Tag Archives: 2015 bargaining

Just kidding, I don’t know why our provost didn’t give United Academics any credit for these raises in this email, sent round today. One of the more unexpected aspects of both this and the 2014 bargaining was that it was the *union* that kept pushing for merit increases, while the administration wanted across the board. The union won. For the record, here’s my final post on the 2015 negotiations: Bargaining XIX: 12:55 AM Friday, and we’ve got a deal. 8% + $650 + a look at equity.

Today’s email:

Dear William,

I am pleased to share important information about compensation. Faculty salary increases this year are effective January 1, 2017.

The 2017 salary increases for eligible faculty will include both a 0.75 percent across-the-board increase as well as a 2.25 percent available merit pool. Additional details about the salary increase process are available on the HR website: FY17 salary increase overview.

Last year, the university transitioned its annual faculty salary increase cycle from the beginning of each fiscal year (July) to the beginning of each calendar year (January). With this change, faculty received their last salary increase in January of 2016. Based on the new cycle, the next opportunity for a salary increase is the start of the next calendar year, which is January 2017. We expect that the January 1 increase cycle will continue in future years.

Please contact Human Resources with questions by email at [email protected] or call (541) 346-3159.

Sincerely, Scott Coltrane

Provost and Senior Vice President

Coltrane’s not giving our faculty union any credit for these raises, but at least he’s not blaming the union, so I guess that’s progress:

To: All Faculty
From: Scott Coltrane, Provost and Senior Vice President
Date: November 2, 2015
Re: FY 2016 Compensation Increases

I would like to share with you the following important details about compensation increases for all faculty:

$650 one-time payment to be issued for all faculty

Any faculty employed in November will receive this one-time payment on the end-of-November paycheck.

The amount will be pro-rated by your November 2015 FTE.

Pay increases

All faculty with an appointment at any point in FY 16 will receive a 2% increase to their base salary.

Pay increases are effective January 1, 2016 and will be applied to end-of-January paychecks.

The Office of the Provost and Academic Affairs is available to answer any questions. Please contact Pam Palanuk ([email protected])

Word is that the OA’s will also get the $650 one-time payment or if they prefer a side of beef, cut and wrapped. Plus a 2% pool for merit raises.

Here’s the April 2012 letter to Governor Kitzhaber from one of his policy advisors, telling him that Interim UO President Bob Berdahl had hired an out of state firm to try and bust the union, and that UO was not being completely honest about that:

All in all UO paid about $1M to Curiale, Hirschfeld, and Kramer and to Harrang, Long, Gary and Rudnick, plus more to other lawyers, and of course noted PR flack Anna Richter-Taylor of the Gallatin Group. UAUO’s Dave Cecil and the AAUP’s Mike Mauer ate their lunch, bargaining session after session.

The ham-handed Bob Berdahl and his rabid General Counsel Randy Geller were the best thing that ever happened to the union’s organizing campaign. After the union was certified they really got vicious with their secret plan to abolish the UO Senate:

Then Gottfredson and Geller hired Sharon Rudnick from HLGR to bargain against the union, along with former Journalism Dean Tim Gleason and VPAA Doug Blandy:

Their inept performance, and Gottfredson’s efforts to use the CBA to trash academic freedom, take the faculty’s intellectual property rights, and control outside consulting and research ended all serious discussion of union decertification. This picture alone probably brought in 50 signed union cards.

But that was then. When Mike Schill got to campus he told the union he was going to try and save UO, and he wanted a three year contract so he could have some breathing room. The union leadership said yes. I think we’re going to make this relationship work:

Either that, or Schill’s got a diabolical plan to kill the faculty union by cleaning up Johnson Hall, fixing relationships between the administration and the faculty, improving NTTF job security, and raising money to boost UO’s national research reputation and improve student outcomes, and Michael Dreiling is unwittingly falling into his trap by going along with it all.

Here’s the email Dreiling sent out today, summarizing what the union got for the faculty, and what we didn’t get. I think this is a very good contract, and shows that President Schill and the faculty union can work together to make UO better. I particularly like this part of Dreiling’s email:

We heard from a wide range of faculty about bargaining strategies. There were many different opinions about how and when to conclude negotiations. The UA leadership found there were a number of compelling reasons to avoid the continuation of negotiations into the fall term. The university has a new president who needs to build momentum for raising resources that serve the academic mission of our university. We need to keep our eye on that process. …

Full disclosure: As UAUO Treasurer I’m a member of the Exec Committee, but I was not on the bargaining team and did not help draft this letter, although I think it’s spot-on:

Dear Colleagues,

I am pleased to announce that after nearly 7 months of negotiations United Academics and the University of Oregon have reached a tentative three-year agreement. Over the course of these negotiations, United Academics pressed the conversation on fiscal priorities at the University of Oregon, standing by the principal that investing in faculty is investing in our academic mission.

The UO administration initially proposed a raise to faculty of only 1% over two years (with an additional one-time payment of $600). With considerable effort and after countless hours, we were able to move these numbers in a more favorable direction. While some may hasten to point out shortcomings of the agreement (and I am not shy about indicating some of these below), it is a solid contract that establishes five consecutive years of salary increases for all faculty at the UO (those represented by UA and those not) as well as major improvements in job stability for all NTTF.

Numerous gains are layered throughout our tentative contract, some of which are highlighted below. A more complete summary of the contract will be available in the weeks ahead. As soon as the two teams complete copy-edits, the tentative contract will be made available online for your review before a General Membership Meeting at which UA members will cast an up or down ratification vote. Stay tuned for those details.

Before presenting a quick summary of the contract, I want to thank the hundreds of faculty who participated in various ways to mobilize and support our union during the summer months. Your involvement made an enormous difference! Last week, about 100 of you attended our marathon bargaining sessions. In the end, our combined efforts persuaded the UO to accept an agreement will provide average raises of 8% over 3 years, along with a $650 one-time payment (about $1,000,000 paid out to faculty), increases to promotion raises, significant increases to salary floors, and more.  Thank you to every faculty member who took some action to support the bargaining team over the last 7 months!  

Contract Highlights

The tentative contract:

• Provides for salary stability (5 years straight, locked in 3 more after 2 good years) and new salary gains averaging 8% over the next three years. Salaries will take effect on January 1, 2016.
  • FY 2016: 2% COLA, $650 one-time payment prorated by FTE on November 30, 2015
  • FY 2017: 0.75% COLA, 2.25% merit pool
  • FY 2018: 0.75% COLA, 2.25% merit pool
• Locks-in the minimum of 8% promotion raises for all TTF. After promotion to full professor, the faculty member whose first successful review “exceeds expectations” will get a minimum raise of 8%. A successful review that “meets expectations” is guaranteed a minimum of 4%. All subsequent six year reviews result in a minimum of 4%.   
• Maintains promotion raises of  8% for NTTF.
• Greatly increases contract stability for all NTTF (including funding contingent faculty) – NTTF who are promoted and are consistently meeting the standards of excellence can expect to have their 3-year contract renewed, with exceptions only for programmatic changes, budgetary limitations or the conversion of the position to a tenure-track position.
• Significantly raises salary floors for all NTTF and Postdocs.
• Brings the salary differential between Pro tem (adjunct) and Career NTTF closer to parity, from 80% to 90%.
• Provides a separate 1% equity pool for librarians since the administration remains unwilling to remove “up or out”.
• Improves faculty access to personnel records and files, including specific time limits for access and partial waivers of the copying costs of records.
• Agrees on a Memorandum of Understanding to study all equity issues at the UO.
• Tightens procedures for the Promotion, Tenure, Retention Appeals Committee (PTRAC).
• Agrees to establish committees to assess a sick leave bank and a child-care subsidy.
• Secures the current the 95% employer/5% employee contribution ratio for health-care premiums.
• Simplifies the faculty policy development process.
• Expands the ability of faculty to change department-level governance policies.

We fought for a number of additional benefits that the UO rejected, including increased sabbatical support and bridge-funding for research faculty. But our single most frustrating loss was in the area of equity. Beginning with our first economic proposal we argued that persistent inequities affect many faculty and departments at the UO. In our attempt to move the administration to include some kind of equity money, we presented an array of solutions, some large, some small, some targeting specific types of equity problems and some taking a multi-year, multi-pronged approach to a variety of internal and external salary inequities. It became clear that the university was not interested in monetarily addressing equity issues in this contract.  We did persuade them to work in concert with United Academics to document and propose solutions to equity issues facing faculty.

Our difficult choice

We heard from a wide range of faculty about bargaining strategies. There were many different opinions about how and when to conclude negotiations. The UA leadership found there were a number of compelling reasons to avoid the continuation of negotiations into the fall term. The university has a new president who needs to build momentum for raising resources that serve the academic mission of our university. We need to keep our eye on that process. By not dragging negotiations into the fall, we averted possible mediation and impasse, which could have had costly ramifications in our relations with the university administration. We look forward to discussing these choices in our Representative Assembly and membership meetings.  

What’s Ahead?

There is a lot of exciting work ahead. In recent weeks, I have received requests from faculty at the University of Washington and the University of Minnesota to visit their campuses and share our collective bargaining experiences. Academic Affairs is working with our union to develop a faculty mentoring program. United Academics will also be working with administration to set up the committees agreed upon to explore the feasibility of a sick leave bank and child care subsidies and collaborating on the salary equity studies.

As we celebrate the completion of our negotiations and prepare to vote on the contract, I hope you will consider supporting the classified staff in their ongoing effort to get a fair contract.  

Warm wishes, Michael Dreiling, President, United Academics

It’s too early to say President Schill has exorcised the demons from Johnson Hall, but the blatant hostility and contempt directed at UO’s faculty by many senior administrators seems to have lessened, and this contract and the way it was negotiated are yet more evidence of that.

And yes I’m saying that even though I’m still puzzled by the administration’s refusal to address the external equity issues at every step of the negotiations. The union’s first offer proposed a pool of money for external equity:

External Equity Raises – Tenure-Track and Tenured Classification

i. On July 1, 2015, the University will establish a pool for external equity raises for all faculty members in the Tenure-Track and Tenured classification equal to 1.5% of the total base salary paid to all faculty members employed in FY15 in the Tenure-Track and Tenured Professor and Acting Assistant Professor classifications.

The administration took it out. The union put it back in. The administration took it out. In. Out. In. Out. The union then asked for a joint committee to study equity. The administration took that out. The union said how about just saying we’ll meet and do a study, it doesn’t have to be a formal joint committee. The administration said no. Eventually, they agreed we could “examine” it. Something about the word “study” was unacceptable to our administration. Bizarre:

The TAed salary agreement is here.

Synopsis: It’s a win-win deal for UO President Michael Schill and the UO faculty. I’m no economist, but I think the technical term is Pareto improvement.

All in all a very fun, and rewarding, bargaining process. The administration’s team, led by Director of Employee Relations Bill Brady, has been very professional and collegial. As has the union’s team, led by UAUO Exec Director Dave Cecil. Everything wraps up with good feelings all around. Brady and UAUO President Michael Dreiling will put out a joint statement tomorrow. Contract ratification vote after fall classes start.

Including promotion raises this deal, which is spread out over 3.5 years, is roughly 3.5% per year. Average raises for continuing faculty at our AAU comparators were 3.4% last year. So we should be able to maintain faculty pay at ~94% of comparators, which the union got us to last round. On top of that there’s job security for NTTFs, etc. And none of the anti-academic freedom language that Coltrane’s administration had tried to add.

What an improvement over the 1% offer that Coltrane and Moffitt started with back in February. Michael Schill deserves credit for that – as does the union, which had to keep pushing the administration for a surprisingly long time.

President Schill starts office having negotiated a reasonable contract for the faculty, which should certainly help increase the good will he’s already accumulated since arriving.

The faculty can point to the 5 years of raises that the union has now negotiated as a precedent, and tell potential new hires that they can expect to be treated well.

The union can point to the reasonable deal, the generally non-adversarial negotiations, and the union’s willingness to agree to matters of importance to the administration, and put an end to past claims from Johnson Hall and some trustees that having a faculty union was somehow a bad thing for UO. No more “blame it on the union”. I hope.

There are still enough leftover items – like the administration’s intransigence on sharing financial information, their insistence on charging the faculty to see faculty records, and their refusal to put anything in the pot for equity – to give the union something to shoot for in the next contract.

Timeline:

• 11:30 AM Thursday: Union proposal: 8.5% plus $4K in annual one-time payments. 4% ATB, 4.5% merit over 3.5 years. See below for details.
• 4:20 PM: The admin team takes out all the one-time payments except $300 in mattress money. Offers 2% ATB, 5.5% merit over 3.5 years. 0% equity.
• 7:44 PM: The union proposes $1500 one-time payment, 3.75% ATB, 4.5% merit. 
• 10:44 PM: Admin comes up 0.25% to 7.75%. $300 one-time, 3.25% ATB and 4.5% merit. They will not agree to even study external equity problems. 
• 11:44 PM: Union proposes 8% over 3.5 years. 3.5% ATB, 4.5% merit, $750 one time, and a study of external equity. 
• 12:14 AM Friday: Administration agrees to the 8%, but only $500 one-time. Union asks for $650, insists on equity study.
• 12:52 AM: Administration accepts the offer, and agrees to discuss the equity problems.
• Deal.

FY 2016: 2% ATB, $650 one-time, pro-rated by FTE
FY 2017: 0.75% ATB, 2.25% merit pool
FY 2018: 0.75% ATB, 2.25% merit pool

Increased NTTF floors and job security. And an agreement to agree to an MOU to explore gender and external equity problems.

I should have got a shot of both bargaining teams together. Oh well, here are the UAUO negotiators:

Continue reading →

2PM: The faculty are having a great time, hanging out on the Group W bench and waiting for the admin team:

2:25 PM: The admin team is back, with counterproposals. See the live-blog below, and see the Union facebook blog here. Chris Sinclair’s got more details on the proposals, but I’ve got more snark. Disclaimer: My opinion of what people said, thought, should have said or should have thought. Nothing is a quote unless in quotes.

Highlights:

• Union puts down a raise proposal of 9.75% over 3.5 years. Enough to keep faculty from losing ground relative to peers.
• Union files unfair labor complaint against administration over public records fees, etc.

Lowlights:

• Administration wants to charge faculty to look at their own personnel files – with billing through the Public Records Office. And they’re going to put Penny Daugherty in charge of deciding what’s relevant for AA. You’re fucking kidding me.
• Admin’s 3PM lowball salary offer: 7% over 3.5 years. That’s 2% a year, the same as the Fed’s inflation target and below recent inflation in the Portland Salem MSA. See below for details. Even with promotion raises this will probably mean UO faculty pay will slide back relative to AAU average, which is currently increasing at about 3.4% a year. And the administration is offering $0.00 to address the external equity problems. Gottfredson’s opening offer was 5% over 2 years.

The next UO Trustees meeting is September 10-11. VPFA Jamie Moffitt is on the agenda to present some financial data and a budget. Which would be nice. The union has already filed an unfair labor practice complaint about the UO administration’s financial murkiness and refusal to document discipline against tenured faculty.

Speaking of murk, it’s been more than seven months since IR has updated the quarterly salary reports that show the details on JH’s latest administrative bloat and the various athletic department raises. I’ve got an email in to IR Director JP Monroe asking what’s up with that.

Live-blog:

Dave Cecil kicks off. Ready to go til 1AM Thursday if admins will really negotiate, but if they continue to pretend they’re not exercising their monopsony hiring power, we’ll wait and come back in the fall.

Union puts down new economic proposal: 9.75% over 3.5 years:

FY16: 2% ATB

FY17: 1% ATB, 1.25% equity pool, 2% merit pool

FY18: 1% ATB, 2.5% merit pool

Cecil: equity pool is not enough to deal with UO’s problems, but it’s a start:

The union proposal also includes salary floors for RAs and pro-tem faculty, and the NIH rate for all 9 month contracts.

Brady: Your proposal says that the admin can’t increase workload without increasing FTE. Is this just about courseload increases, or any workload increases, e.g. research.

Cecil: I’ve heard lots of complaints about this. All have been instructional, none about research. Willing to talk about language.

[Sorry, I skipped over a bunch of union counterproposals]

11:17 AM: Brady has a few things.

Art 8, personnel files. UO wants to charge faculty for access to their personnel files. WTF? And they’re going to put the Public Records Office in charge of the work and the fees. And Penny Daugherty will decide what’s relevant for AA. 

And Brady thinks this is “reasonable”. Wow. 

Article 32, Leaves.  Aah yes, remember Randy Geller’s bitter 2013 Christmas email to the faculty?

This is a reminder that under Article 32, Section 21, of the United Academics Collective Bargaining Agreement, bargaining unit officers of instruction who do not earn vacation will be considered to be on paid leave during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day (and during the week of Spring Break).

Christmas Day and New Year’s Day are paid holidays. However, bargaining unit faculty members (typically some officers of research) may be required to work on these holidays if necessary to maintain or operate critical facilities or operations. If a bargaining unit faculty member is required to work on a holiday for that reason, he or she may take an equivalent amount of time off with pay at a later date, as approved by the bargaining unit faculty member’s supervisor.

Otherwise, as provided in Article 17, Section 7, of the CBA, each bargaining unit faculty member must be fully engaged in teaching, research, and service work for the university to the extent of his or her appointment, and must be engaged in work or reasonably available for work for the entirety of the term for which the bargaining unit member is employed unless on approved leave. There is no blanket leave for the period between fall and winter terms.

You previously received information about the Governor’s Day.

Faculty members who are not subject to the United Academics CBA may make individual arrangements with their supervisors regarding work schedules.

Randy Geller
General Counsel
University of Oregon

University wants the right to assign work during spring break and winter break.

Brady: Issue is when we have to assign faculty to student advising over weekends. We are not willing to pay for that. [Which is weird, since they used to.]

Article 18, Summer:

Brady: We don’t want the joint admin/union committee with faculty union membership involved in approving policies for summer session appointments. They can review and edit, but Dean approves.

Cecil: We’ll take a look at this.

Article 16, Notices of Appointment:

Brady: We refuse to accept restrictions on our ability to not renew NTTF’s. We want to be able to fire career NTTFs and search for a replacement, even if the NTTF meets expectations in performance reviews, and we don’t want the union to be able to appeal those decisions to an arbitrator by arguing that shifts in budget priorities are a matter of academic judgement. [I love this argument. Let’s remember it when the administration tries to tell the the Senate that budgets are not academic matters.]

Cecil and Blonigen discuss what would happen if a department needs to cut a NTTF member. How do they pick which one? Cecil: That’s Article 25, financial exigency.

Speaking of budget priorities, no sign of Around the 0’s strategic communicator Tobin Klinger, who gets paid more than a full professor of physics:

Cecil: Why do you say the administration needs protection from the possibility that you’ve hired, promoted, and repeatedly reviewed and passed an NTTF, and then want to fire them? You say you want rigorous academic standards. So does the faculty union. So the administration should do serious reviews of NTTF’s on the basis of their teaching effectiveness, and don’t promote and pass them on reviews. This is on you. But this new language just gives you an easy out when the administration doesn’t do its job.

Brady: OK, I get it. Not sure how we can resolve this though.

3:00 PM: Article 26, salary. Administration puts out another lowball offer, 7% over 3.5 years. 

FY16: 1.5% ATB, 0% merit, 0% equity.

FY17: 0% ATB, 2.5% merit, 0% equity.

FY18: 0% ATB, 3% merit, 0% equity.

Provost holds 10% back from merit pools.

No equity? No Chevy Van? And no movement on adding workload without increasing FTE. Cecil: You’re not helping us get to an agreement with this offer.

Deb Green to Bruce Blonigen: As a CAS Assoc Dean, Are you happy turning over the merit money to the provost? [What if Coltrane gives it all to sport product design?]

Blonigen: This won’t be a problem so long as we have a good provost.

Article 21, Appeal of Denial of Promotion or Tenure:

Brady: We agree to let the PTRAC meet without the General Counsel if they want, but don’t understand why you care.

Cecil: Because while we are hoping for positive changes, the UO General Counsel’s office has a long history of incompetence and hostility to the faculty. Are you familiar with Randy Geller’s memo about dissolving the UO Senate?

Caucus break. Cecil: We’ll get back to you on the FAC part of this.

Article 35, Professional Development.

Brady: We’re taking power to approve these policies away from the joint admin/union committee and giving it to the Dean’s office.

Cecil: We said we would move on job security in return for money. So where’s the money? 

Brady: We’ll have to see.

Cecil: Cut the crap. The day’s almost over. Show your cards.

Brady waffles. Apparently President Schill hasn’t given him the authority to cut a deal.

Cecil: So are we wasting our time here, pretending to negotiate?

Union presents counter on Art 8, personnel files. UO wants to charge faculty for access to their personnel files. WTF? And they’re going to put the Public Records Office in charge of the work and the fees. And Penny Daugherty will decide what’s relevant for AA. 

Cecil: We made a few changes to account for UO’s intransigence on releasing documents. Brady: We’ll look at it.

4:04 PM, Caucus Break. 

7:27 PM, they’re back:

Cecil: We’ll give you economics and NTTF job security tomorrow (Articles 16 and 26).

Some clean-up and Temporary Agreements. Snoozers, Cecil’s got it covered.

8/3/2015: “Around the O” retracts claim UO faculty pay meets Senate target, admits it’s really 6% behind

Presumably this correction means Bill Brady will kick off Bargaining Session  by adding 6% to the administration’s current lowball offer of 6.5% over 3.5 years.

Continue reading →

Sorry, I’m teaching summer camp so no UO M live-blog. The faculty union is live-blogging on Facebook, though. Their info on the administration’s counter-offer from today:

Admin proposal:

FY16: 1% ATB.

FY17: 2.5% Merit (with dean’s withholding 20%).

FY18: 3% Merit (again 20% withheld) 

That’s 6.5% spread out over 3.5 years. (Plus about 1% per year for promotion raises.) Last year raises at our comparators were 3.4%, and it looks like they will be about that again this year. Our administration is offering 1% (plus promotions). I’m no macroeconomist, but I hear that the Federal Reserve Bank’s Open Market Committee has an inflation target of 2%.

The union proposal is for 10% raises over 3.5 years (plus promotions) split between ATB, merit, and equity. The two sides are a long ways apart and there are no more sessions scheduled until August 12.

Meanwhile the administration’s PR flacks still haven’t retracted their claim that UO faculty compensation is now *above* the Senate White Paper target. Come on. And while the administration’s own data shows the serious external equity issues for fulls, the administration’s proposal includes zip for equity. And don’t get me started on the unicorn.

So it seems likely we will still be bargaining when classes start September 28th. Will the faculty strike? Not in September. As you may recall from the GTFF strike there’s a long period of impasse, arbitration, votes, and so on before a full-blown strike can be called.

Some quick googling shows this for 2015-16 raises at some AAU publics and some nearby universities:

University of California system: Faculty will get a 3% ATB raise, in addition to the regular step/promotion raises, which are about 2.5%. (https://ap.ucsb.edu/compensation.and.benefits/ucsb.salary.scales/ and http://www.dailycal.org/2014/03/16/uc-academic-employees-receive-3-percent-salary-increase/)

University of Colorado: 3% (http://communique.uccs.edu/?p=18303)

UVA: 2% ATB plus regular promotion raises: http://www.newsplex.com/home/headlines/Virginia-Lawmakers-Approve-Budget-with-State-Pay-Raises-294256111.html

University of Illinois: 3% plus usual promotion raises of $7,000 and $10,000. http://www.ahr.illinois.edu/FY15BudgetGuidelines.pdf

University of Indiana: 2% plus up to 1.5% merit, plus promotion raises: http://president.iu.edu/initiatives/monthly-update/2015/index.shtml

Iowa State: Up to 1% merit plus promotion raises: http://www.inside.iastate.edu/article/2015/05/14/fy16parameters

Ohio State: 2% plus 1% one-time merit pool plus up to 10% for promotions: http://www.hr.msu.edu/recognition/facacadstaff/payfaculty/acadsalaryadjust.htm

Michigan State: 3.5% merit plus promotions: http://www.hr.msu.edu/recognition/facacadstaff/payfaculty/acadsalaryadjust.htm

Penn State: 3% merit plus promotions, near as I can tell: http://budget.psu.edu/President/AppropRequest201415/BOT%20-%20Sept%20SAR-%20FINAL.docx

Purdue: ?

Rutgers: 2% plus 10% promotion raises: http://www.rutgersaaup.org/sites/default/files/images/ArticleVIII_0.pdf

SUNY Stony Brook: 2.5% plus promotions

Texas A&M: TBA.

University of Florida: Bargaining now, faculty asking for 6.5% plus promotions: http://www.gainesville.com/article/20150629/articles/150629672?p=1&tc=pg

University of Minnesota: 2% plus promotions: http://www1.umn.edu/ohr/prod/groups/ohr/@pub/@ohr/documents/asset/ohr_asset_497181.pdf

University of Washington: They’ve got a proposal but I don’t know what’s happening with it: http://www.washington.edu/faculty/senate/issues/salary-policy-proposal-faq/

 Non AAU:

Washington State: 4% merit pool for 1/1/2015 raises. http://budget.wsu.edu/documents/Q%20%20A%20MSI%2015-Version%203.pdf?0.7134609038475901

University of Idaho: 3% (Yes, we’re losing out to Idaho.) http://www.uidaho.edu/~/media/Files/administration/Provost/policy/Salary%20and%20Consulting/FY16/FY2016.ashx

Post a comment if you find more, but it looks like 3.4% is ballpark for next year too.

For UO,  the number will be 0%. (Plus promotion raises for those eligible, averaging about 1%). This is because our administration wants to delay raises until January 1, instead of July 1 as in the current contract. This is a bonehead move: by delaying the raises past October, they won’t show up in the AAU and AAUDE data, which in turn feeds into the US News rankings. (Yes, faculty pay goes into the USNews rankings algorithm).

The 2011 Lariviere/Coltrane plan would have increased average UO salaries by rank and discipline to peer averages by 2014. Coltrane abandoned the plan when he became Provost, and the administration has repeatedly rejected the faculty union’s external equity proposals, despite some big deviations between UO pay and what faculty earn at our peers. These deviations are largest for full professors, as over time it becomes more costly for faculty to move, and UO’s monopsony bargaining power starts to bite more. Our AAU peers are typically in larger labor markets, and therefore their salaries are more reflective of “the market rate”, if you’re into that perfect competition thing.

All the 2014-15 data is now posted on UO’s IR page: http://ir.uoregon.edu/sites/ir.uoregon.edu/files/UOwithAAUPublicsbyDept_2014-15.pdf. Unfortunately there are still no good comparator data for NTTF’s, although the AAUP is working on this. As always, check the footnotes. While UO counts one-time faculty excellence awards in pay, it is not clear how many if any of our comparators do. Also, a colleague checked the Econ data and found one full professor was miscoded as associate. This doesn’t affect the full percentages, but it means that the % of AAU salary for UO Econ associates should be 82%, not 92%. Yikes.

Here are a few cherry picked departments, in no particular order:

That was the opening offer from Mike “The University” Gottfredson on March 3, 2013:

Sharon Rudnick told us this was a take it or leave it ultimatum offer. VPFA Jamie Moffitt came to a bargaining session to tell the faculty that there was no more money, but fled the session when forensic accountant Howard Bunsis started asking her about UO’s reserves.

The union ignored Rudnick’s non-credible threat and kept bargaining, and bargaining, and bargaining. It was a long angry summer. A few days before fall classes started the administration finally agreed to a 5.5% retroactive raise, and another 6% starting July 2014. Plus $350 in goat money. Call it 6% a year. Substantial as they were, even these raises were not enough to meet the Lariviere/Coltrane target of getting average salaries by department and rank to the AAU public averages by 2014. Meanwhile AAU pay has been increasing, last year by 3.4%.

So was Moffitt right? Did these raises break UO? Not according to Moody’s bond raters, who report UO’s unrestricted reserves grew from $77M to $116M and gave us an Aa2 rating, meaning “Obligations rated Aa are judged to be of high quality and are subject to very low credit risk.”

This time the university administration opened with a proposal to give everyone $600 in Chevy Van money, followed 0% for FY 16 and 1% for FY 17. Jamie Moffitt even came to a bargaining session again, to tell us, again, that there was no more money, so the union brought Howard Bunsis back to call bullshit on that claim again, via powerpoint.

The most recent proposal from the union is for 10%, spread out over 3 years. Some ATB, some merit, some external equity. The administration’s counter-proposal is due this Tuesday July 28th, 9AM Knight Library.

Last time it took XLI bargaining sessions to get a contract. This time we’re on session XVI, and it’s beginning to look like this thing is going to drag on for quite a while.

Here’s the latest UAUO bargaining update:

We had a productive bargaining session on Friday, exchanging a total of ten articles between us.

The main focus of the session was our economic proposal. Over the past few months, the two teams have been talking about how we can find a mutually satisfactory agreement on economics.  We maintain that the university has plenty of resources to provide faculty robust raises and that doing so would demonstrate a willingness to walk the talk of academic excellence.  So far the administration’s paltry proposal of 3% over 2 years shows no such intention of honoring the hard work of faculty. The administration team  continues to suggest that there is not a lot of money to be had for faculty raises over the next two years. We have consistently replied that faculty deserve a salary increase and a cost-of-living adjustments so we don’t lose what ground we’ve gained relative to our peers We have also consistently bargained to address uncompetitive salary floors, internal and external equity problems, and the need to reward meritorious work.

When two parties in collective bargaining find they have competing interests that appear unresolvable, there are two main options: finding creative paths to a middle ground, or making bargaining about power. The power of a labor union, of course, comes from the unity of the membership and their willingness to act together to show their employer that not meeting the union’s demands will be damaging to the employer. This shift from problem solving to power brokering typically happens when the two parties just cannot reach agreement at the table. The exercise of this type of power can be fraught with conflict, long-term loss of good will, and other unintended consequences.

Our bargaining team does not believe negotiations have broken down to the point where bargaining has become about who has the power and who can compel the other side to accept a proposal. We are still having productive conversations. But, unfortunately, we are quickly running out of negotiating room on economics. So far, as we have seen, the administration has only proposed a 3% raise over two years. This is laughably inadequate, frustrating, and insulting. In an effort to continue to have productive conversation and find agreement this summer, the bargaining team decided to explore creative options before declaring an end to productive bargaining.

One of the key themes of our bargaining platform is stability, normalizing raises instead of relying on the “boom and bust” cycle that existed at the UO for so many years. At one point in our conversations with the administration team, it was suggested that maybe we could add a third year onto the contract so that we would not “always” seem to be in bargaining mode. We decided to propose adding a third year to the collective bargaining agreement, both so we could feasibly secure our COLA, equity, and merit goals, but also so we could achieve some stability in knowing that we would be securing a decent raise for a third year.

The following is an outline of our new wage proposal (full proposal here):

FY16 (July 1, 2015-June 30, 2016) – 2.0% COLA, 3% increase to salary floors

FY17 – 1.5% COLA, 1.5% equity, 3% increase to salary floors

FY18 – 1% COLA, 4% merit, and a 4% increase to salary floors

This would be an average of a 10% total raise spread out over 3 years, with a concurrent 10% increase to the salary floors.

We believe that this is a healthy and sustainable wage package. However, this is also close enough to our very bottom line that bargaining could wrap up quickly, which is the goal. But if that is not the case, we will be looking to carry bargaining into the fall and trying other tactics. Stay posted. The administration team seemed amenable to a third year on the Agreement, but we will not know if our attempt to resolve bargaining this summer was successful until we see their next proposal.

Our next session is scheduled for July 28 at 9 am in the Knight Library Collaboration Center, Room 122.

Bargaining session XVI is Friday at 9AM, Knight Library Collaboration Room.

For a live-blog check the faculty union’s facebook page, here. (Link fixed.)

The faculty union has made a 3-year economic proposal:

FY16: ATB 2%.

FY17:ATB 1.5%, Equity 1.5%.

FY18:ATB 1%, Merit 4%.

Previous bargaining posts are here. VPFA Jamie Moffitt has plenty of reserves and as Howard Bunsis explained, the bond raters love UO’s solid finances – and that was before the state increased what it gives UO by $10M a year. We’re finally closing in on the longtime goal of getting faculty pay to parity with the rest of the AAU. This spring the Board of Trustees approved huge raises for the athletic department and the new president. So it’s mystifying why the administration is proposing to do nothing about equity, and give raises that won’t even match likely cost of living increases. The union will have a counter-proposal Friday.

I’ve got to confess, I sort of miss the snark from former UO Journalism Dean Tim Gleason’s “fact-check” blog that we got during the 2013 bargaining round. UO archived some of it here, but, perhaps wisely, they first deleted at least one of that blog’s more problematic bullying, harassing, intimidating and unprofessional attacks on the faculty. Two months ago I paid UO’s public records office $225 for documents related to that, but haven’t got anything yet. In any case, everything is a lot more polite this time around. Maybe too polite, given the big differences between the two sides on some important issues. I’ve bolded some of the disagreements in the bargaining reports from the UO administration and from the faculty union, below.

The UO faculty union’s report on the current situation:

On Friday, July 10, United Academics and the University resumed negotiations.  We discussed all outstanding issues and made some progress.

For the most part, we agree on all but three issues: contract security for NTTF; contract length for funding contingent faculty; and salary increases for all faculty.

We are still discussing what to call temporary faculty (the University proposed “pro tem”), access to faculty records, the degree of redaction of external review letters, and the role of General Counsel during a tenure denial appeal. The ongoing conversation mainly centers on word choice or fine details, with general agreement about principles. We agreed that faculty who work less than part-time should be eligible to purchase parking permits and use bus passes.

As for the three important issues bulleted above, in Article 16, we continue to insist that all NTTF should have a right to expect their contracts will be renewed if they have passed their performance review, there is funding for their position, their position is still needed in the unit, and there is no plan to replace the NTTF position with a tenure-track position. We clearly voiced our resolve that NTTF job security provides a foundation for shared governance, academic freedom, and NTTF collective bargaining rights.

We also returned to our earlier proposal that funding-contingent faculty have contracts of the same length as all other NTTF. We restated our agreement that should a unit lose funding mid-contract, then the contract could be terminated, but we remain skeptical that there are other justifications for a mid-contract termination outside of disciplinary factors. We did, however, invite the University to craft language explicating other legitimate reasons.

The University made their third salary proposal. We found their first proposal, 1.5% over two years, insulting. We found their second proposal, 2.5% over two years, disappointing. Unfortunately, their third proposal, 3% over two years, does not offer significant improvement, particularly in light of recent news that the University will see a windfall of dollars from the Legislature. The increase in their proposal represents an additional cost of only $500,000 over two years, despite an increase of $10 million in state appropriations for this next fiscal year alone.

The University’s proposal also failed to increase our appallingly low minimum salaries. Instead, the University offered that salaries should be (and are) dictated by “the market.” The UO’s quest for academic quality will not be well served by low-balling our dedicated and talented faculty, while suggesting they leave if they can do better elsewhere.

Bargaining is set to resume on Friday, July 17 in the Collaboration Room of the Knight Library at 9 am. We plan to counter the University’s economic proposal. Please join us!

The UO administration’s report is hosted on the UO Foundation’s website, presumably so they can easily track who reads it: http://www.uofoundation.org/controls/email_marketing/admin/email_marketing_email_viewer.aspx?sid=1540&gid=3&eiid=3639&seiid=1572&usearchive=1&puid=e0e1d0f0-29f5-4b05-8b05-ce5b417d783c&csid=625403

Finally, some movement on the Lariviere/Coltrane plan from 2011, just in time for Friday’s 9AM faculty union bargaining session!

“Market rate is determined by discipline and rank at peer institutions, based on data collected by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources. The plan is the product of long-term planning among the University Senate, the faculty union, and the administration.”

Oh wait, that’s Eastern Washington University. Bummer. The InsideHigherEd story is here. Their plan has less emphasis on merit than the Lariviere/Coltrane plan, or the similar proposals from the UO faculty union, which would have increased *average* UO salaries by rank and discipline to peer averages, not all salaries to at least the peer average, as at EWU.

Coltrane abandoned the 2011 plan when he became Provost and the administration has repeatedly rejected the faculty union’s external equity proposals, despite some big deviations between UO pay and what faculty earn at our peers. These deviations are largest for full professors, as over time it becomes more costly for faculty to move, and UO’s monopsony bargaining power starts to bite more. Our AAU peers are typically in larger labor markets, and therefore their salaries are more reflective of “the market rate”, if you’re into that perfect competition thing.

All the 2014-15 data is now posted on UO’s IR page: http://ir.uoregon.edu/sites/ir.uoregon.edu/files/UOwithAAUPublicsbyDept_2014-15.pdf. Unfortunately there are still no good comparator data for NTTF’s, although the AAUP is working on this. As always, check the footnotes. While UO counts one-time faculty excellence awards in pay, it is not clear how many if any of our comparators do. Also, a colleague checked the Econ data and found one full professor was miscoded as associate. This doesn’t affect the full percentages, but it means that the % of AAU salary for UO Econ associates should be 82%, not 92%. Yikes.

Here are a few cherry picked departments, in no particular order:

7/10/2018: Administration proposes more real wage cuts

UO’s Board of Trustees had no problem coming up with millions to give raises to the football coaches, the athletic director, and our new president. But now the well is dry. Funny how that works.

With raises at our comparators running at around 3.5% a year, and the Portland MSA CPI increasing at about 2.5% a year, the administration is proposing real wage cuts for the faculty of about 1.3% per year.

Live blog below, proposals here (updated Monday), and a quick summary:

1) Admins were doing OK until they tried to pretend the General Counsel represents the faculty, not just the Johnson Hall administration. Try telling that to James Fox.

2) The admins increase their salary proposal by just 0.5%. All raises will be delayed 6 months from the current CBA timing. So this works out to 3%, spread out over 2.5 years – let’s call it 1.2% per year.

Jan 1 2016, 1% overall:
1% ATB
0% Merit
0% Equity

And then wait another 12 months for this:

Jan 1 2017, 2% overall:
0% ATB
2% Merit pool by unit (But up to 20% held back at Dean’s discretion.)
0% Equity

Wait 18 months for merit raises? What has merit done to make our administration hate it so?

And they propose to cut raises for 6th year review of full professors from the current 8% to 4%. WTF?Current UO policy is here:

A positive evaluation at the sixth-year major review of a faculty member holding the rank of Full Professor or Tenured Senior Instructor shall result in the recommendation to the Provost of an increase to the base salary of that faculty member comparable in amount and funding source to that given for promotion.

And the current CBA language on promotion raises is “at least 8%”:

Section 5. Promotion Raises All bargaining unit faculty members in the Tenure-Track and Tenured Professor classification who achieve promotion will receive an increase of at least 8% of base salary.

Live-blog: Usual disclaimer, these are my opinions of what people said or should have said, nothing is a quote unless in quotes. And try the UAUO Facebook blog, here.

Dave Cecil kicks things off with some UAUO counters. I’m guessing it’s going to be a while until we get to the economic proposal from our Johnson Hall colleagues.

9:00 AM. Article 8: Personnel files. Union wants the faculty to have free access to personnel records. Basic good management stuff.

9:15 AM. Article 16, Notices of Appointment. Union wants some minimal job stability for funding contingent NTFF research appointments. Cecil talks about benefits for joint appointments, etc. Brady wants to know where the resources will come from – university, college, department?

9:37 AM, Summer Session Appointments. If they haven’t already, units need to adopt and post a policy on summer session appointments.

Sec 6: The union is sick and tired of the administration saying that it is the union that is preventing them from giving raises. So “There is no cap on summer session salaries.” Got it?

9:53 AM: Administration’s turn:

Bill Brady is challenging the union’s interpretation of case law in a recent grievance, and is putting forth language in Art 14,16,17, and 21 to deal with it. Something about discrimination training? I got no idea what he’s talking about, sorry.

9:56 AM, Article 15, Academic classifications. Administration proposes to start calling adjunct (i.e. limited duration) professors “Pro Tem” faculty. Cecil: We’ll take a look.

10:04 AM, Article 19: Administration agrees to slightly loosen FTE requirements for promotion to career NTTF. Cecil raises question of how FIG’s and other overloads don’t count for FTE. Shouldn’t they?

Admin wants to retains up or out rule for librarians, even though they don’t get tenure. Union is opposed.

10:17 AM, Article 20: TTF Review and Promotion. Some stuff about confidentiality of letters.

10:27 AM, Article 21: Appeal from denial of tenure or promotion. Lots of continuing disagreements here. Bill Brady is claiming the UO General Counsel’s office provides independent legal advice. Really. Deb Green pushes him on this. Brady and Blandy jump to the defense of the GC – “they represent the institution”. Green: But the grievant is up against the institution. Brady: They might help the faculty! [This is such bullshit. We all know that the GC works for JH, and against the faculty.] Green keeps pushing Brady and Blandy on this. Cecil: So why does the university claim there is an attorney-client privilege between the GC and administrators, but that privilege never seems to work for faculty?

10:39 AM. 10 Minute break. 

10:55 AM, they’re back, after some chit-chat about how UO’s drug policy will make it difficult for faculty to go to a Knight Arena concert.

Art 24, Discipline and Termination for Cause. Timeline stuff.

Art 26, Salary: See top of page for summary of the proposed real wage cuts.

The union team is ignoring this proposal, which is pure Kabuki. The discussion instead moves on to the issue of the administration’s previous efforts to cut faculty pay by raising faculty workload while keeping FTE constant.

Bill Brady reacts to the union’s ignoring his raise offer by talking about the costs of UO’s fringe benefits. Doesn’t mention that much of these costs subsidize Bellotti and previous retirees PERS benefits and the rest of the state government on health costs. A cost to UO, but not exactly a benefit to current employees!

Cecil asks about Jamie Moffitt’s unicorn report in the RG yesterday, and why it’s not reflected in raises. Brady tries to claw Moffitt’s remarks back, saying it’s not much more money. Then he says the administration hasn’t fully digested the numbers.

Cecil: Your position will be hard to explain to our membership.

Cecil: Why nothing for equity? Brady: “We are very pleased with how we are stacking up”.

Cecil: Do you know how much it would cost to address remaining external equity problems? Brady: No. Cecil: If you’re curious, it’s about $2.5M. [Brady doesn’t seem very curious].

Cecil: Why are you proposing lower salary floors for research RAs? Brady: Don’t know.

Deb Green gets into UO’s monopsony hiring power, points out that this means that market rates in Eugene are not accurate measures of their value of marginal product of labor.

Conversation dissolves into a disagreement as to whether or not the Eugene hiring market for NTFF’s meets the Arrow-Debreu requirements.

Cecil rescues things by offering to search out comparator data. The administration seems interested, then starts making the administration nervous.

Blonigen then, unfortunately, starts to forget the well-known inefficiencies of local labor monopsonies. This is Econ 201 stuff, simple deadweight loss triangles, and there’s a standard efficiency argument in favor of unions, when facing a monopsonist employer. I’m resisting the temptation to walk over to the whiteboard ….

Deveraux: So if we get you the comparator data, will it matter? Brady: We’ll throw it in the hopper.

Cecil to Brady: So, Bunsis predicted UO would end the year on June 30th with a large cash surplus. How did that go?

Brady: I don’t know. 

Article 27, Benefits: Union wants to give a year of insurance to faculty who are over 0.5 FTE for the whole year, even if below it for certain quarters. Admin says no.

Brady starts getting snippy. Not fully Rudnickesque, just a bit flip and illogical, which is not a good combo.

Article 36 – Academic Freedom. Admin was trying to set up “standards of conduct” to allow them to enforce civility restrictions.

Brady starts to lose it. “We were trying to protect faculty, and the union didn’t seem interested in that”.

One of the administration’s goals was to get some language that would let them shut down this blog. The Senate’s Academic Freedom policy made that much harder. So the language Brady proposed would have also made it easy for students to make false accusations against faculty.

Deb Green isn’t giving an inch on this. Nor is Cecil.

Brady “We still need how to protect faculty from aggressive individual faculty members”. Cecil points out that the CBA protects members from working in a harassing, intimidating or abusive environment”. Article 13. So file a grievance.

Brady: Faculty won’t file grievances.

Green: Work through Ombudsman. Very helpful.

Cecil: Why won’t you agree to language that protects the faculty from administrators?

Blonigen points out potential conflicts of interest if grievances involve two union members. [Hmm, where was this argument when we were talking about the General Counsel’s conflicts?]

Cecil agrees with potential for conflict of interest, explains how union will deal with it if necessary, then proceeds to shred Brady’s position on this.

Cecil: What about the third year on the economic proposal you’ve been talking about? Brady: We’re working on it.

The administration has had these data for weeks, and what with union bargaining restarting Friday at 9AM, I’m sure it’s coincidental that Chief Strategic Communicator Tobin Klinger put the numbers up on “Around the 0” on Thursday:

Raises? You call those raises? Check the UO Institutional Research data for what UO’s senior admin’s get:

The 2009 Lariviere/Coltrane/Bean plan was to get average UO faculty pay by rank and department to 100% of the AAU averages by “No later than” July 2014:

From: James Bean [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Sunday, June 07, 2009 12:26 PM
To: Deans Working Group
Subject: Faculty Salaries
The Missouri article stating that UO has the lowest salaries in the AAU has caused quite a stir (we have since verified that they were correct). Low salaries were always thought of as just Oregonian. But 34 out of 34 is a whole other thing. We cannot have this. Richard’s reaction was “this is job #1.” Richard will likely have an announcement on how we are attacking this when politically feasible (after last gavel). Please communicate to your faculty that the Missouri article really got our attention. This may require disruptive solutions.
Thanks, Jim
_______________________________
James C. Bean
Senior Vice President and Provost

Five days later, the Register Guard’s Editors essentially endorsed Lariviere’s plan to get UO faculty to the AAU averages:

The market for academic talent is national, even global. From a salary standpoint, Oregon has dropped out of the competition. The state is fortunate in having universities that continue to meet high standards, but Oregon’s advantages — a relatively low cost of living and a high quality of life — can only be relied upon to make up part of the salary deficit.

Richard Lariviere, who will become president of the UO in July, comes to Eugene from the University of Kansas, an AAU university with an average faculty salary of $91,400 — 25 percent higher than at the UO. He’s no doubt aware that higher education claimed 15.1 percent of Oregon’s general fund budget in 1987-89, but received only 6.4 percent in 2007-09. One of Lariviere’s continuing challenges will be to persuade Oregon’s governor and Legislature that underfunding higher education has consequences.

In March 2011 Scott Coltrane, at the time CAS Dean, announced his plans to implement this for CAS faculty:

Russ Tomlin, then VP for Academic Affairs, released a detailed spreadsheet showing the plan for the entire UO:

But apparently it only got implemented for the Johnson Hall insiders.