Tag Archives: GTFs

11/14/2014: Senate to vote on admin efforts to “dilute and degrade” academic standards

Here’s hoping Scott Coltrane will reign in Gottfredson’s $300 an hour lawyers and settle with our grad students. If not, the Senate will be taking up legislation next Wednesday:

One well spoken UO faculty member sent out a pretty plain response to the Deans and Dept Heads about that “confidential” Doug Blandy, Barbara Altmann and Bill Brady memo:

I feel compelled to share my frustrations about the messaging to Dept. Heads and Program Directors in relation to the strike. Just two points:

First, the messaging that repeatedly compares the planning and management process in relation to the strike to what we would be doing if there were an earthquake or a flood grates against this philosopher’s remaining rational capacities. An earthquake certainly, a flood presumably, is not the sort of event that is negotiated in advance by human actors. The continued reference to natural disasters as somehow analogous to what is about to happen here is apparently designed to engage our basic moral sensibilities in a way that is inappropriate to the situation at hand. In the face of a natural disaster, the necessity to adapt and adjust, to be creative and compassionate in the face of tragedy, to also go above and beyond our normal obligations and responsibilities, even in heroic ways, would be unquestioned. The impending events are the result of human decision. They are not comparable in any way to a natural disaster. Our obligations are different in this case than they would be in the case of a natural disaster. Our responsibilities are different.

Second: The imperative to assign all students a grade in order not to interfere with their financial aid, puts the entire responsibility on Dept. Heads and Program Directors for these students’ ability to pay THE UNIVERSITY the tuition dollars they owe. The University administration is apparently willing to put these students in a very vulnerable position. They are also willing to imperil the income to the UO that these financial aid dollars represent. Yet they are asking us to feel fully responsible for the fate of these students and these dollars. If students don’t get their grades, they are implying, we bear the moral responsibility for that. Doesn’t the administration bear responsibility for engaging in this level of stubbornness and brinksmanship in relation to these very same students, and putting us, dept. heads, and program managers who don’t have a place at the negotiating table in the position of carrying out a decision that we have no voice in? If our commitment to the undergrads is sacred, why is the administration willing to put their education at risk? Department Heads and Program Directors should NOT be put in a position of feeling the moral responsibility and weight for individual student’s financial-aid fates, when the administration is clearly willing to put these very same students in jeopardy. We have NO VOICE in the negotiations with the GTFF, no power to impact those negotiations, we should not be made responsible for the result of the failure of those negotiations. The moral appeal is designed to pit our concern for our undergraduate students against our concern for our Graduate Teaching Fellows. No educator should be put in this position, certainly not without having had some voice in the process through which the situation has come to be what it is. A basic tenet of most ethical systems and theories is that one cannot be ethically responsible for those things that one had no part in creating and has no power to influence or control.

Thanks for listening.

In related news, the Daily Emerald reports on today’s GTFF rally in front of the Johnson Hall administration building, home to many overpaid UO administrators:

A member of SLAP also held a sign with the face of Michael Gottfredson on it, and the number $940,000 written across his forehead – a reference to the severance package Gottfredson received upon resigning. The SLAP speakers addressed Gottfredson’s severance as well.

“Our tuition shouldn’t be wasted on presidential severance packages and union busting lawyers,” Huebner said, referring to the outside lawyer hired by the university to aid in bargaining.

Personally, I think the $940K Chuck Lillis spent to get rid of Mike Gottfredson was a hell of deal. I’d have paid $4M of other people’s money.

11/14/2014: Admins back off veiled threats to international grad students about visas

This latest effort from $300 an hour land-use lawyer Jeff Matthews is not going to help UO recruit top international PhD students. The GTFF union has the story here. After they sent our administrators this letter, patiently explaining that the University of Oregon is part of free country, governed by laws, Johnson Hall backed down and retracted their veiled attempts to intimidate international grad students.

11/2/2014: The most striking part of the story is the news that half our peers give their grad students the sick leave benefits our administration has been refusing to offer ours, “because of the principle”. Huh?

Diane Dietz has the story in the RG. (link fixed). It’s a good sign noted zoning variance lawyer Jeff Matthews isn’t talking for the UO administration:

On Thanksgiving Day, University of Oregon graduate teaching fellows will be cleared to strike under timelines set by state labor law — although they say they’ll probably wait until after the weekend when administrators are around to see the walkout.

That Monday will be the 10th week of an 11-week quarter, when a maximum number of term papers and final exams need to be graded and final grades need to be calculated and posted.

The university will be able to make do without its 1,494 Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation-­represented employees, should they strike, said Bill Brady, a labor lawyer who worked six years at the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System before arriving at the UO in June to take the post of senior director of employees.

“We have a lot of employees on this campus, not just our graduate students,” he said. “We also have qualified individuals within the community, and we’re going to use a variety of methods to prepare for and to carry on business as usual during the strike.”

10/29/14: Doug Blandy’s confidential strike plan allows faculty to cut finals, admins to hire “community experts” to scab on grad students

Word down at the faculty club is that VP for Academic Affairs Doug Blandy has asked David Miller if he’s willing to teach Quantum Mechanics, while noted campus presence John Brewster may teach intro Public Relations classes.

UO’s complete secret strike plan is here:

…

…

No one should really be surprised by our VPAA Doug Blandy’s willingness to compromise academic standards for financial gain, given that the Arts and Administration Department he used to chair is notorious for grade inflation in its AAD 251-3 gut classes, which have been raking in $1M or so in student credit hour cash, per year:

It’s funny – every quarter faculty get an email from Blandy about our obligations regarding grades and final exams. We even managed to give finals during last December’s Snowpocalypse. Seems like that’s no longer convenient for our administrators:

From: “Senior Vice Provost” <[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
Date: November 21, 2013 at 12:36:42 PM PST
Subject: Dead Week and Final Exam Policy

Dear Colleagues,

This message is to remind you of examination policies that may affect your course planning for the end of this term. Faculty legislation controls assignments that may be required during the last week of regular classes, commonly known as “Dead Week”:

1. In the week preceding final examination during fall, winter, and spring terms:
No examination worth more than 20% of the final grade will be given, with the exception of make-up examinations.
No final examinations will be given under any guise.
No work that will be evaluated for grades/credit will be due unless it has been clearly specified on the class syllabus within the first two weeks of the term.

2. Take-home examinations will be due no earlier than the day of the formally assigned final examination for the class in question.

This action clarifies and extends earlier faculty legislation (1911 Faculty Assembly archives) prohibiting the giving of final examinations earlier than officially scheduled.

…

Doug Blandy
Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs

Francesca Fontana has a well researched article in the ODE, here:

… The GTFF asked for a 5.5 percent raise for two years for all GTFs. According to Bronet, the university offered two proposals: a 6 percent raise per year for two years to level one GTFs and 3 percent to levels two and three, or 5 percent in the first year and 4 percent in the second for all GTFs.

“We are happy with either of those because we want to meet their interest and their needs,” Bronet said.

The other unresolved priority is paid leave. According to Bronet, the university cannot offer the GTFF paid leave because they are part-time employees (working under 0.5 Full Time Equivalent, or FTE).

“What they can do right now is have 12 weeks of protected job leave,” Bronet said. “In terms of paying for family leave, one of the dilemmas is that we have many employees on campus that work less than 0.5 and don’t have access to family paid leave. We’re trying to have some kind of equivalence across all the people who are working and contributing to our collective community.”

The Service Employees International Union released a statement on Sept. 30 announcing solidarity with the GTFF and revealing that part-time classified staff accrue paid leave. This leaves adjunct faculty as the only part-time employees that cannot acquire paid leave.

According to Henry, the issue of paid leave is a form of discrimination towards students who want to have children.

“We’re told, ‘Dissertate before you procreate,’” Henry said. “Without paid leave, the issue of gender equity comes into play because you’re saying men can pursue professional track positions, wives can stay at home and have children. This gets rid of the best and brightest women on their way to becoming professional scholars because you can’t do both.” …

The university is also claiming that the tuition waivers grad students receive should be counted as pay. Whatever. The point is UO needs our grad students. Of course we give them fee waivers. Many other universities supplement these with research grants for computers and travel. (As a first year PhD student Wisconsin sweetened their offer to me with me a state of the art $2500 PC with a 386 processor and 1MB of RAM.)

Actually, to stay in the AAU we need many more graduate students. It’s a bad time for the administration to pick a fight with the ones we got. This is the first time in history that UO has hired an outside lawyer to negotiate with the grad student union. That’s been a big failure. Coltrane and Bronet need to show that they have the stones to back down, and set things right.

No, it’s not in the giant white tent in Hayward Field. South Eugene HS, 5:30.

Here’s some good news:

TO: Deans and Department Heads, Directors of Graduate Studies, GTF Contacts, and Graduate Coordinators

FROM: Kassy Fisher, UO Graduate School

RE: Tuition Support for Grants Funding Level III GTFs (Revised July 2, 2014)

Effective Fall 2014, the University will provide support to grants on which GTFs are hired. In short, the labor index will be charged only three credits of tuition when the index is a grant and when the appointee is a research level III research fellow (GRF). The balance of the tuition will be charged to a non-grant index in the hiring unit. Hiring units with GTFs supported on grants should consult their dean’s office to determine the index that will be used. …

3/21/2014 update: Today, Friday at 3:30PM, 302 Gerlinger. Topics to include pay and health care.

3/14/2014: President Gottfredson’s team has been giving our students a hard time. Their “Hired Guns and Hired Help” live-blog of the bargaining sessions is here:

The admin’s position is that what the admin spends on him is not appropriate for the table. Our organizer points out that this is a misrepresentation of our position. We are trying to ascertain the admin’s priorities. He doesn’t get it. We’re not trying to offer any proposals that would alter the General Counsel Fund spending is administrated. But when we see spending on admin and General Counsel grow, and yet we’re told there’s no money to spent. Now the lawyer threatens to bury us under red tape.

And don’t miss the excellent Twitter hashtag feed: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23GTFF3544&src=tyah

Topics for Friday include money, sex, and of course dental. I’m no dentist, but Gottfredson’s position on the economics mystifies me. Our GTF pay floors are really low. This is painful for our grad students, embarrassing to our university, makes it difficult to recruit the best grad students in many fields, and generally calls into question the seriousness of UO’s efforts to stay in the AAU. The money needed to fix GTF pay is trivial – a Bean and a Gleason or two. Does anyone understand what game Gottfredson is playing here? Is it just that he thinks a few deadwood admins are more important to UO’s future than 1200 grad students?

UO’s lead negotiator is Jeff Matthews of Harrang Long Geller and Rudnick.

How did he get the job? Apparently Sharon Rudnick decided union bargaining was not her comparative advantage, and fled back to tobacco company work.

The blog is http://hiredgunsandhiredhelp.blogspot.com/. No word on whether or not Gleason and Geller have defamed the authors yet. We’ll keep an eye on the craziness that is sure to ensue with Rudnick’s crew. Remember, don’t sign until they bring out the goat!

The official UO GTFF union website is here: http://gtff3544.net/