Union bargaining XVII:

All proceeds go towards the $300 I had to pay Dave Hubin to see the invoices on Rudnick’s $400 an hour billing. Which Randy Geller is now sitting on. Conflict of interest? Read this and judge for yourself. I’ve now received $160 $170 for Rudnick’s invoices, from faculty, students, and just now from an alum – thanks readers!

Synopsis: 

Rudnick doesn’t care that the University Senate just voted to recommend that the administration should be called the “university administration” in the contract, and once again goes wacko. It’s like pushing her “embarrass yourself again” button.

She’s also pissed at the union for daring to suggest that her crack team of experts needs to pick up the pace. Uh, the faculty voted to unionize almost a year ago. We’ve been at the bargaining table since December. The union put its raise proposal on the table March 19th. Rudnick is saying that the administration’s counter proposal won’t be ready until April 24th. Do the math. Maybe Moffitt was travelling with the Ducks to the NCAA games again?

Speaking of math, it turns out that despite taking two weeks to do it, Moffitt had a few problems with those tricky addition and multiplication operations when costing out the union’s proposal. Don’t get me started on their attempts to take first derivative of total cost. Hint – it’s not an Excel function, you gotta think a little first, or try Mathematica. Anyway, she’s going to send the union a redo to try and get her grade up. 5 points off for every day late, it’s in the syllabus.

Other than that, it was a fairly productive meeting. The union put down counter-proposal after counter proposal, often adopting changes and language suggested by Rudnick and the administration, but holding their ground on a few key points.

Prologue: The union is coming off a big win in the Senate: 30 to 3 to ask Gottfredson to instruct his team to accept the union proposal to put shared governance into the faculty contract. Gottfredson has to realize that his bargaining team has at best 10% credibility with the faculty, and that his own credibility is shrinking fast given his apparent support for Rudnick’s bargaining strategy. Although “strategy” seems like a rather grandiose term for the random neural noise that our scans have thus far detected from the administrative team:

Maybe if we drop the t-stat cutoff to 1.6, turn off the Bonferroni correction, and do a one-sided test?

The union has disproved the skeptics – such as me – and has put forward a series of reasonable proposals for shared governance, promotion and tenure, and protections for the NTTFs. They made a reasonable economic proposal, focused on merit and on the external equity that has been a shared faculty administration goal since 2000. All the contract articles are now on the table. They’ve compromised with the administrative side on grievances and arbitration. If the administration’s team gets its act together we could wrap this up by the middle of May.

But given that their chief negotiator gets $400 for every hour she can drag it out, how long do you think it’s really going to take?

Disclaimer: This is my opinion of what people said, should have said, or should have wanted to say. Nothing is a quote unless in quotes. For the union’s view of things see Luebke’s blog.

Liveblog:

Act I:

Got in a little late. Rudnick is still refusing to let the administration be called the “university administration” – which the UO Senate agreed to just yesterday. I’m not sure how she got off on this, but she’s sounding more than a little childish. “This is a very significant fundamental issue here!” Back off! Now she’s mad because the union has been telling people she is moving so slowly. Mauer: We just need to get on with things. We have 9 faculty volunteers, are working really hard, we’ve put out all this work. You can’t even come back with an agreement on nomenclature? Rudnick:” Your speech is offensive! We are doing all the economic work! Your speeches are not going to change anything! We are not going to be called the administration! I’m sorry that you don’t like it! “Our people also have no time for this. It’s going to be done as soon as it gets done.” Too bad you want to get it done before you faculty go on vacation! “We are not going to be the administration!” Mauer: Our members are asking why the administration is taking so long. Rudnick: I don’t think you understand how hard we worked to incorrectly cost your bargaining proposals. (We’d understand better if you’d tell Geller to produce your invoices.) When I can find the right people to talk to about nomenclature, I’ll ask them!

Caucus break.

Act II:

Mauer: So, you have no economic proposals today, but you will on Wed the 24th? Rudnick. Yes, and Moffitt will come to defend them. We should have some of the information you have requested this week. Mauer: You will have a complete counter? Rudnick starts backtracking – at least we will on compensation. Moffitt’s going to go first to try and scare you with snippets from her secret powerpoint forecasts.

Art 2: Academic rank. Union counter:

Cecil: We’ve accepted you classification and rank system, we put back some of our language, attempt to address people who have been switched arbitrarily by the provost. Rudnick: Give me a more concrete example. Cecil: Person was hired .5 teaching and .5 research, then Tomlin said no, it’s one or the other. This makes that possible. Sec 2: Our language was from published OUS info describing ranks, you took it out, we think the descriptions are useful. We accepted your language on “paid”, tuned up a few parts to deal with potential confusion. We accepted your idea that Adjunct should be its own classification, added some descriptive stuff. Gleason: Is this language intended to capture current practice? Cecil: Yes, to the extent we could figure it out. We added back in post-doc fellows and emeritus, just for thoroughness. We couldn’t find some stuff which has apparently deleted from the UO website. Stuff about a “rank reclassification committee”. Cecil says he’s not aware of anyone reclassified from NTTF to TTF. I can think of one: Charles Martinez. Rudnick: Productive definitional back and forth with Cecil.

Art 8: Non-discrimination. Union counter.

Rudnick: Why 7 years between trainings? Mauer: There was a movie about it. Rudnick: How about 3, or 5? Mauer: Sure.

Art 5: Union rights, union counter:

Cecil: we cleaned up a little language, adopted some of your stuff. We should be a “university organizational unit” and a “recognized university group” so we can use facilities. Not asking for any special privileges. Rudnick: OK. Sec 4: Gleason: In the last 2 weeks I’ve had several faculty ask me how to get people from the union to stop coming to my door asking me to sign something. It’s interfering with their ability to feel comfortable in their office. Cecil: Tell them to say the standard thing: Please don’t come back. Mauer and Rudnick: People should email the union and ask them to stop. Cecil: But people change their minds, not unreasonable for us to check back every 6 months or so.

Caucus break.

Act III: 

Art 28: The mysterious faculty handbook again raises its ugly spectre:
Mauer: OSU has a website, here’s a printout. Blandy: OK. Rudnick: What does it mean to print something out? Links? Mauer: If links change, must be captured for the record. Rudnick: OK.

Art 29: University Administration Rights:

Admin shall have the rights in Oregon law, UO constitution, regulations, case law…

Mauer: We expected you to write this, but you stuck it in shared governance, so we’re writing it for you. Comes mostly from the UF contract. Rudnick: OK, we’ll look at it.

Art 30: Distribution of the agreement
Mauer: You explained last time the admin does not have an email list of bargaining members so it would be an undue burden for you to email out the news that there’s a contract posted on the AA website. Rudnick gets pissed again. I have no idea why they don’t want to send out this email. Demeaning for administrators to have to do something for the union? Who knows. Rudnick, tight lipped, “We’ll look at this”.

Art 40: Negotiation of Successor Agreement:

Art 42: Criminal faculty checks:
Mauer: Sec 6. Only have to notify Bean if they are convicted of a crime that affects their ability to perform their job duties. I personally have never seen language like what you are asking for. These are very unusual provision. These are not arising out of any actual problems – why are you raising them? Rudnick: Diverts with talk about background checks. … Blandy: what if a faculty criminal hid a crime that did affect job performance. Mauer: You’d have grounds for discipline. Gleason: Your criminal records are public records, what’s the privacy concern?

Mauer: That’s it for our counters. Rudnick: OK, I think we are on agreement or very close on a lot of these. Next time we will finally have the administrations economic proposals, or at least most of them. We will make Moffitt available at your request.

That’s it for today. Next meeting 4/24.