents?
That sounds about right. Most union supporters I know figured that no poll authored by Tublitz and Hurwit could be neutral on the matter, and ignored it.
I hope that is not going to be the official union line.
I participated in the UAUO poll and am not “pro-union”. If the union comes to fruition, I want my voice to be heard. However, mere participation should not be confused with support (As I recall the UAUO poll did not include a question to the effect of “Do you support the union”). Could you post the link to the results of the UAUO poll so that we may better consider your assertion that it showed 100% support for the union?
I participated in the Tublitz et al. survey and I am pro-union. I have a problem with the survey instrument itself. It asked three questions in a row about which populations we would like in the union. The only one of these that I liked was TTs, NTTFs, and ORs. So, I answered “no” to two population questions and “yes” to the question that supported all three pops. The real problem comes with the last question: Would you support any union? Well, no, I wouldn’t; I would only support the union that has all three populations in it. I answered “no.” Was my answer taken as a “no” to unions? Yes, it was. Nathan clarified after I voted that this question was asking about “any union at all.” But that isn’t what I intended by answering and that isn’t what the survey led me to believe was the question. This is a common problem in surveys and the reason why so many people actually specialize in creating surveys. I think at this point we can ignore the survey results entirely and focus instead on what the State will say about the cards. The university will have all the lists soon enough and everyone will see for themselves how the counting came out.
But you answered “yes” on the question highlighted above, which described the composition of the actual bargaining unit and has been the basis of the discussion in this thread.
I’ll be happy to nitpick or even disregard the Tublitz survey if the union makes the basis of its count similarly available for scrutiny. Until then, I’m sticking with the numbers that are most transparent.
Peter — I know you are being your usual flippant self — but if that is going to be the “official” union story on these polls — then I am a lot more suspicious than I was already.
Hhhmmm. Now even my math is taken as evidence of flippancy. I guess that’s better than being accused of producing nasty sarcastic arithmetic. But if it’s backhanded way of pointing out that I’m one of two or three people posting here who doesn’t think that the fate of western civilization hangs on the resolution of this issue, thanks for the compliment!
I thought I was just pointing out a very obvious conclusion, to counter the assertion that it is almost impossible to reconcile the UAUO’s statement of having received a majority of TTF cards, with the Hurwit/Tublitz poll results: that somewhere between a half and almost 2/3 of the TTF signed unionization cards. That is just a rational conclusion, and I don’t understand how many commenters, all of whom certainly have much greater mathematical ability than me, can be so convinced it’s inaccurate. I find no conflict between the two findings, and I don’t have to resort to accusations of underhandedness or union thuggery to explain it. If the data at hand seems to indicate that the poll “was extremely skewed towards those against the union”, then that’s the conclusion I’d draw, rather than assert that that doesn’t make sense at all, with no evidence. That conclusion may not jibe with how you’d like the world to be, or it may not reinforce your pre-existing biases, but I thought this was a university and people argued from facts around here, not prejudices.
As for whether this is the “official” union story, let me be clear that even though I am union supporter, I am not representing any official union position.
Everything is in flux right now – the cards have been submitted, the ERB has notified the administration, the administration will post that notification, the administration will then have two weeks to respond. A small delegation from the organizing committee was supposed to meet with the President last week to discuss where things were going, and to begin to feel out whether we could cooperate. That meeting was cancelled, with no reason given. That was too bad, but certainly well within the administration’s rights. It’s also understandable – probably they need some time to get a handle on what is happening, and figure out the best course to pursue, before they meet with us or make an official challenge. So we accept that the administration is being a little cagey; to my way of thinking, the union would have to be out of its collective mind to behave any differently. I may agree that the union should release a more detailed breakdown of the vote, and I might make that argument at an organizing committee meeting. But I certainly don’t think those numbers should be released right now, for the reasons I cited above.
I might ask why everyone is screaming that this whole process is all corrupt if the union organizers won’t tell them everything they want to know RIGHT NOW, and no one is making any similar demand of the administration? Why won’t they tell us what they intend to do, and how they feel about the union, and whether they have consultants and lawyers plotting at this very moment against the expressed wishes of a majority of the faculty? If I were a little paranoid – perhaps at just the mean level of the commenters on this blog over the past week – I might start to think that all the negative Anonymous comments here were really the work of the Administration! How do I know that any of you are faculty? (On the internet, no one knows you’re a Dog.) There might be a massive disinformation campaign operated from a command center under Johnson Hall – what do you think all the recent remodelling was really about?
Or slightly less fantastical, assuming that you really are faculty – mightn’t this be a Fifth Column within the faculty – those who have been bought off, implicitly or explicitly, by the favors and perks of the administration? Or are we seeing a case of widespread Stockholm Syndrome among the faculty? As one commenter queried, maybe Hurwit and Tublitz are just pawns of the administration!
Okay, now I am being a little flippant. But I don’t think this conclusion is any more unsupported than the ones most of you are jumping to.
Peter Keyes, you stated above: “Of the more than 50% of the TTF who participated in the UAUO poll, 100% were in favor of the union.”
What is your source for this assertion? Could you provide a link to the results of the UAUO poll?
Thank you.
I may have been unclear. By UAUO poll, I was referring to the card check process, which had no way to abstain, or vote nay. By definition, all cards submitted were yeas. Sorry for any confusion.
Cheers.
Peter- I hope you’re not acting as if you’re impartial. If you’re concerned about prejudices, you should at least be aware of your own. The two facts are that we’ve heard from union organizers that more than 50% TTF signed union cards, and the results of the Tublitz survey. You’re explanation of the discrepancy between the two isn’t satisfactory to many of us.
Speaking of conspiracy theories, how do I know that you’re Peter Keyes? Maybe you’re really someone from the administration just trying to make Peter look bad?
Peter,
If the unions response is that the union intends to match the transparency of the admin, then I think most union supporters would be dissappointed and unsupportive of such a stance. Be proactive with transparency and demand the same of the admin.
I agree with you completely. I am not arguing at all that the union shouldn’t be transparent. I’m just saying that right now, too many things are in flux, too many unknowns, let’s lat the dust settle a bit and take well-considered actions.
Anon 5:06 –
No I’m not impartial, but I’m not sure that matters in this discussion. I keep hearing that you (and others) just aren’t satisfied with my explanation of the discrepancy between the “two facts” as stated, but I haven’t heard why. The two facts are not irreconcilable, as I have shown. If you assume (as I do) that neither the union organizers nor the poll authors are lying, then the conclusion I have stated is completely logical.
Actually, I guess this is where prejudices come into play. I have a prejudice that my colleagues are honest. You seem to have a prejudice that half of your colleagues are liars.
As for whether my posts are actually being written by someone in the administration, I’ve never seen any evidence that anyone over there is “flippant” enough to write them. Well, maybe Dave Hubin could do it. Cheers.
As far as waiting for the dust to settle before taking well measured actions, why wasn’t that applied to the formation of the union? Furthermore, how can we take well measured actions without full information?
To me, I am very concerned that colleagues which share a lot in common with me (science faculty who employ post docs and the law faculty) are not my peers in the union. In stead it consists of individuals whose main reason to bargain (employment guarantees, etc) are not my own. My fears might be premature, but hearing trust me over and over again, isn’t helping.
Actually Peter there are other explanations than what you’ve provided that don’t assume one or both sides is lying. For example, perhaps what each side is calling “TTF” is different? That’s another completely logical explanation that seems likely based on what we’ve heard from you and other union representatives. As to whether I have “a prejudice that half of your colleagues are liars,” I can see why you think Oregonians don’t know how to argue – comments like that can crater any hope for useful discourse. Have you ever wondered if it could be you that doesn’t know how to argue?
Peter, if that is true, the union should release the numbers. Otherwise, they are guilty of lack of transparency, which is a major reason many of us don’t trust the admin.
Build trust with transparency, not assumptions…
btw I completed the Yahoo poll and I wasn’t in favor of the union. So either my voice was ignored in that poll, or your statement above is false about 100 percent being in support.
According to Tublitz’s survey there are a total of 740 TTFs (724 who got the survey + 16 who had opted out of Surveymonkey). 361 people answered the above question, and we can interpret the answers to mean 65 of them as signed cards and 296 did not. (I am interpreting “uncertain” as “did not sign a card,” which is consistent with the union’s repeated message that there is no abstaining from card check.)
That leaves 379 TTFs who did not respond to the above question. In order for the union to have reached a majority among TTFs (740/2 + 1 = 371), that means that 306 of the non-respondents — or 82% — would have to have signed cards.
Perhaps someone who does a lot of survey sampling research can tell us if an 18% “yes” rate among respondents versus an 82% “yes” rate among non-respondents is a typical byproduct of self-selection. 18-vs-82 sounds like an awfully large discrepancy to me.
I meant UAUO …..dang auto correct :-)
In a painfully clear, related topic– From the Eugene Weekly
• Former UO football coach Mike Bellotti collects almost half a million bucks a year in UO retirement benefits, according to PERS data released recently to The Oregonian and the Salem Statesman Journal. But sources at the UO tell us the millions in benefits paid each year to retired coaches, athletic directors and others on staff are ignored when the UO administration claims the $78 million athletics budget is fully covered by ticket sales, broadcast fees, donations and other athletics-based sources of income. It’s time for the UO to come clean, document all the hidden costs, and admit that tuition is higher and academic salaries are lower because of excessive spending on athletics.
Going a bit off topic-
As the parent of a graduating student– the U of O delivers yet another reason to propose changing the name of the University to the U of Athletics….
1. For their own convenience, the U of A is having commencement ceremonies on a Monday.
2. Because the Track & field championships will be held the same week as commencement, there will be *no parking* on the 295 acre campus. Most areas will be closed to vehicular traffic, or as the web site states:
Parking and traffic on UO’s main campus will be extremely limited due to numerous and significant street closures in preparation for the US Olympic Track and Field Trials held later in the week. Do not attempt to park or drive on campus on June 18th.
3. Simply arrive @ Autzen stadium parking lot @ 7 AM & add 30 to 45 minutes additional to be shuttled to the Matt Knight (debacle) arena.
4. Their own list of area hotels shows the whole region is just about sold out. The U of A Commencement pages have a link to Hotel (UN)Availability http://www.eugenecascadescoast.org/commencement/
The term SOLD OUT seems to apply to any remotely decent nearby hotel & what the U did to it’s graduating class of ’12.
5. They actually built a $227 million dollar arena that holds 12,369 people, but only added approx 300 underground parking spaces??? As if Uncle Phil could not afford to build a parking lot & then have it pay for itself by selling parking permits year round.
6. Some departments scored indoor venues for the ceremony where each individual name is called, others are outdoors on campus, they state “The ceremony will be approximately one and a half hours long Please note that this is an outdoor ceremony where shade or covering may not be readily available; please plan accordingly. The ceremony will be held, rain or shine.”
With over 60 major buildings on campus, one would think there would be a back up venue in the case it is pouring rain.
But hey– these students have given all the $ they are going to, the Track & Field venue is a cash cow. Slap together some ceremony & call it good enough. Let them come on a Monday @ 7am & then later just have ceremonies rain or shine.
What’s all the fuss about? This is just honoring the academic achievements of students, there is a sports event priority, so the students are lucky we have commencement activities at all! Fork out your $67 bucks for cap & gown & the diploma cover they will give grads. So what if it rains? Hey! Maybe the families can take over the Jacqua center or some of the sports complex buildings for a day & have a respectable commencement ceremony.
Yeah, let’s take the focus off of this union thing and get back to bitching about athletics and the administration… to whip up union support.
You need to connect the dots & understand the Athletics heavy focus @ the U of O takes away from the academics.
The fact that Former UO football coach Mike Bellotti collects almost half a million bucks a year in UO retirement benefits should be a wake up call that faculty needs to unite & demand better pay.
Then again, I suppose ignorance is bliss. Chip Kelly Kelly is amongst the highest-paid college coaches in the country in 2011 with a $2.8 million base salary and the chance to earn up to $1.035 million in bonuses.
While Chipper gets a fat $2.8 plus bonus money— at the University of Oregon more than 1,300 professors and administrative workers got salary hikes. The increases included $2.8 million divided among 578 professors who had tenure or were on track to get it – an average raise of about $4,845, though increases varied widely.
If faculty thinks this is fair (and remember whole lot of faculty got NO RAISEs whatsoever), then no need to consider having union representation.
Chip may be the football coach & may not be involved in academics, (or even requiring the sacrosanct athletes to adhere to the student code of conduct!) but let’s face it–
$2.8 million base salary and the chance to earn up to $1.035 million in bonuses vs.
$2.8 million divided among 578 professors– Chip got the better deal.
I’m sure Mike (no contract) Bellotti & Chip Kelly are laughing all the way to the bank.
They are fine with the program just as it is.
But if faculty wants to demand there be some remote semblance of fairness, and balance to what should be the focus of a University– academics…. they are going to have to organize & going union is an excellent starting place.
All these “gifts” to athletics from Uncle Phil come with hidden costs to the University, and those costs take away from the majority of students who are not athletes, and faculty.
The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing & expect a different result.
Athletics at UO has been successful. Does that mean that UO has an “athletics heavy focus”? Only to the extent that the academic side hasn’t had the same success.
There are departments that rank as highly on the national scale as football has over the past decade, and do so without millions of dollars of subsidies, free cars, the ability to trade “donations” for tickets to entertainment, or all the other advantages football has.
As soon as they catch their breath, the union organizers should publicize the breakdown of support, by the numbers, not only among TTF/NTTF/ORs but also among each of the professional schools as well as the three divisions within CAS. The organizers’ acquiescence in the law school’s defection, whatever its legal basis, opens the door to legitimate demands for a more granular analysis at this point. I don’t say this as a ruse to sabotage the union’s hard work — the decision now rests with the ERB in any case — but we need to get these things out in the open in order to move forward. In due course, I’d also like to see whatever petition, forms, and/or supporting documentation were submitted with the cards themselves to the ERB.
Dog to anon@10:53
Agreed.
I am a TTF.
My attitude and support of the Union will depend on this voting
breakdown.
If the majority (hell even if 1/3) of the TTF voted for the union then I can easily support it.
If I never am informed about the % of TTF that voted for the union, then I will remain suspicious, disconnected ,and unsupportive of the whole process.
To Dog–If your criterion for supporting the union is backing from 1/3 or more of the TTF, then we’ll be welcoming you in. We’ll be setting out the Kibbles and Bits for you.
Honestly, to various Anons, if you want to know more about the breakdown of the card signers by status, wouldn’t it be better to hold off on the implications and accusations of strong-arm methods, fraud and the like?
I think we have become jaded due to experience with the such that lack of transparency is a huge red flag for us. If you don’t want accusations of fraud, wouldn’t it be better to put your cards on the table so to speak?
Dog to Professor Pope
Yes 1/3 is good for me. Experience shows that no one welcomes
dogs, however.
Over 1100 cards were submitted, majorities (i.e., over 50%) in each of the 3 classifications (TTF, NTTF, ORs). Look forward to working with you Dog.
ditto. i don’t intend to ignore te obviously substantial % of vTTF who apparently signed cards, and pro-union folk would be wise not to ignore the obviously substantial % of TTF who do not want to be in a union, esp one dominated by OR and NTTF. At this point, i have zero confidence in the union organizers based on their non transparent, manipulative behavior. more than one post suggested a path to a more credibly cooperative outcome. the union clesarly chose the path of least resistance to getting technically legal certification while railroading over questions and concerns about process from among our most respected and credibly pro-faculty faculty faculty on campus. every dig at them for daring to speak their honest opinion and trying to shine light on what we as a collective think only weakens the credibility of the union and its leaders sign me suspicious, disconnected, etc. too, and it did not have to be this way for me or many other honest skeptics.
As an NTTF, I’d be shocked if we ever dominate anything n this campus, numbers or not. There is a lot of hyperbolic rhetoric on these forums suggesting NTTF were behind this whole effort and will dominate the union. I doubt an NTTF driven effort could have obtained support of 50% plus TTF. I also hope my NTTF colleagues involved in negotiations will have the wisdom to realize without a top-tier, well-compensated and supported TTF, none of us will have anything.
I’ll settle for a little job security (a contract more than a couple of years) and reasonable teaching/service loads.
Well you will dominate voting in the union, so the union will likely focus on those issues, rather than the concerns of TTF like myself. Your coaltion has enough to be the median voter.
You’ll “settle” for a 3+ year contract and “reasonable” teaching/service loads? Tell us what you really want…
I don’t get what you are implying with the quotation marks. I said what I meant – my starting concerns are job security and workload. I feel pretty good about my pay besides it not keeping up with inflation or being tied to performance in any standard, predictable way.
My thoughts as an outsider who will be watching from the sidelines:
At a certain level, this is a zero sum game which makes it interesting to think about NTTFs, ORs, and TTFs negotiating together.
There seems to be the perception that the university has large “profits”, which may or may not be true, but could influence what individuals feel are legitimate demands. For example, the “settle” comment above could seem reasonable in that light, or unreasonable to someone unemployed in the community, and this is a public university, as just two extremes.
When the dust settles, are there just a few TTFs that are upset by this, or is anti-union sentiment more wide-spread? If it is, it’s a good bet that support varies widely from unit to unit (as the law school already proves). Will the union leadership be able to pull everyone together, or will they push ahead with whatever majority support they get.
How will research fit into the union? From my perspective, research has already been on a long, slow decline at UO. It’s hard to imagine how the union will change this, and at least to this outsider, it could accelerate the decline (see zero sum game, above).
Good luck!
The natural sciences TTF are overwhelmingly opposed to the union. Already, there is talk about difficulty in attracting new faculty, and retaining topnotch recently tenured faculty. If there is a unionized university with outstanding natural sciences, it’s unknown to me. We look at Rutgers, SUNY, etc. and see places that never reached their potential and are probably in long decline. I already hear talk of people looking to escape to OSU, which is a really bad sign if true, because OSU is mediocre in just about everything that UO offers. But there are predictions that OSU will truly become “the science school” in two or three decades.
Dog to Science Duck
A few points
1. The entire OUS system does not have a lifetime of even 2-3 decades but yes I agree that science, engineering and applications will begin to
merge at OSU. From the system (OUS) point of view, this makes some sense. From the UO point of view, it probably makes no sense.
2. Every once in a while I stumble upon science ducks, and maybe even
the Science Duck. Most of the them seem a little bit over reactive to
the whole union idea and I don’t for an instance believe a Union restricts reaching one’s potential.
3. The issue to pay attention to, and this is where the ducks of science, and the Science Council needs to get involved, is how the CBA handles course buyout time. If course buyout time (for the purpose of
research leave or whatever you want to all it) becomes a heinous and
cumbersome and more expensive process, then I think that does spell real trouble for science ducks.
4. OSU has some good programs. COAS, for instance, is pretty good and is not at all duplicated at the UO. COAS also brings in a lot of federal
grant money. Yes “hard sciences” are better at the UO, but this dog doesn’t believe that hard sciences is where future funding will be.
Dog to anon Zero Sum above
I am glad to see someone make this point. I was going to try and weave it into some thread but you have directly stated it (suggest your screen name be ZeroSum). I think in practice, this is initially going to be exactly the case. CBAs and union negotiations are very unlikely to create new resources and therefore it will be a re-distribution of extant resources under the zero sum rule. Now this could improve efficiency or it could produce a lot of unintended consequences. Who can say?
Dog, yes, I’ve probably honked at you a few times! And chase me as you will, I always get away.
A union makes it much more likely that OUS will survive and that UO will be part of it. Forget the “New Partnership”! In the first place, I don’t the money will be there.
Your points 2 and 3 somewhat contradict each other. Anyway, I’m telling you that younger science faculty are already thinking about whether it is time to bail.
I was talking about the areas UO has, not all OSU programs. Whether or not the “hard sciences” are where the future is, they are what UO is limited to, for the foreseeable future. We are not going to have engineering any time soon, oceanography, ag, pharmacy probably never. So if physics, chemistry, biology etc. go down at UO, that’s it for science here.
Hey – Economics is a science!
My feathered duck tail it is! Anyhow, econ will go down too.
I’m no Science Duck, but I was a bit taken aback by his willingness to trash Rutgers and SUNY (Mar 18 9:43 am) as “places that never reached their potential and are probably in long decline.” I don’t know about science at Rutgers or SUNY Buffalo, but his comment made me check and learn that four SUNY Stony Brook faculty have won Nobels in the last decade. I also recalled that James Simons, former Math professor there who became a hedge fund multi-billionaire, recently contributed $60 million for a math and physics center. Not quitea Matt Court-sized gift, but not too shabby. Apparently he wasn’t scared off by the presence of a faculty union.
(To be sure, one of those Nobels was in “Economic Sciences,” so maybe Science Duck doesn’t want to count that one.)
A nobel in the last decade can be from work done a long time ago. As an example, one of those Nobels was to Paul Lauterbur for his work on MRI which he did at Stony Brook in the early ’70s. Interestingly, Lauterbur moved to the University of Illinois in the ’80s, although I don’t know if it had anything to do with the faculty union.
Dog
has done extensive visitor time at Rugters and at SUNY Stonybrook. For now, just a comment on Rutgers:
In many ways Rutgers is similar to the UO:
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/02/rutgers_university_faculty_cal.html
except that its athletic investments have not been met with team success.
Rutgers has struggled with low faculty morale (hey if you lived in Pissthataway you would have low morale as well) and dwindling state funding for decades.
It remains a university, like the UO, with pockets of excellence scattered around
but with now clear academic direction of mission.
The situation has gotten worse in recent years. The Union at Rutgers formed
in 1970.
How to square the claim that the union got a “clear majority” of TTF with the Hurwit-Tublitz poll. How is it possible?
If the law school faculty really were excluded from the vote, and the faculty who employ postdocs — like myself — then it starts to become understandable. (I’m hearing now that we were excluded from the card check roster of eligible faculty; somebody please confirm or disprove.)
In other words, make a deal with the anti-union law school; don’t count the votes of the science faculty who employ postdocs on grants — cut out the most anti-union groups on campus — and you can get a majority of the rest.
(Assuming the count was for real; who the hell knows? Who checks the signatures, the union organizers?)
The whole thing is beginning to sound like a corrupt, sleazy operation.
The State Employment Relations Board counts, verifies the signatures (I’m not sure in what detail.) It also accepts challenges to the bargaining unit from the administration, if any. Standard process, and I doubt it’s corrupt or sleazy.
I’m sure they can count. How do they “verify” the signatures? Maybe they have the faculty and postdoc signatures available to check if they look authentic — the way they check voters’ signatures? I would like to know, and if so, how do they do get access to the authentic signatures?
That still doesn’t answer the questions about the law school and postdoc employers. As I said, assume the count was for real. The rest of it still sounds like it may be corrupt and sleazy. Maybe the facts are otherwise. Let’s hear them!
The problem we have with the administration is the reliance on non-transparency and misleading statements. The DPS will save money, Bend is making money, we can’t release this information. It is that attitude that leads to mistrust. So I am not heartened that when the union is questioned about the law school, they come back with “not on a quarter system” and other inanities (compared to post-docs who are here for 3 years and never teach a course being part of the union?). Why is it people in charge need to resort to these behaviors? Are we now going to have to listen to drivel from two sources instead of just one?
As (another) employer of post-docs, I appreciate that our bargaining concerns won’t always align with those of NTTF and ORs. Thus, it seems fair to exclude us from the union. I don’t see what is “corrupt and sleazy” about this practice of essentially the union self-selecting its membership. I think the worst one could say is that the union is unrepresentative of the faculty as a whole, but rather only representative of the faculty who support a union.
Can I check to make sure my signature is NOT counted in the card check? Somebody stopped by talk and I said I wasn’t convinced and likely wouldn’t be, but then I got an email survey asking me what I wanted from the union. Did everyone get that?
Seems unlikely. You could ask them if they have counted your signature “No” but that wouldn’t answer your question, would it? Unless they show you the list of all the signatories. But that list is not public.
So if they were cheating — Chicago style, but nothing like that could ever happen in Oregon! — you would have no way of knowing.
I believe they sent an email about a bargaining survey to all the faculty. You know, trying to bring all voices into the conversation whether you supported the union or not, like everyone here wants.
If you did not sign an authorization card, your “signature” is not being counted.
How do I have a guarantee of that??
Only those who filled out a card and signed it are counted among the “Yes.” A non-card is a “No.” That simple, guaranteed.
The pre-bargaining survey went out to everyone, because input is needed from everyone, whether pro-union, anti-union, or on the fence.
Did you sign a card? If not, then there is no card to count. You count as a no.
Here’s a question for the TTF who voted for the union. What motivated your decision? People have mentioned various things — lack of collaboration by admin, salaries, etc. etc. But it seems to me — I voted against — that things were getting better here, things were looking up. Bleak guy me! Salaries (and benefits) had been improving, though erratically, relative to comparators — especially after the last round of raises. Lots of gripes about the Frohnmayer days, whether justified or not. But Dave has been gone for nearly three years. Just 3 months ago, the newly decapitated new guy was our hero. Did he turn into a goat over the break? Is our new new guy — also a hero — a goat too, not good enough for us? I can’t imagine he is anything but horrified by the union. I hear that prospective president candidates are dropping out.
Lot’s of unhappiness about athletics. But is a union going to change that? Demand that the next Autzen expansion not happen? Demand that Phil Knight not be allowed to put any more money into the legacy fund until he builds us a gazillion dollar humanities/neuroscience/linear accelerator center?
So … what gives? I am really curious.
My main reason (as TTF, post-doc employer) was not out of self-interest, but rather solidarity with the NTTF. They are clearly exploited–does anyone question that? I have friends in other depts who work as many or more hours than I do for less than half the pay. Sure, some of that has to do with market values of different degrees, etc., but when the rubber meets the road it just seems unfair to me. And unions definitely do equalize salaries in that way.
Dog to Contented Duck
Short version: Management decides to make up for dwindling state funding by
rapidly increasing the size of the undergraduate population without any commensurate increase in facilities or TTF faculty lines. As a result, the NTTF
population rapidly grew (data easily available at IR) and the entire system was
stressed. That coupled with no salary raises over the period Nov 2008 until May 2011 combined with deep suspicion about the May 2011 pay raises (in my view that process was straightforward and not suspicious but others disagree) and the
ever increasing student load has led to current, collective disgruntlement. I am sure others will offer more reasons.
Prof Pope is all too coy, and Prof Keyes seems disingenuous: why hold the union to a higher standard than the admin? because that is what the union claims for itself. I do hope the union organizers will indeed “catch their breath soon” and post the breakdowns, by category within the bargaining unit, and yes, probably also by university unit.
Cat here is not so easy-going as Dog. I think 1/3 is not a good show, if that means disproportionate numbers of NTTF and OR favored the union. Such a result suggests to me that the bargaining unit was ill-conceived. That’s always been the main sticking point for me. If the TTF support is not strong, at least 50%–i.e., proportional to the total vote–then what we really learn from the card-check is that the NTTF’s badly need and want a union, but TTFs not so much. Is this why the union cut bait when they went over the limit, so the numbers of ORs and NTTFs would tip that balance even more obviously?
I wholeheartedly support Puppy’s legitimate desire for job stability and reasonable teaching/service loads. But as a TTF I already have those things. Why then are Cat and Puppy in the same bargaining unit? But Employer of Postdocs is not?
I agree with ZeroSumGame and fear that TTF have a more to lose by unionizing themselves than they gain–whereas an NTTF union we could have all supported.
dead duck to dog, agree with your assessment, though it is worth noting that the ‘open the floodgates’ with no real planning for how to teach the students, where to teach them, or who will teach them ( or where the teachers will be ‘warehoused’predates the most recent cuts in state support. As the coffers swelled , at least by Oregon standards of swelling, administrative leaders allowed VPFA to skim millions off the top for administration and were too distracted by their own pet plans to be bothered to pay any attention to how to deal with the rising tide of students, or how to sh resources appropriately with those ‘toting the bales.’ That we have managed as well as we have is a tribute to the dedication most faculty, including mid to lower level administrative faculty outside JH have to our core mission of teaching and research. As an old chestnut goes, ‘unions don’t organize workers, management failure does.’ (for better or worse, pepending on your views)
Dog to dead duck
I agree that our most recent behavior is similar to what has been done in
the past (recruit more out of state students, etc), but this latest “floodgate”
strategy has now saturated our infrastructure which has required hiring a large
number of adjuncts and is moving us, in my opinion, much closer to a community
college model and much farther away from the UO as a research institution. If
the union can reverse this trajectory (which in my view is a direct result
of management failure), then, in the end, it will be a good thing,
A reminder that the Old Bean academic plan had us stopping growth at around 24,000 students and hiring 100 new faculty, if memory serves.
Dog
Your memory is mostly correct.
1) We are not “stopping at 24000” but does look like we will be stopping
at 24-25 thousand. (see fall 2011 headcount below)
2) We have not hired 100 TTF. This plan originated in 2008. In 2008 TTF = 646; 2010 = 683 (the 2011 data is not yet available
and I remind everyone of the historical figures.
Most relevant in this case is enrollment in 2000/2001 = 17,843 ~ 18,000
Fall 2011 = 24,447 ~ 24,500
so we have grown by about 1/3 – by any scaling that means we need ~200
more TTF.
So maybe the original plan was flawed from the beginning. Also, what was TTF growth between 2001 and 2011? And NTTF? I’d also be interested in class size growth as a compensating effect of not enough faculty.
Of course there are many variables here. One is the growth in international students without requisite growth in support for those students (or even a faculty discussion, that I know of, of the wisdom of growth in that particular area over other areas – I’m not lobbying one way or the other but some types of students require different kinds of services…not just more bodies. Not that we have those either.)
Dog says
No shit the original plan was flawed, from any academic perspective. 2001
TTF was around 620 – this number hasn’t changed over time very much.
Determining an increase in average class size is not easy to do and I don’t believe
anyone keeps track of it. The scaling argument above suggests that class size
has increased by 1/3.
All the data you need for NTTF growth is, and always has been available at
http://ir.uoregon.edu/sites/ir/files/ten2011.pdf
of particular note is the upwards trend in “adjuncts” since 2008. I do not
know what constitutes an “official adjunct” only that the number is increasing.
As said earlier, data for 2011 is not yet readily available.
That the number of adjuncts is increasing is troubling, for both TTF and NTTF. Especially considering that revamping of NTTF policies to create the “career” classification was meant to reduce reliance on adjuncts and protect adjuncts from prolonged abuse.
Dog reminds
This is the UO; what we say in policy we seldom implement in
real life. Data generally illuminates the latter.