March and June meetings of Dave Hubin’s Public Records Administrative Advisory Group

7/23/2014: I thought I’d repost this classic on the meetings of Dave Hubin’s working group to hide public records. From what I can tell this group has now accomplished its mission and is defunct.

6/5/2013 meeting, page down for 3/7/2013 meeting.

Prologue: 

  • Last meeting (see below) was a disaster for Hubin and Thornton, who got raked over the coals and revealed that there were serious problems with the office’s decisions about fee-waivers, bad software, refusal or complete inability to answer questions about policies, inconsistent statements, no decision on the STC recommendation for fee-waivers for student journalists.

Synopsis:

  • Dave didn’t even tell UO’s student-journalists that the meeting was being held, they found out about it from UO Matters.
  • Faculty and students not allowed to ask questions.
  • Thornton killed a bunch of committee time with irrelevant numbers, worked well.
  • No progress on public-interest fee waiver policies. Still a black hole. Thornton’s statements just added to the mystery of what current policy is. Still seems like she has *never* given a full fee-waiver.
  • In Feb the STC voted unanimously to recommend Gottfredson waive fees for student-journalists, up to some reasonable limit, with Hubin to determine what’s reasonable. Gottfredson won’t do it, claims he’s studying the issue. He was provost at UC-I, where there are no fees for anyone (except for computer programming time, if that’s required.) So Gottfredson already knows how well this would work, and he just doesn’t want the students to be able to get information on how UO is spending their money.

Live-blog disclaimer: My opinions on what people said or would have said, if they only had a spine.

Continue reading

Senate MMXXIII:I Free speech, legal services. Wed 10/9 at 3PM, 282 Lillis

Synopsis: 

  • I apologize for the skimpy notes below.
  • The Senate spent a fair amount of time on the Academic Freedom policy passed in April, but never signed by President Gottfredson. Neither Gottfredson nor Randy Geller was present to explain precisely what objections the administration had. Senate Pres Paris appointed a committee consisting of John Bonine (Law), John Davidson (Poli Sci), Michael Dreiling (Poli Sci), Bill Harbaugh (Econ) and Deb Merskin (Journ) to find out what their problem is, and what language President Gottfredson will accept. 
  • We also discussed procedures for motions of no-confidence. President Paris agreed with others that any such motions would be debated publicly.
  • Low turnout, and the Senate still has a bunch of unfilled seats. 

Senate Meeting Agenda – October 9, 2013 282 Lillis, 3:00-5:00 p.m. 

Live video here.

3:00 pm 1. Call to Order

3:05 pm 2. Approval of Minutes

May 8, 2013 

May 22, 2013

3:10 pm 

No quorum yet, so no votes on minutes.


3.  State of the University

President Gottfredson will miss this, he’s schmoozing with the “UO Portland Council” at White-Stag. Anyone know what this council is? Google has never heard of it. Presumably they’ll be talking about whether or not UO should renew the $2.4M lease on the Portland clubhouse.

Coltrane delivers speech. Good incoming students. New need-based scholarships have increased number of Pell students. GPA also up. 535 new Pathway Oregon students, vs 400 last year.

80 new faculty (gross, not net). Only 35 are TTF. “More diverse than the faculty look”. OK, they look different. Do the think different?

I’ve been busy with board and collective bargaining.

New board confirmed soon, need to work on by-laws etc. I wonder who’s in charge of that.

New CBA will help NTTF’s, standardizes practices. Implementation of policy will come through Senate and Pres. Lots of work.

$300M in new buildings, but we couldn’t afford to follow through with plan to raise faculty salary to comparators.

Gottfredson will now turn his attention to internal issues. Strategic plan for capital program. Try to stay in AAU. Hire 4-5 new faculty in strategic areas. Budget model needs work. Years of growth. Graduate student ratios “are a little out of our norm”.

Q: What do you mean by attention to the budget model?

A: Shelton has a technical task force working on the plumbing. There’s a “Budget Committee” that includes Senate members. Maybe move away from the tax to ?. Pres is concerned about funding research and graduate education. Need private money to secure our place as a research university.

Q: When you say graduate education, will that include law school grad program?

A: Yes. Need more money for grad fellowships including law.

Followup comment: Gott is absent, and missed half of the Senate meetings last year. Did he also miss FAC meetings.

Paris: We’ve now got a quorum, minutes are approved. Need a Senator for the IFS. 6 meetings a year. Kyr is nominated, approved unanimously.

3:20 pm 


4. New Business

4.1 Introductions; Margie Paris (Senate President)

Lisa, new Senate coordinator is introduced.

4.2 Orientation; Margie Paris (Senate President)

Paris runs through handy slide. See link. Board of Trustees at the top, followed by statutory faculty, Assembly, Senate.

More than 2 unexcused absences and you are off the Senate. Good rule.

Decorum: We will obey Robert’s rules, with help of Paul Simonds!

Q: Can we get a better room? Not this time.

Good idea to correspond with your constituents. Read the agenda, email them with motions in advance.

Stahl: Are all the administrative advisory groups that have been set up an abrogation of Senate authority?

Paris: Good question. We should look into it.

4.3 Election for IFS Senator; Margie Paris (Senate President)

3:45 pm 


5. Open Discussion

5.1 Academic Freedom/Freedom of Speech policy; Margie Paris (Senate President)

Last April’s Senate policy proposal had some clear language on freedom of speech and a clear call to incorporate this into the faculty union contract:

Freedom of Speech 

All University employees retain the right to address any matter of institutional policy or action without fear of institutional discipline or restraint. They also are guaranteed the protections of freedom of speech with regard to any matter, so long as it is clear that they are not acting or speaking on behalf of the University. 

Contractual Force of Policy 

This Policy on Academic Freedom and Freedom of Speech shall be given contractual force by incorporation into pertinent contractual and collective bargaining agreements and individual letters of appointment. It shall be incorporated into the Faculty Handbook and the UO University Policy Library.

President Gottfredson refused to sign it, and his union bargaining team adamantly opposed putting it in the collective bargaining agreement. Gottfredson got some national ridicule and backed down, a little. Now the Senate is going to decide how to respond. My understanding is that the UO constitution calls for the President to defend himself to the faculty assembly in these situations.

Paris: Update on academic freedom. Pres was required to adopt this w/in 60 days or come back to Senate. Gottfredson did this, requesting that the policy be split into two: one on academic freedom, one on freedom of speech. Then the AY ended.

Gottfredson will come to the Senate in November and explain.

Harbaugh: So he wants it split but didn’t say how? Why don’t we ask him to split it or do it ourselves?

Kyr: Motion for a group to get this done quick?

Bonine: Pres was obligated to make this request w/in 60 days. Hubin says that the message could be interpreted as a request for a delay, which is allowed. Goes into Garcetti and new Demers 9th circuit opinion.

Current free speech policy: http://policies.uoregon.edu/policy/by/1/01-administration-and-governance/freedom-inquiry-and-free-speech

Senate votes to set up another committee to try and deal with this. approved 17 to 8.

Group will include Bonine, Harbaugh, Davidson, Dreiling.

5.2 Virtual Accreditation Review; Robert Kyr (Music)

4:00 pm 6. Reports

6.1 Carryover from 2012-2013

6.1.1 Report: Legal Services Policy; Margie Paris (Senate President)

This policy is one of General Counsel Randy Geller’s power grabs. The Senate beat him off last fall. From the live-blog:

3.1 Motion (Policy Adoption): Legal Representation Policy; Margie Paris (Law), Senate President-Elect and Chair, Legal Representation Policy Review Committee

Geller’s draft: 

That would certainly be an improvement. 

Kyr reads the motion. It spells out the GC’s responsibility to provide high quality legal assistance. Authorizes Randy to provide legal opinions about UO stuff, and hire high priced legal help from Harrang et al. New language removes Randy’s monopoly on providing legal advice to faculty, students. We have the right to seek legal advice – revolutionary. UO shall defend employees against acts of omission, including those in teaching, research, service. (Merle Weiner clause). Employees may be reimbursed for legal expenses, especially if there’s a conflict of interest. 

Paris: Originally drafted by Geller’s office, would have given you the red-lined version but it’s all red. Tublitz proposed 2 amendments today, want to add these. Right to legal advice: what if Senate wants alternative, competent legal advice? Amendments allows this. 

Mitchell, Harbaugh: SB242 took away DOJ’s monopoly on legal service to OUS institutions. Minor problem for some of the wording. 

Lamar Wise: ASUO supports motion because it gives chance to get out from under Geller. Stahl: Hold back til we get the DOJ thing figured out. Sullivan: Geller represents the administration. If he’s defending an employee, who’s the client? Paris: Let’s go back and research this stuff. Good call. Kyr: We will make Geller show his mug at the next meeting. Meanwhile, direct questions to Paris. Postponed.

We’ll see if Randy shows his face for today’s discussion: 

Nope, no Randy. Shocking.

Paris: We’re kicking this can down the road to the Board of Trustees. So no vote, the motion is tabled.

6.1.2 Report: 10th Year Review; Robert Kyr (Music)

Kyr: This has now become the 12th year review. Passes around signup sheet for volunteers to staff committees to revisit charges of the committees.

6.2 PAC-12 Faculty Leadership Coalition Conference Update; Robert Kyr (Music)

Kyr will go and report.

6.3 Forming an Administrative Advisory Group: VPOEI Yvette Alex-Assensoh (Equity and Inclusion)

The administration has become addicted to using these AAG’s to do an end run on shared governance through the Senate. No charge, handpicked faculty members. Hubin’s Public Records AAG is the most nefarious example. Gottfredson’s Budget Advisory Group is another.

Alex-Assensoh, VP for Equity, wants to form an AAG and actually wants to do it through the Senate. Respect. What do we have to do to get the rest of our administration to do sensible things like this.

6.4 Update on Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics; Margie Paris (Senate President)

Tublitz has been serving as liaison to this, without a formal process. Senate Exec has apppointed him for the rest of the year, then we’ll have a formal process.

4:45 pm 7. Announcements and Communication from the Floor

Stahl: Last year Senate voted to create a committee on proprietary research. What happened? Paris: We’ll have it by next meeting.

7.1 Notice of Motion (Legislation): Working Groups for Campus Planning and Non-tenure Track Instructional Faculty Committees; Robert Kyr (Music), Senator

7.2 Notice of Motion (Legislation): Academic Credit for ROTC; Frank Stahl, Professor Emeritus (Biology)

Stahl wants UO to stop giving academic credit for Military Science (ROTC). I think Napoleon said it best: Si vis bellum para pacem. Besides, you get to rappel out of helicopters – who can say no to that? But we should do something about their grading policy – last I looked it was almost as inflated as Doug Blandy’s notorious online AAD classes. The MIL classes are popular easy A’s for the student-athletes.

4:50 pm 8. Other Business

Stahl: Asks what happened to the motion last May for a vote of no confidence in Gottfredson?

Paris: I advised Senate to go into exec session, even though it was just a notice of motion. Maybe I was wrong.

Bonine: Exec sessions are not allowed on policy matters under Oregon public meetings law.

Harbaugh: So, if this happens again, god forbid, will we have a public discussion?

Paris: Yes, I believe so. Simonds agrees.

Bonine: Hell yes. Since we don’t have the power to fire the President, a vote of no confidence is *not* a personnel matter, and should not be secret.

Stahl follows up on procedures: Can the Senate Exec decide not to bring a motion forward?

Kyr: No.

5:00 pm 9. Adjournment

Adjourned 5 min early! Sweet!

Bargaining XXXX: Pay, Consulting, NTTF’s, Free Speech, IP, Computers, Termination

Thursday, September 12, 1pm-5pm in Knight Library 101. This is the big one, be there. not the end, bring more colleagues next time, we’ll probably need an even bigger room as start of term approaches and raises, consulting, and IP come up.

PDFs of proposals submitted 9/12/2013 here.

Disclaimer: My respectful opinion of what people said, or were thinking but were too decent or well-paid to say. Nothing is a quote unless in quotes. If you don’t like my blog read Luebke’s.

Synopsis: 

Where’s interim Provost Scott Coltrane? Trying to cover his ass and get the permanent title.

The well paid but increasingly pathetic administration bargaining team has abandoned many of their long cherished proposals to punish the faculty for unionizing, take back faculty rights, and limit NTTF protections. The faculty union team is putting up counter after counter, signing off when the administration responds reasonably, and sticking to its guns when they don’t.

On raises, Gottfredson has known for a while that Rudnick and Moffitt’s claims that “the well is dry” aren’t true. But he’s just realizing that this will soon be common knowledge. Time is on the faculty’s side, and that also is common knowledge. If he’s smart he’ll do the backwards induction, jump to the unique sub-game perfect Nash equilibrium, and we’ll have a reasonable contract early next week.

Or at least that’s the theory, for rational agents.

In practice:

  • Gottfredson finally caves on his free speech restrictions, after being publicly shamed for them (con rispetto). Still work to be done on explicit protections for faculty who criticize the administration. Not that I ever would.
  • What do we have to do to get a similar story out on Gottfredson’s IP and consulting power grabs and his failure to be transparent about UO’s financial situation?
  • Contracts: Admin cuts union proposal for guaranteed contracts lengths, but keeps the principle of gradually longer contracts for NTTF’s as their rank increases, waffles on reasons for non-renewals.
  • Admin computer snooping: Rudnick: We backed off our previous claims that faculty had no expectation of privacy, after widespread faculty outrage. Now you’re trying to exploit our mistake to get a reasonable policy. That’s cheating!
  • That fact-checking job didn’t work out, so the admin team tries VPAA Barbara Altmann at the bargaining table: “That’s a very good question. I’m going to have to stop and think.” Rudnick shuts her up.

Voodoo is here:

Meanwhile the Insidehighered.com story on the academic freedom fight at UO is attracting a lot of comments there, and new visitors to UO Matters:

Rumor has it Howard Slusher will be replacing Sharon Rudnick at the bargaining table. She’s working on a case for Philip Morris, presumably pro-bono.

Sharon Rudnick delivers President Gottfredson’s message on the prospects for faculty raises:

“The well is dry. Hear me please. The well is dry.”

But “it’s a watershed moment”, and that water is flowing a little more freely over in the athletics department:

Synopsis from XXXIX:

  • Rudnick lectures faculty: Give up: “you all need to get focused on your students.”
  • Use of UO computers and networks: Geller is no longer claiming he can look at anything on your computer for any reason, but still reserves the right to look at it for any legal “administrative reasons”. Rudnick tries to sell this as a concession, raising the question of whether or not they meant “illegal” administrative reasons in their previous proposal. President Gottfredson signed a Senate approved policy in February, but the procedures required by that policy were still not in place as of August.
  • Academic Freedom and Free Speech: Current UO policy: “Free inquiry and free speech are the cornerstones of an academic institution committed to the creation and transfer of knowledge. Expression of diverse points of view is of the highest importance, not solely for those who present and defend some view but for those who would hear, disagree, and pass judgment on those views. The belief that an opinion is pernicious, false, and in any other way despicable, detestable, offensive or “just plain wrong” cannot be grounds for its suppression.” Admins propose to strike all this language.
  • Consulting and Intellectual property: sides are miles apart. Discussion to continue Th at 1PM.
  • Good news: UO’s US News ranking improves, which will mean a further strengthening in UO’s finances.
  • Salary: Goat is still on the table, union counter on Thursday? 
  • Retirement: Sitting on ~$150M in reserves, Jamie Moffitt wants the faculty to bear all the downside risk of an end to the 6% pickup.
  • Bottom line: Supposedly Gottfredson wants this deal done, but he is still trying to take back faculty rights that we have under current UO Intellectual Property, Academic Freedom, and Consulting policies.
Synopsis from XXXVII:

    Raises: The elevator version:

    We’re going down. During the first year of President Gottfredson’s administration UO faculty pay has fallen still further behind other AAU public universities:

    • Full profs: down from 85% to 82% 
    • Associate profs: down from 92% to 90% 
    • Assistant profs: down from 93% to 89%
    XXXX: Live-Blog:

    Good turnout. Donuts arrive. Looks like well over 100,000 kilocalories from here. Get yours!

    Barbara Altmann, putative author of the administration’s fact check pages, shows up to work the crowd. First times she’s shown up for 4 months?

    Rudnick: Barbara is here to talk about NTTF’s, and because she’s the only administrator left who we think might have a shred of credibility with the faculty. Debatable after this post – she won’t even answer emails about what’s posted on the admin fact check page.

    Art 23 Retirement, admin counter.

    Rudnick: 6% pickup, blah, blah, yada yada. I’m waiting for the union team to explain it.

    Mauer: Your proposal requires a causal connection between the state ending the pickup and cutting the budget. Rudnick: We agree that one legislators statement would not suffice to establish this. Mauer: Grievable. Rudnick: Yes.

    Cecil is hilarious.

    Braun catches Rudnick on coverage for ORP folks. Rudnick: We could add that.

    Academic Freedom and Free Speech, admin counter

    Rudnick: We added free speech back in the title and the unenforceable preamble. We take out “civilly” and now say “with respect” – which sounds better in Italian.

    Section 3: Admin now agrees to incorporate by reference the excellent language in the current Senate policy approved by President Lariviere in 2010, though Gottfredson manages to do that without saying the dread word “Senate”.

    Cecil: What’s the assurance that the University might no change Lariviere’s policy? Rudnick: You can put it in the appendix.

    Mauer: We disagreed about whether the freedom to criticize the administration is academic freedom or free speech, but I take this to mean that you agree that it exists, though you’re still not sure exactly why? Rudnick: Correct. To us it’s a distinction without meaning.

    Davidson: What about speech off campus, e.g. a City Club meeting, as a professor.

    Gleason: How could the university take action against a person for free speech. I can’t imagine an activity where the university would be able to discipline them. (Really Tim? No child porn examples for us this time?)

    Rudnick: I think that faculty speech off campus would be covered by the same rules as on campus speech.

    While the administration has backed down a lot, they are still unwilling to explicitly provide the protections for faculty who who criticize the administration that the Senate proposed in April, and which Gottfredson rejected.

    Here’s a clip from Margie Paris’s admirable rewrite of the Geller proposal, presented at the 4/17 meeting. Geller had removed “they are entitled to comment on our criticize University policies or decisions” from the original draft, and added a lot of other restrictive language. Ms Paris fixed it, and the Senate unanimously approved it. Then Gottfredson wouldn’t sign it. Why can’t we get that explicit protection in this contract?

    Article 9, contracts. Admin counter.

    Admin cuts union proposal for guaranteed contract lengths, but keeps the principle of gradually longer contracts for NTTF’s with longer time at UO. E.g. Senior Instructors get at least 2 years. (Union proposed 3).

    Mauer to Altmann: Why did you drop our language about reasonable standards for termination?

    Altmann: Lots of hypotheticals, e.g. we need to change from NTTF’s to TTF’s to teach more grad students (and fewer undergrads?)

    Mauer: Tries to pin her down – what would you agreed to? List of what reasons are allowed and what are not. Do you agree that there are some circumstances which are justification for non-renewal and others that are not?

    Blandy: There’s already plenty in the contract for NTTF guarantees. We’ve given up enough.

    Cecil: Barbara, you said you’d come up with 12 hypothetical reasons for legitimate non-renewals but you won’t tell us what they are. We’ve come so far – you now agree you can’t fire someone for filing a grievance. So why not agree you can’t terminate them for no reason?

    Rudnick: This is too much to deal with in one contract. The well of additional protection for NTTF’s is running dry.

    HAVE SOME DONUTS!

    Cecil: About up and out. Can a department establish a policy for up or out? Barbara starts talking, Rudnick interrupts: Under some circumstances, yes.

    Cecil gets into the nuts and bolts of proving non-renewal was not legit, given that the university will hide the documents, claiming attorney work-privilege.

    Faculty start giggling uncontrollably at Rudnick. She says she does not appreciate not being treated with respect. So, now we’ve got an operational definition of “respectful” in the free speech policy: No giggling.

    Rudnick: Don’t hold me to this, I’m not sure if Geller would agree, but how about if we say we have to provide a reason when we don’t renew someone?

    Wow. Did she really just say that? Green jumps on the idea. Blandy seems to agree. Then Rudnick pulls out her lawyer stuff, realizes it’s not going in a good direction, starts babbling.

    Green: You’ll provide an evidence based reason?

    Rudnick gets nervous. Altmann proposes the admin team tries to draft some language. Rudnick calls for a caucus break, desperate to get her team out of the room before they say too many more reasonable things.

    Braun wants to pin the admins down before allowing them to leave the table: What’s the connection between reviews and contract renewals? Can an NTTF get an excellent review, then get canned for some reason not related to their performance?

    Braun wants Altmann and Blandy to respond. Altmann: “That’s a very good question. I’m going to have to stop and think.” Lame.

    Blandy: After 8 months and $500K in Sharon’s pocket we’ve finally agreed to your proposals to help build a university where NTTFs would be treated with respect by the administration and be able to build a career here. Isn’t this bargaining going well!

    Barbara speaks out of turn: How about if we talk about maximum contract length now? Rudnick: Uh, no, lets not.

    Blandy: I know that we used the uncertainty of university budgeting to argue for a new UO Board, but now that we’ve got that we’re changing the story and blaming our consistent failure to budget on Brad Shelton and his budget model. So, we’ve got a problem with the April 1 deadline for renewals. How about May?

    2:27, caucus break
    3:20, they’re back. Still donuts, come on down, just don’t report them on the HEM form.

    Rudnick: Back on contracts. We will agree to a written explanation for non-renewal. Provost would have to sign it, so it would have to be articulated.

    Mauer: So, it could just say “We’re going in a different direction and you’re not part of it.” Not worth much Sharon, with respect. Mauer proposes better language.

    Rudnick: Starts to fall back into pissy mode. She’s very disrespectful, though not actually screaming this time. You could grieve that! We’re not willing to do that! It means that NTTF’s would have a job unless we could provide a reason to terminate them. (WTF?)

    Rudnick: “We do not have authority and will not agree to make termination decisions subject to any kind of cause or legitimacy review.”

    MOU on one-time reclassification of adjuncts, union proposal.

    This is about whether long-time part-time adjuncts will be eligible for one-year NTTF contracts. Braun gives a passionate, rational explanation.

    Rudnick: But your language would allow someone who has taught 1 class a year for 3 years to get a career contract.

    Braun: A one-year contract. Is that so horrible?

    Rudnick: We’ll need to caucus. Meanwhile, lets go on.

    Art 25: Termination for financial exigency or reorganization. Union counter.

    I’m eating pizza, read Luebke’s blog.

    Art 14: Appeal of tenure denial, union counter.

    I’m still eating pizza, read Luebke’s blog.

    Acceptable use of university computers and network, Union counter.

    Union’s Section 7 calls for a reasonable expectation of privacy for email, files. Requires admin to have a demonstrably legitimate reason to access info. Admins must notify the union and explain their reasons when admins start snooping around.

    Rudnick: Can we delete section 7 and incorporate current policy?

    You’re kidding me.

    Rudnick starts explaining why this would be OK. Even she doesn’t believe what she’s saying.

    Mauer: No, we like section 7 and the “reasonable expectation of privacy ….”

    Rudnick: That’s a legal term and we don’t want to have it in a contract, in case some lawyer might then try to use it to protect the faculty. If you take that out, we’ll sign this now.

    Mauer: No.

    Gleason: Tries to speak, not making sense, Rudnick won’t look at him. Mauer runs circles around him.

    Rudnick: We backed off our previous claims that faculty had no expectation of privacy, because of widespread faculty outrage. Now you’re trying to exploit our mistake to get a reasonable policy. That’s cheating!

    Rudnick thinks the union’s use of “reasonable” is unreasonable.

    Mauer: Let’s take a quick caucus and Rudnick and I can have a secret talk. Rudnick. Thanks.

    4:24, break. Lots of pizza and donuts left. 

    Here’s the policy that Rudnick wants the union to accept in lieu of Sec 7 above: http://policies.uoregon.edu/node/215

    Only authorized personnel [“Authorized Personnel” are persons, including employees, students, vendors, visitors, affiliates, and courtesy faculty, who have been authorized by UO to interact with information assets] may have access to the information assets. Such access may be granted only to the extent and for such time that a business need exists. Access shall be limited, using technical or procedural controls, to the least permission necessary for the performance of duties. The data owner [The Administration] is responsible for determining who may be granted access to data and information assets for which the data owner is responsible. A record of the request for access and grant of authority to access data or information assets shall be maintained by the data owner. [But does not need to be shown to the faculty.] It is the responsibility of all authorized personnel to protect data and information assets from unauthorized change, destruction or disclosure.

    So, don’t delete any of the files on your computer without authorization from Randy Geller.

    5:22, Union team is filtering back in, no admins yet. Cecil is ready to bargain all night, but library closes at 6, we’ll see what happens.

    5:40, they’re back.

    MOU on adjuncts. Rudnick: admin accepts. Wow, how many hours did Rudnick bill to fight this before finally agreeing to it with no changes?

    Art 14, promotion appeals:

    Rudnick: We changed it so the Provost appoints the members to the appeals committee. Blandy: Union can nominate a member, but Provost can reject. Otherwise OK. Mauer: Maybe.

    Termination w/o cause:

    Rudnick: Randy needs to read it, but thinks we’re close. He expresses his respect for the union’s work.

    Conflict of Interest. This is the missing admin proposal that has been holding up a union response to their power grab on consulting.

    Rudnick: Our proposal “clarifies and in some cases changes current UO policy” which the Senate approved just a while ago after much consultation and discussion.

    Art 30, on Overhead and Transparency:

    Rudnick: We haven’t talked about that with Randy yet, he starts chewing the rug whenever I mention transparency.

    Consulting: 

    Cecil: Current UO policy only requires prior approval for a few things. Your proposal seems to require prior approval for almost everything. What problems have arisen that motivate your drastic changes?

    Rudnick: I don’t know.

    Bramhall: When the admin tried to pull this a few years ago there was an uprising, long Senate debate, and a new policy was arrived at after much discussion. Why this sudden change, without notice or faculty consultation?

    Rudnick: No answer, she just looks very sad and tired.

    New bargaining sessions:

    Rudnick: This was the last scheduled session, we’ll talk about where we go from here.

    Mauer: Makes sense, we’d like to get you to agree to a schedule that will allow us to wrap this up next week.

    Rudnick: OK.

    5:52: That’s it for this week, see you next.

    Bargaining XXXVIII: Do they own us? They sure think they do.

    Friday 9AM – 4PM, 9/6/2013 122 Knight Library. SRO, but maybe not enough to force Rudnick to allow a move to the nicer 101 room. 

    Live Blog disclaimer: These are my opinions of what people said or meant or should have said. Nothing is a quote unless in quotes. If you don’t like my blog read the United Academics one on facebook, here.

    Synopsis:

    • Rudnick on raises: Admin proposal is “more than fair”. We are really disappointed in you for not being excited. Students come back in two weeks and you say everything the faculty does is in the best interests of the students, so please don’t strike.

    “The well is dry. Hear me please. The well is dry. This is an incredibly rich offer.” And you get a goat

    If you want more we will have to get the athletic department to start paying their own bills.

    • Administration is still insisting on the right to access all faculty files on UO computers for any reason, without your permission, and without even notifying you after the fact. 
    • On NTTF participation in departmental governance: Rudnick: Equitable, not equal participation. Union team: Yes.
    • On shared governance: Gleason: The president will defend the current constitution to the board for the 2 years of the contract, but he will not agree to put it in the contract, where it would have legal protection.
    • Intellectual Property: If you produce it while working for UO UO owns it, with some specific exceptions. I’m thinking about Chip Kelly’s playbook. We paid him $3.5M a year to develop it. It seems rather valuable. He’s now taken it to the Eagles – how much did Randy Geller make them to pay UO for it?
    • Academic Freedom: Is Johnson Hall getting ready to go after me for writing UO Matters? Both Richard Lariviere and Bob Berdahl publicly said that they hated this blog, but supported my right to publish it. Is Mike Gottfredson going to let his administrators try and discipline me for it? Because that’s the way their language reads, and Rudnick pointedly refused to clarify it when the bargaining team raised the question.
    • Gottfredson is not content with just paying us wages at the bottom of the AAU. His new consulting policy proposal will require that *any* consulting activity, even below 1 day in 7, must first be approved by his Provost or designee. 

    Now available: University of Nike ™ Coffee Mugs! $4 from every purchase goes toward buying public records from Dave Hubin. Get yours before the lawyers shut me down.


    From the Union:

    United Academics Bargaining Handout for 9/6/2013

    The Union and the Administration have reached agreement on many issues. This is a list of some of the more important issues that remain to be negotiated, with a brief summary of the differences.

    Academic freedom: The union wants faculty to have absolute academic freedom consistent with the long standing principles of the American Association of University Professors. The administration proposal could potentially restrict faculty members’ right to speak in class about controversial matters unrelated to the subject of the course, and to criticize the University. 

    [UOM: See new court decision here: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ruled that the First Amendment protects a Washington State University professor’s calls for change at his institution, handing a major victory to advocates of the idea that college faculty members have free speech rights beyond those afforded other public employees.] 

    Intellectual Property: The union wants faculty to own all products associated with their teaching and research. The administration agrees when it comes to things such as books and articles, but argues that it should own other products from research it has helped fund. The administration also wants to own faculty’s teaching notes and course content, and wants to be able to sell electronic courses that faculty develop, and prevent faculty from taking these with them if they move to another university.

    UO computers and networks: The administration wants a contract saying that the university owns everything faculty put on UO computers or and that administrators can access this information without notice. The union’s position, which is consistent with current UO policy, is that computer storage is like the filing cabinets in a faculty office. For reasons of practicality these often contain a mix of personal and university documents. Putting a personal letter in your filing cabinet does not mean UO owns it, or can read it without your permission.

    Protections against Arbitrary Terminations: The administration’s Article 25 proposal rejected the union proposal that the University Senate review the administration’s judgments of “financial exigency” and program elimination for “academic reasons.” They proposed only a set of guidelines governing who would be terminated if a declaration is made or a program is eliminated. The union counterproposal requires the administration to provide a full public report on the circumstances at issue in advance of a declaration and would require a public hearing with the President and Board before any action could be taken.

    Contract fairness for NTTFs: The union holds that “all Career NTTF have a reasonable expectation of continued employment contingent upon the bargaining unit faculty member continuing to meet the standards of excellence appropriate to a major research university and provided that employing units have adequate resources and continuing programmatic need.” The administration’s proposal eliminates this expectation.

    Salary: The union’s Aug. 29 proposal was for 8% promotion raises, and for overall raises of 14.5% for TTFs and 13.5% for NTTF’s. The administration’s Sept. 3 counter-proposal accepted the 8% for promotions, and added a modest increase in post-review raises for full professors, plus a one time $350 bonus on signing. On the other hand they cut the overall raises to 11.5% for TTFs, and 12% for NTTFs, by reducing the equity component. Under both proposals all the raises would be effective by 7/1/2014.

    Nomenclature: The administration wants to be called “The University” in the contract. The union’s position is that, by charter, the faculty and the president, as a member of the faculty, constitute the university, and has proposed that they use “The University Administration” instead. They are opposed.

    The union is planning a general membership meeting Oct 8th. This may include a contract ratification vote. Elections for union officers and for delegates from departments for the governing council will be held in December. You must be a card-carrying member to vote. More information is available at uauoregon.org

    Rudnick wrap-up and Synopsis from Tuesday’s session XXXVII on raises here. The administration’s fact-check site has reported no errors in UO Matters bargaining posts since July 24. Thanks for the endorsement!

    Mauer: We appreciate admin movement on economics, are talking to members to get their thoughts.

    Rudnick: Our proposal is “more than fair”. We are really disappointed in you. Students come back in two weeks and you say everything the faculty does is in the best interests of the faculty. “The well is dry. Hear me please. The well is dry. This is an incredibly rich offer.” If you want more we will have to get the athletic department to start paying their own bills.

    Mauer: So, why’d you wait so long to make your counter? Rudnick is quiet. She and Gleason look so depressed. Blandy seems as chipper as ever. No Grado today, does HLGR have more tobacco company work?

    Art 25, Termination, union counter:

    Mauer: Deals with termination without cause in case of financial exigency or program changes. Admin was concerned last time, didn’t want the UO Senate involved. We want the Senate involved. These are academic matters, that’s the Senate’s job. Requires administration to be transparent with the Senate about the financial and academic matters involved. Administration can have the last word, but they must inform and consult. Union wants lots of transparency, and the opportunity to make a public presentation to the president and board.

    Mauer: In most areas of bargaining both sides have moved closer together. We don’t believe UO is planning program closures or a declaration of financial exigency. But at other institutions with problems, the faculty has not been consulting faculty. Many Louisiana institutions used Katrina as an excuse to terminate programs. VPFA Moffitt has said she is building up UO reserves in case of a tornado, we also want to be prepared. Another university doubled its athletic budget and then declared financial exigency and cut faculty.

    Rudnick: “I’m getting warm, can someone open the door? “Suppose UO declares exigency and union disagrees, what’s the union going to do?

    Mauer: We could have an arbitration hearing about whether or not the university was really in exigency. Rudnick has some clarifying questions. She’s fixated on the possibility that an arbitrator would make academic decisions. (Is financial exigency academic? Sounds like an accounting or finance issue.) Mauer: Question for the arbitrator will be limited to ruling on whether process was followed. Some back and forth. Rudnick’s looking for a way to agree to this, she finally figures it out.

    Rudnick is fanning herself. Mauer, ever the gentleman: Would you like us to move to a more comfortable room, say 101? Rudnick: Why yes, I would. Thank you, kind sir! We move to 101.

    Art 49, Use of Computers etc. Union counter:

    Mauer: Administrators should not be able to read faculty emails without reasonable suspicion. (4th amendment.) Rudnick: This proposal is not going to be acceptable. The university has to be able to read all your stuff, even without reasonable suspicion. (And, in current practice, without notifying you.)

    Gleason: Public records, or monitoring usage?

    Mauer: That’s reasonable, but we need policies. For example, a faculty members office is public property. But that does not mean the administration should put peepholes in faculty doors.

    Rudnick: Suppose the administration wants to know if physics professors are doing physics, or just spending their time doing online shopping. (Seriously. She said this. You slacker physicists have got it coming. Shop craigslist for used cyclotrons on your own time.) I do not understand why there’s any expectation of privacy when you are using a computer. There’s nothing private about it!

    Mauer: We are willing to add language for public records requests, etc.

    Rudnick: Your language is contrary to law, unless we agree to it, and we won’t.

    Cecil: So, do admins have the right to go through faculty desk drawers looking at faculty photos, memorabilia, etc.

    Rudnick: I don’t know.

    Cecil: Going back to the physicists shopping problem. I assume UO does not have the right to put hidden camera in an office that would show what is on screen?

    Rudnick: If faculty put a lock on their file cabinet, then they’d have a right to expect privacy. (But the admins policy will not allow faculty to encrypt files without administration’s permission. Catch 22.)

    Cecil: We need some language that will allow the reasonable exceptions you’ve raised, but not your unreasonable carte blanche to look at everything for any or no reason. People have an expectation of privacy.

    Rudnick: You might have that expectation, but you shouldn’t!

    Cecil: I’m no constitutional lawyer, but didn’t our society work this out once before, with the 4th amendment? You want to allow the administration to read faculty files and email even for illegitimate reasons.

    Rudnick: Use your $350 goat money to buy your own computer.

    Current UO policy? Quoting, 

    The state may or may not have a property interest in information stored on University systems. Mere physical presence of information on a University electronic information system is not sufficient to conclusively establish the ownership and control of that information, just as physical presence of a paper document in a faculty member’s desk or filing cabinet does not establish an irrefutable presumption that the document is owned or controlled by the University.

    This is a huge power grab by Geller and Gottfredson.

    Gleason blabs on about legal minimal standards for privacy. This guy used to be a journalist? Does anyone know what kind?

    Davidson gives him hell, calmly and rationally. Bramhall gives more. Green: Suppose I’m in a discussion with Gottfredson about Blandy. Blandy can read the emails?

    Rudnick: Gottfredson could devise a policy on what sort of privacy faculty can expect. But he’s been here a year, and hasn’t.

    (Is this going to be a campus wide policy that applies to administrators, athletics, etc? No, just for the union members, from what I can see.)

    Rudnick starts to understand she’s in a hole, starts asking for specific language that might work. Back and forth with Mauer.

    Mauer: We want to know why there is a legitimate reason for administrators to have this unfettered power. Lets craft language that would clarify when it is OK for admins.

    Bramhall asks if there are current policies. I say there are not, I made a public records request for the policies and were told there are none. Rudnick chews me out for speaking. Cecil tells me to keep quiet. Rudnick objects because Cecil said it so loudly and clearly. 

    Background on this is an unsubstantiated rumor that UO General Counsel Randy Geller has been arguing that UO should have employees personal email and facebook passwords. If you have information on this please send me an email at uomatters at gmail.com (best from a personal account!) or post an anon comment.

    Meanwhile, I’m thinking about Chip Kelly’s playbook. We paid him $3.5M a year to develop it. It seems rather valuable. He’s now taken it to the Eagles – how much did Randy Geller make them to pay UO for it?

    Break, good discussion among the 40 or so faculty in the room. Now they’re back.

    New article from admins, breaking out union’s shared governance proposal:


    Mauer: Our proposal was that dept policies would include NTTF’s as default, except for hiring etc. Bramhall: Does your proposal allow departments to decide not to include NTTF’s as default? Rudnick: It requires NTTF participation, but allows departments, including NTTF’s to set up rules.

    Cecil: Suppose faculty devise a workload policy without NTTF participation. Would that be grievable? Rudnick: No, if dept policy said that NTTF’s didn’t participate in workload policies. Cecil, Bramhall: We need to make it explicit that they do have full participation and voting rights.

    Rudnick: Do you mean equal numbers of TTF and NTTF on the workload committee? that’s how we read your proposal. Mauer: A rule that people vote according to FTE would be a violation of our proposal.

    Gleason: So you are saying that a full time TTF and a part time NTTF should have the same voting rights on developing department policies? Cecil: Yes. Bramhall: We could use the statutory faculty definition. Rudnick: We agree that all faculty should participation. We are trying to figure out the specifics. Productive back and forth, hashing out the details.

    Rudnick: Equitable, not equal participation. Union team: Yes.

    Article 3, Shared governance, admin counter:

    Rudnick: The board can change the University constitution whenever it wants, in exercise of its authority. Mauer: Does that include changing the constitution in a way inconsistent with the constitution? Rudnick: I don’t know. President can’t restrict board’s power though.

    Mauer: We need to hear from you now or later on whether or not the board can unconstiutionally change the constitution. Rudnick: I think it can. Cecil: You are saying the board can dissolve the Senate? Rudnick: The president can say he won’t change the constitution, but he can’t (won’t) put that in the contract because that would limit the board’s power and he doesn’t have the right to do that?

    Rudnick: Terms of employment are delegated to the President, so he can sign a labor contract. But I don’t think he has the authority to put the constitution in the contract. He can and will say *he* won’t abrogate the constitution himself.

    Cecil: So, we need to figure out if the board can dissolve the Senate.

    Rudnick: We are not sending any signals here about what we expect the board to do. No evidence they are interested in this. (Recall that almost none of the trustees have higher ed experience.)

    Bramhall: Hasn’t the OUS board delegated authority to president to sign the constitution? So, the new board would have to withdraw that authority from him? Or order him to do it?

    (But hasn’t the PSU faculty union gotten its constitution in their contract?)

    Gleason: The president will defend the current constitution to the board for the 2 years of the contract, but he will not agree to put it in the contract, where it would have legal protection.

    Rudnick: We will not agree to make shared governance grievable. We will agree that if the faculty union thinks there is a problem, they can meet with the president.

    (Rudnick is being very conciliatory here. Big improvement in clarity from Gottfredson’s “asked and answered fiasco”.

    Lunch break, back at 1:30 PM for Academic Freedom! 

    They’re back.

    Art , Admin counter on Academic Freedom:



    Union on Academic Freedom: The union wants faculty to have absolute academic freedom consistent with the long standing principles of the American Association of University Professors. The administration proposal could potentially restrict faculty members’ right to speak in class about controversial matters unrelated to the subject of the course, and to criticize the University.

    [UOM: See new court decision here: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ruled that the First Amendment protects a Washington State University professor’s calls for change at his institution, handing a major victory to advocates of the idea that college faculty members have speech rights beyond those afforded other public employees.]

    Rudnick: All bargaining unit member have first amendment rights. When they speak in public they can identify as UO faculty so long as UO endorsement is not implied. We concede that you don’t have to say that explicitly. UO will protect existing freedom, but will not agree that faculty can speak on any institutional matter “with impunity”. We want to keep lines between academic freedom, free speech, and shared governance separate, so that write to free speech doesn’t overlap with shared governance.

    Mauer: 9th circuit decision is good but might not stand. So you are not willing to put the rights it gives into the contract. Rudnick: Right, we are not.

    Green: I’m no lawyer, but you are saying I can be disciplined for free speech that UO thinks is inappropriate?

    Rudnick: Yes, unless you have explicit protections as outlined in case law – are speaking on a matter of public importance. Which it might not be. You could, for example, speak at a rally complaining about subsidies for the Jock Box, and the university could not discipline you or retaliate.

    Cecil: What’s your objection to 1c and d? Rudnick: They extend free speech too far, beyond the first amendment as currently interpreted, and they don’t have anything to do with academic freedom, in our judgement.

    Cecil: So, you are not OK with a compromise that calls these the right to criticize the administration?

    Gleason: What exactly are we talking about. What are you looking for?

    Cecil: They are motivated by faculty’s unique role in shared governance, which means they need to have this right even if other employees do not.

    Rudnick: If they are speaking in their role on a committee, etc. If they’re some crazy-ass blogger, not necessarily.

    Mauer: Why not?

    Rudnick: University needs to have the ability to control its workplace, and President Gottfredson is not willing to give faculty the unfettered ability to criticize things.

    Mauer: We are not arguing for a faculty right to defame people, just a right to criticize without the threat of university retaliation.

    Rudnick: We are not going to give up that right.

    Mauer: We need to discuss where the line is.

    Rudnick: There are lots of protections, we’re not going to give any more. For example, suppose Deb Green yelled at some library employee about moving the bargaining room. She could be subject to discipline.

    Cecil: Give me an example of how our 1c clause goes too far?

    Rudnick: Threats like I spewed at the faculty member who was trying to rearrange chairs the other day – not protected.

    Mauer: Gives specific example from Garcetti.

    Rudnick raises impunity red herring. Mauer: We’re not asking for impunity. We’re asking for reasonable protections in the contract. We don’t understand why you are opposed to this is.

    Bramhall: I stand up in a faculty meeting and speak my mind. Am I in trouble?

    Rudnick: You’re OK if it’s a matter of public concern, unless the university had said you weren’t allowed to speak up about that matter in faculty meetings and you did anyway. WTF??

    Mauer: The Garcetti decision limited right to criticize too much.

    Davidson: Courts have limited first amendment freedoms too much recently. Universities are about debate, need extra protections. Why is our university aiming for the lowest common denominator on free-speech?

    Green: I trust Doug Blandy not to run a truck through these loopholes allowing discipline for free-speech, but why is Pres Gottfredson asking future faculty to trust some future VPAA? Lets get this in the contract.


    Braun: University has a responsibility to foster free speech. These limits are a bad example for our students, not a good one. Where is your affirmative support for free speech and academic freedom? Give me some examples.

    Rudnick: If you are teaching a class in gender studies and you want to oppose genital mutilation or abortion, and that is related to what you are teaching in that course, we would protect you.

    (What about the Merle Weiner case, where UO wouldn’t protect a law professor when she was sued over an article she had published?)

    Civil discourse:

    Cecil: Would UO Matters be protected?

    Rudnick: Reads the article in an angry voice: Is he discharging his duties …?

    Cecil: What would be an plausible example of un-civil discourse that you could be disciplined for?

    Rudnick: I think that “acting un-civilly” and interfering with university business is pretty clear, particularly if it’s repeated.

    (Is Johnson Hall getting ready to go after me for writing UO Matters? Both Richard Lariviere and Bob Berdahl publicly supported my right to publish this blog, despite the fact they hated it. Is Mike Gottfredson going to let his administrators try and discipline me for it?)

    Cecil call short caucus break.

    They’re back:

    Art 50, ethics. UO proposal: Don’t lie, cheat, or steal. But at UO, you are allowed to tolerate those that do.

    Fun debate about whether or not the article allows psychologists to use deception in experiments. I’m no experimental economist, but we can’t – at least if we want to get the results through peer review.

    Art 51, Intellectual Property:

    Rudnick: UO is not going to give up ownership rights to intellectual products you create at UO. Period. Ever.

    Mauer: What’s wrong with current policy and OARs? Rudnick: I don’t know what current policy is.

    Gleason: Status quo was the starting point, then we grabbed everything because JH bought into the MOOC hype.

    Cecil: The science professors are telling me UO’s current policy is fine for them. Why not just use it in the contract?

    Gleason speaks, Rudnick speaks over him again, then he gives a brief lecture on legal fictions.

    Green turns around and starts making the hand signals Captain Winters used in Band of Brothers. Hmm.

    Olson: You told us last time you wanted this article because you wanted to monetize our online courses.

    Rudnick: If you develop an online class they can be lucrative. Even though you developed it at UO you could profit from it. And we want that money!

    (I don’t understand why this same logic doesn’t apply to faculty who write a textbook. Faculty have got rich off these for years. What’s the diff?)

    Bramhall: Suppose I post powerpoint on blackboard. You own them? Raises the obaverse issue.

    Cecil: Lets cut to the chase. What exactly do you think UO owns?

    Faculty record their lectures, put them on youtube? You own them? Rudnick: I don’t know. Blandy: you do it yourself, yours. Media services helps, we’ve got an issue. Rudnick: sculpture, faculty owns it. Textbooks? Rudnick: I still don’t know.

    Why didn’t the admin team bring in someone who does know?

    Cecil: To clarify, we are not trying to override language in other contracts, grants. Rudnick: How about if we go through your list. Would that move things forward? Cecil: Yes. There’s lots of room for debate. Gleason: Our proposal is consistent with what peer universities do. Cecil: Well Tim, last time this came up you agreed that these were new issues that were still being explored by universities and their faculty.

    (I’m no economist, but I’m thinking that there’s too little discussion of the negative incentive effects of the universities ownership grab here.)

    Cecil: This is not as hopeless as it seems, lets get the experts in the room.

    Rudnick: No, we’ll go talk to them in secret, and bring back our version of it to you.

    Cecil: How about a statement that there will be agreements for online platforms etc., that these must be memorialized, etc? Because we are shocked by your proposal. Faculty are doing things now with no idea of what their rights are.

    Olson asks about SCOTUS case. For some reason Rudnick is incredibly dismissive of her, and makes a point of doing it publicly.

    Cecil: Our worry is that a faculty member will develop a great online course, then dismiss them and hire someone cheaper to use this, and that this will happen without the faculty understanding that this could happen.

    Rudnick: We agree this needs to be clarified.

    Davidson: Brings up the negative incentives. It’s good for the students for faculty to do many things online, but if you are saying you own it, then I’m being played for a fool.

    Rudnick: I need to go back and figure out what I’m talking about when I say “online platform”.

    New: Art 52, Outside Activities (Consulting), admin proposal.

    Rudnick: We’ve just realized we need it, we’ve drafted it, we should discuss in context of conflict of interest and commitment.

    Another power grab: This policy will require that consulting activity be approved by the Provost or designee.

    Art 10, professional responsibilities, union counter:

    Rudnick: What’s this “fair and transparent” stuff?

    9.5 minutes to go. Rudnick is wasted. Cecil just keeps on going. “Let’s go back to the consulting article.”

    Olson: Will this apply to non-BU faculty?

    Rudnick: “My understanding is that, as a general rule, the intent is *all* policies will apply to all employees.

    Mauer: When do we meet again? Rudnick: Afternoons Sept 10 and 12, maybe Friday.

    That’s all folks, see you next week.

    Bargaining XXXVII: Rudnick wrap-up

    Page down for live-blog, 9/3/2013. Next session Friday, I think 9AM – 4PM. Be there.

    Wrap-up:

    UO’s faculty union bargaining team has played President Gottfredson’s lead negotiator Sharon Rudnick like a screechy fiddle. She has insisted since March that there was no more money, beyond her initial 10.5% offer. The union has now forced her to raise it by significantly more than the 1.25% that dues will cost.

    We’re not yet up to 14.5%, but the AAUP and AFT can take this on the road – deservedly – as proof that a faculty union at a research university can raise faculty salaries by more than enough to cover dues, even in the face of a determined if misguided president.

    Along the way the faculty team has written the missing UO faculty handbook, which our accreditors have been telling the administration to do since 2007. They’ve secured many important protections for NTTF’s. And while Rudnick started the bargaining by threatening that it could take as long as 18 months, the union team has played her out in double-time: not even 8 months so far.
    The unfortunate collateral damage from Ms Rudnick’s incompetence is President Gottfredson’s standing with the faculty. He could have proposed 14.5% in January and taken the credit, instead of the blame, and saved at least $500K in legal bills.


    Today’s synopsis:

    • Over the past 5 months the union has made big economic concessions on wages, from 18.5% to 14.5%. Admin proposals stalled at 10.5% (No compounding).
    • Today we learn that Gottfredson will budge. A little. His offer is still well below Lariviere/Coltrane proposal from 2011.
    • For NTTF’s, the union proposal from last week was for 15.03%, compounded over three years. Admin came back today with 12.4%.
    • For TTF’s, union had last proposed 15%. Admin came back with 11.8%, plus a problematic increase in first post-tenure review raise amounts. This doesn’t address external equity, the focus of the Coltrane plan. And if you just had a review, you’re SOL for 5 years.
    • Admin still refuses to make 1.5% ATB for last year fully retroactive – even though AAU salaries increased 3% last year. 
    • Instead they propose a $350 “signing bonus”. Don’t laugh, you can get some good shit on craiglist for $350. I call dibs on the goat.
    • Who came up with this $350 idea? Presumably Gottfredson’s $20K a month anti-union consultants down in SF, trying to drive a wedge between the TTF’s and NTTF’s.
    • After hearing Rudnick the faculty start leaving the room, presumably to start looking for outside offers.
    • Rudnick says Gottfredson says UO can’t afford more, because of the 3.5% tuition raise cap for next year. 
    • Not true. Every 1% increase in tuition brings in ~$3M, recurring, while a 1% increase in faculty pay costs ~$1M, or a 0.33% tuition increase.
    • Admin team is even more on edge than usual but only one outburst, this time from Gleason.

    Raises: The elevator version:

    We’re going down. During the first year of President Gottfredson’s administration UO faculty pay has fallen still further behind other AAU public universities:

    • Full profs: down from 85% to 82% 
    • Associate profs: down from 92% to 90% 
    • Assistant profs: down from 93% to 89%

    The relative drops are mostly driven by pay raises at the other AAU schools, however UO’s average pay for assistants and fulls has actually fallen, presumably because of composition changes. The retroactive 1.5% ATB raise proposed by the admin’s for 2012-13 is only for 6 months, so it’s really only a 1% raise. Sneaky. Either way it is not close to enough to make up for the ~3% UO faculty lost relative to other AAU publics between Fall 2011 and Fall 2012. Much less enough to get the elevator going up. And the administration has been fibbing: UO benefits don’t make up salary gap.

    Background:

    Their conclusion is that while both effects are at work, Bowen effects dominate in public research universities, with $2 in increases due to administrators seizing on increased revenue for every $1 in increases due to upward pressures on faculty and staff salaries from other industries. Same for private research institutions. What’s more, they find a plausible culprit within universities. They notice that cost increases are likelier when the ratio of staff to faculty is higher. That suggests that when administrators within the university accumulate bargaining power, they’re better able to force increases in costs. The administrative staff, they suggest, is what’s really driving this.

    By administrative staff, they presumably mean central administrators like Jim “38%” Bean. Say Jim, any update on how much our administration is going to piss away in Portland this year? Thanks to an anonymous reader for the link. From the WaPo’s excellent “The Tuition is Too Damn High” series.

    Lots of rumors flying around – and I didn’t start all of them – that the administration’s haste to wrap up bargaining is motivated in part by a desire to get the economics off the table before the latest administrative bloat data comes out:

    From: Bill Harbaugh
    Subject: public records request, non-classified employees
    Date: September 1, 2013 11:55:21 PM PDT
    To: Lisa Thornton Cc: J P Monroe , [email protected], Andrea Larson , [email protected], [email protected]

    Dear Ms Thornton:

    This is a public records request for a machine readable file in excel, comma delimited, or any other standard format showing the following information for UO non-classified employees as of 9/3/2013:

    First Name, Last Name, MI, University Email Address, University Office Address, University Office Phone Area Code, University Office Phone Number, Employee Type, Academic Title, Job Type, Job Title Job Start Date, Yrs in Position, Fac Prim Activity, Home Department, Rank, Rk Date, Pay Department, Annual Salary Rate, Appt Percent Job Status, Job End Date, Appointment Status, Term of Service, EEO Type, FT/PT

    I ask for a fee waiver on the basis of public interest.

    I’m ccing a few people in the UO IR office, who should be able to easily provide these data.

    The prior data on this is from the error ridden Beangrams, and the most excellent presentations of the AAUP’s Howard Bunsis. March 2013 update for UO here:

    “Institutional Support” means central administration, more or less.

    More background:

    Rumor from the spectators at the annual faculty club ping-pong semi-finals is that Gottfredson has told Geller and Rudnick to stop their $100K a month billing frenzy and cut a deal, quick. The large faculty turnout at the Thursday meeting had its intended effect, and Rudnick’s flip-out didn’t hurt either.

    Rudnick will apparently meet with Gottfredson et al at 9AM to get his instructions. As you can see from the spreadsheet below the union has already come down from 19.3% over 3 years (compounded) to 15%, and has made concessions on health, childcare, and promotion raises as well. The majority of the faculty I’ve talked with feel that if the union offer is not acceptable to Gottfredson as is, we should strike during week one.

    Synopsis from session XXXVI, Thursday 8/29:

    • Practice drill for strike goes off well. ~100 faculty show up on a summer day when they’re not even on contract. News on the SEIU strike preparation in the ODE here.
    • Some chatter about discipline for Rudnick over her disrespectful treatment of faculty and library staff this morning. Does UO’s respectful workplace policy apply to $300 an hour lawyers? 
    • Union holds firm on raises, only minor concessions. Rudnick seems to have new instructions from Coltrane, sounds ready to deal.
    • After lunch, still about 60 faculty in the room. No visible support for the admin team. No Altmann, no Moffitt, no Geller, no one with any actual authority to deal. No wonder this takes forever.
    • After getting all medieval on me for “posting of false and inaccurate information about bargaining” the administration’s bargaining team is now trying to keep me from posting copies of the presumably fact-based transcripts they’ve been taking at every bargaining session – their stenographer has been typing away all day. Latest here
    • Art 49, use of UO computers, a.k.a as the Stasi Clause. They own you.

    Your Guarantee of Truthiness: All UO Matters bargaining posts are fact-checked by Geller and Rudnick’s secret team of well paid consultants, who post their spin on the official UO Admin site, hereIf you pay Dave Hubin $285.98 he’ll even tell you who wrote it.

    Proposals so far:




    Live Blog:

    Disclaimer: My opinion of what people said or were thinking but were too decent, or well-paid, to say. Nothing is a quote unless in quotes. If you don’t like my blog read Luebke’s.

    12:55: Admin team filing in. ~50 faculty, kids, etc. Approaching fire code limit. Any volunteers to move Rudnick’s chair?

    1:05 Rudnick: Thanks for delay, we have economic proposals and more propaganda about how we already spent your money on athletics and pet admin projects.

    Art 24 Leaves, admin counter:

    Rudnick: Go forth and multiply. We’ll give dual family leaves if both parents are UO employees. Admin relents on Ebenezeer clause: Officers of instruction can now leave for xmas and spring break without getting pay docked.

    Art 31 Release time, admin counter:

    Rudnick: Union gets 2.5 FTE for officers, extra 2.0 FTE for bargaining, and can buy course releases based on salary, OPE, admin costs, facilities use.

    Mauer: Why not charge us the replacement cost? Rudnick: It’s not replacement cost. Mauer: Why not? Rudnick: blah, blah. (She’s an expert on bill padding issues, be careful here Mike.)

    Art 20, Salary, admin counter:

    See the spreadsheet, admin proposal is very weak.

    Caucus break. Union team leaves. 

    Admin’s and ~50 faculty stay. I start giving a thoughtful, fact-based discussion of the admin proposal, using the spreadsheet above, with a few illustrative examples such as:

    Proposal: $350 one time signing bonus. This goes over like a lead brick. Jim Bean’s been getting $775 a month for his beamer payments:

    Rudnick interrupts, saying I’ve got something wrong, but won’t answer when I ask her for details. Faculty start ripping into the admin proposal, asking her questions. She won’t answer them either.

    Union team returns, tells Rudnick we’re moving this to Room 101. We do. Session restarts:

    Gleason: While you were in caucus, the people in the bargaining room, including your economic consultant (me) were ridiculing this proposal. This is unacceptable, and I’m a journalism dean so I know all about that so called free-speech stuff.

    Mauer: So, you want to talk about it? (I’m right there Tim. Why not send me another harassing fact check letter?)

    Gleason: No.

    Rudnick: Long bit about $350 being an attempt to split off the NTTF’s and divide and conquer. Gives a bit more to the lower classes. She tries to explain her math, Cecil finds a few errors.

    Rudnick: No changes to your merit proposal. We cut your equity proposal for NTTF’s because of something the finance people said. Then she adds “Don’t ask me any details” and “It’s all in the details.” (Why didn’t Jamie Moffitt show up for this crucial bargaining session? Because the administration doesn’t have enough respect for the faculty to make the trip over from JH).

    Cecil: 2% is not enough to get NTTF’s to $36K floor.

    Rudnick: We think it is enough. But it’s all in the details and don’t ask me any details.

    Promotion raises:

    Rudnick: We accept the union’s 8% promotion raises for NTTFs. Currently there is no policy for this, so it’s a significant increase.

    Rudnick: For CAS, post tenure review typically gets $2k or $4K, we’ll boost that to 4% or 8% in order to give more equity and merit. (Note, however, that this is only for the *first* post-tenure review after the contract is signed. Among the many problems with this proposal is its hit or miss nature: had an excellent review last year? You will wait 5 years to try again for your raise.)

    Rudnick: Here’s our spreadsheet, with cost increases, estimates promotion and post tenure review increases will result in $3.5M or so in new costs. Pratt: So, these are just for first post-tenure reviews? Rudnick: Yes, because …. Pratt finishes for her: Because that would increase faculty salaries.

    Why isn’t our $270K a year (plus football junkets) VPFA Jamie Moffitt here to explain this proposal?

    Rudnick: This is a significant proposal. We worked very hard to try to put some significant extra money on the table. There was a very long discussion in JH this AM on how to fund this. (Uh, cut athletic subsidies and drop the $2.4M Portland White Stag lease, for starters?)

    Rudnick: We hope you see this as meeting you in the middle. Oh yeah, we didn’t have time to do the compounding, check UO Matters.

    Mauer: Back to floors. Pool is 2%. You don’t know if that’s enough to get NTTF’s all to $36K?

    Rudnick: We’re looking at different groups individually and looking at other possible permutations on how to fairly set floors. They’ve run a bunch of scenarios. Their sense is it’s enough to get to a fair outcome.

    Mauer: What if there’s money leftover? Rudnick: We’d spend it on beamers for the administration.

    Braun: Can we see your scenarios? Rudnick: Starts waiving her hands, it’s back of the envelope, … It’s just somebody in accounting doing if this and that.

    Braun: But it did inform your proposal? Cecil: I’ve seen assertions that admin is saying it would be unreasonable to pay RA’s $36k?

    Rudnick: UO research grants are falling, less than came in last year, might lead to layoffs. Rudnick starts passing around her spreadsheet, with costs, talking about it. She shortchanged us on copies, I’ll post as soon as I get one. She babbles on.

    Pissed off looking faculty start leaving the room, making calls for outside offers. 

    Rudnick: Post-tenure reviews will be reviewed outside the department, by Gottfredson, before you get the 8%.

    Retirement: Rudnick asks union for ideas on how to deal with the pickup. Uh, they did that already, Sharon.

    In conclusion:

    Rudnick: President and Provost are putting themselves on the line for this proposal. It will take reorganization, re-prioritization, maybe even cuts or postponement of hiring of new strategic communicators and brand manager hires. She was just kidding on that last part, I’m sure.

    Caucus break. 

    Cecil stays, gives the ~40 or so remaining faculty an impressive off the top of his head talk on bargaining, dissecting the admin proposal, comparing it with what the union is asking for.

    They’re back. 6 die hard faculty observers left.

    Contracts: Snoozer. And no, it’s not because it’s about the NTTF’s, it’s because Cecil and Mauer are on this. Just kick back folks, they have your back.

    Wait – Blandy is going to reduce the amount of notice and pay they need to give NTTF’s. Current policy is too expensive. So, are you going to do the same for administrators, Doug?

    7/31/2013: Back in July 2011 UO got in trouble with the State auditors for post-dating Frohnmayer’s retirement contracts and no bothering to specify what work he’d done for the money. Then Bean got in trouble with Davis for hiring his buddy John Moseley for an extended post-retirement gig without bothering to write a contract. Davis had to write another retroactive one while Bean was on sabbatical, and she chewed out Bean for it. Then in April 2013 Gottfredson announced Bean would “return to the faculty effective 7/1/2013” And now Bean is working for UO without a contract – if he’s still working for UO that is. From the UO Public Records Office yesterday: 

    The university does not possess documents responsive to your request for “a copy of the current employment contract(s) for James C. Bean“.  The office considers this information to be fully responsive to your request, and will now close your matter.  Thank you for contacting the office with your request. 

    My April 2012 request for docs on the unusual deals between Bean and Moseley, including the retroactive contract and Davis email, was quickly followed by Bob Berdahl’s clampdown on public records releases, which has continued under President Gottfredson. I did get the response above without having to pay a fee, but it took 11 days

    Long back and forth between Cecil and Rudnick on job security, raises for NTTFs. Not a word from VPAA Doug Blandy, who is supposedly in charge of all this. Bizarre.

    Q: Do all UO departments give NTTF’s the opportunity for career-track jobs?

    Rudnick: Pres wants the flexibility to replace NTTF’s with TTF’s.

    Cecil: So, if we come back with a proposal that says you can cut for that, but no other reasons, will you agree to it?

    Rudnick: Seems to be saying no.

    Next session this Friday – not sure if it starts at 9AM or 10AM.

    Bargaining XXXVI: Rudnick violates UO respectful workplace policy?

    Thursday 8/29/2013, 9am-4pm, room 122 Knight Library.

    The admin team’s fact-check on this post should be quite interesting.

    Lead admin negotiator and noted tobacco company lawyer Sharon Rudnick violates UO Respectful Workplace Policy?


    If you’d showed up you’d probably know what I’m talking about. Don’t miss the next session: Tuesday, 9/3, 10AM. Your chance to get more verbal abuse, and hear President Gottfredson’s counter-proposal on raises.

    Turns out VPAA and admin bargaining team member Doug Blandy is in charge of enforcement, and if multiple, independent reports from those present at today’s exciting bargaining meeting are correct, Rudnick may have violated UO policy. Perhaps twice:

    The University of Oregon is noted for its strong tradition of collegiality and support for all members of the institution. Hostile, intimidating or abusive behavior damages the strong sense of community so valued at UO. Please join us in working to ensure that each member of our community benefits from a respectful and inclusive working and learning environment. 

    We recognize that the demands of our jobs and stressful challenges in our work and personal lives can occasionally lead to moments of impatience and irritability. However, we want to take this opportunity to remind you that, regardless of the provocation or reason, it is never appropriate or acceptable to vent frustrations or conduct workplace business by yelling, using profanity or acting in a demeaning or verbally abusive way.

    Blandy’s email is [email protected] if anyone wants to file a complaint about his co-negotiator.
    Synopsis:

    • Practice drill for strike goes off well. ~100 faculty show up on a summer day when they’re not even on contract. News on the SEIU strike preparation in the ODE here.
    • Some chatter about discipline for Rudnick over her disrespectful treatment of faculty and library staff this morning. Does UO’s respectful workplace policy apply to $300 an hour lawyers? Any truth to the rumor someone caught that on a cell phone video? Email me at uomatters or just post it on youtube already.
    • Union holds firm on raises, only minor concessions. Rudnick seems to have new instructions from Coltrane, sounds ready to deal.
    • After lunch, still about 60 faculty in the room. No visible support for the admin team. No Altmann, no Moffitt, no Geller, no one with any actual authority to deal. No wonder this takes forever.
    • After getting all medieval on me for “posting of false and inaccurate information about bargaining” the administration’s bargaining team is now trying to keep me from posting copies of the presumably fact-based transcripts they’ve been taking at every bargaining session – their stenographer has been typing away all day. Latest here
    • Art 49, use of UO computers, a.k.a as the Stasi Clause. They own you.

    Your Guarantee of Truthiness: All UO Matters bargaining posts are fact-checked by Geller and Rudnick’s secret team of well paid consultants, who post their spin on the official UO Admin site, here. If you pay Dave Hubin $285.98 he’ll even tell you who wrote it.

    Disclaimer: My opinion of what people said or were thinking but were too decent, or well-paid, to say. Nothing is a quote unless in quotes. If you don’t like my blog read Luebke’s.


    The faculty union needs you to show up at this session for as long as you can.
    The union team will put its latest counter to Gottfredson and Coltrane’s 3.5% a year proposal on the table. Check out the data by rank and department. You are a long, long way from the Lariviere targets, and 3.5% a year is not going to cut it.

    If you want to get a real raise, you need to show up and help put on the pressure. Word is that the much maligned part-time yoga instructors will be there to help out with stress reduction during the caucus breaks. Bring your mat, and be prepared to chant.

    Raises: The elevator version:
    We’re going down. During the first year of President Gottfredson’s administration UO faculty pay has fallen still further behind other AAU public universities:
    • Full profs: down from 85% to 82% 
    • Associate profs: down from 92% to 90% 
    • Assistant profs: down from 93% to 89%
    The relative drops are mostly driven by pay raises at the other AAU schools, however UO’s average pay for assistants and fulls has actually fallen, presumably because of composition changes. The retroactive 1.5% ATB raise proposed by the admin’s for 2012-13 is only for 6 months, so it’s really only a 1% raise. Sneaky. Either way it is not close to enough to make up for the ~3% UO faculty lost relative to other AAU publics between Fall 2011 and Fall 2012. Much less enough to get the elevator going up. And the administration has been fibbing: UO benefits don’t make up salary gap.

    Prologue: 


    Live-blog:

    9:04. Looks like 50 people so far. Rudnick is telling the faculty they can’t sit behind the admins – don’t want us seeing the transcripts they are taking down.

    Admins walk out looking pissed. Cecil lays down the rules: It’s the library: whisper. No eye-rolls, those really drive Rudnick batty.

    9:22: They’re back. Blandy, Rudnick, Gleason, Grado, stenographer.

    Mauer: Let’s review. Here we are on progress and tasks needed. Our view is we can use this session and the 2 next week to get a final agreement. We need:

    1) Work to do: IP – big disagreements. Workload, career paths, job security. We think we can both make reasonable compromises.

    2) More difficult: Governance. We’ve had the Senate, but faculty have now voted to also be represented by UA. What led to that was an unfortunate history, not your fault. Admin believed faculty were not constructive on admin matters, faculty thought admin was incompetent. Key to success is to *not* supplant Senate, but to provide support for its role. Admin sees union as distinct, not as a partner with the existing forms of shared governance. (Too true – see Gottfredson’s rejection of Senate vote to get union support for constiution.) For nomenclature, faculty see themselves as the heart of the university. The faculty are dealing with the university administration – not The University. Nomenclature is not a game stopper, but it’s symptomatic of problems in your approach.

    Librarian enters and says there are so many people it’s a fire code violation. She sends us to Room 101. Rudnick says this not consistent with ground rules, but OK.

    101 is a great room, Senate meeting room. The faculty march in and fill it up. Very comfy:

    But Rudnick is out in the hall telling Mauer “I am not going to bargain in a classroom. This is not acceptable. There are rules!” Say, where are the administration’s supporters?

    Cecil calls a caucus: Mauer tells faculty what Rudnick said. Faculty member says “So, she wants us to take this outside?” Mauer gives him a stern look, tells us there will be decorum, goes back out in the hall to work his magic on Rudnick.

    Are the admins going to use a big show of faculty support for the union to close down bargaining? That’s not what’s recommended in Frohnmayer’s “Negotiating for Dummies” guide:

    Mauer comes back in, after a frank and open discussion with Rudnick. He told her the faculty came to see bargaining. (And practice for a strike?) A junior faculty member asks why Rudnick yelled at him when he tried to help move chairs. Says he’s never seen that sort of nasty intimidation. I’m guessing it’s his first session with Rudnick.

    10:07: Rudnick and her dispirited looking junior admins file back in. “We need power. Where are the outlets?”

    Mauer: “Now you understand the problem of having to switch classroom in the middle of a session”.

    Mauer:

    3) We have counter-proposals for all the economic proposals. You’ve said repeatedly that you’ve already spent the faculty’s money. We’ve made some compromises, here they are.

    Art 20: Salary: (See spreadsheet above for details.)

    New proposal cuts promotion raises from 10% to 8%. Keeps 3% pool for NTTF floors – unacceptable that a full time university instructor would make less than $36K.

    Rudnick says “I’m chuckling about you saying you’d be happy for us to pay you more.” A $300 an hour lawyer without a clue. The crowd is stone cold silent.

    Mauer: I’d now like to give you the rest of our economic proposals and then have discussion. Rudnick: OK.

    Art 21: Fringe Benefits:

    Mauer: We’ve dropped the child care benefits in an effort to reach an agreement. Rudnick: So we’re in agreement except for the part where you call us “The University of Nike Administration” instead of the “The University”. Mauer: Yup.

    Art 22: Health Insurance:

    Mauer: We’ve dropped request for a $1M fund to help get benefits for part-timers. We dropped this in order to focus on salary issues.

    About 100 faculty in the room. No admin supporters are noticeable. Blandy and Gleason still haven’t spoken.

    Art 23: Retirement Benefits:

    Mauer: Nothing new here, we can’t do much about PERS. We are concerned about threats that UO might drop the 6% pickup. Other bargaining agreements specify that if this happens employees will be made whole. We won’t agree to less of a commitment from UO, unless you can give a coherent explanation for why we should.

    Rudnick: That’s it? I’ll respond. For the 6%, admin would agree to shift it to salary if possible. But if legislation prohibits the pickup and takes money away from UO (come on, how much money does the state give us now?) we can’t agree to make you whole. We want you peons to face the risk, rather than have the university bear it, for example by perhaps having to cut Jim Bean’s sinecure, or cut back on athletic subsidies. That would be too much for JH to bear.

    Mauer patiently explains optimal risk-sharing theory to Rudnick. Blandy looks interested, Gleason has his head down, reading UO Matters. Rudnick doesn’t understand risk-sharing. (There are two possible states of the world …).

    Cecil starts running circles around Rudnick, giggles from the crowd. So why can other Oregon universities manage to make this commitment to their faculty, but not UO?

    Rudnick starts trotting out $8M cost figure. That’s less than 1% of the UO budget.

    Gleason speaks: It’s not like we’re going to put this money in our pocket! Sure Tim. What’s Bean getting paid? And the beamer? How much has the admin wasted on Bend and now Portland? How much in pursuit of their other pet projects? Athletic subsidies? Paying the Matt Court land bonds…

    Green and Rudnick have a productive conversation. Turns out the language does not apply to ORP people – got to check that out closely.

    Rudnick’s basic argument is that individual faculty are better prepared to bear the risk of having to pay the pickup cost than UO, currently sitting on ~$150M in reserves. It’s a stupid argument, but it’s hers and she just loves repeating it. Which is really dumb, because the more she says it, the more people in the room start understanding how wacky it is.

    Mauer: We agree this may or may not come to pass. If it does, recall that the health of the University depends on the well-being and satisfaction of the faculty, and of new recruits. Threats to cut benefits are not going to help the university. You keep trotting out retirement benefits as a recruiting tool. Now you’re going to tell prospective hires they may lose 6% and you have no plan to make it up? (You’re trying to destroy the university, in order to save the administration.)

    Rudnick: Budgets are tight. We could learn how to do better with what we’ve got, starting with optimal risk-sharing, but we’re too stubborn to listen to you on how to do it better, so I’ll just repeat my usual blather. Which she does. The crowd breaks out laughing.

    Meanwhile, get your University of Nike T-shirt here:

    Now she’s off on the university’s tight future budget. The projections for which she won’t share with the faculty. Shameless. “Tim Clevenger’s new job is not new, it’s part of an effort to reduce administrative costs, and those are substantial!” No kidding. I couldn’t make that one up.
    Art 24, Leaves:

    Cecil: We’re trying to codify what you’ve told us is current practice. People under 0.5 FTE don’t get sick time, but they don’t typically get docked for missing class for legitimate illness, or have to pay for a substitute, so long as they make it up.
    Cecil: Paid 6 weeks parental leave: Suppose 1 parent works at UO and the other at another firm. Both could take family leave. We want to make sure they can do the same if both work at UO. Rudnick: OK.
    Some back and forth on faculty on grants getting vacation time. Blandy keeps his mouth shut. Rudnick says she’ll go back to her handlers and find out what’s up.
    Art 31: Release time for union officer and negotiating team.
    Mauer: We’ve cut the number of releases UO grants to faculty for union work to 2.5, plus 2 more for bargaining. But, we insist we need the right to buy additional time from the university on the same terms as the university gives releases for other administrative work. We want a union that’s run by the faculty, not paid staff, this will help us do that. 

    Rudnick: Would UO get to have input, in case releases put a burden on one department? Mauer: Sure, we want to do this cooperatively. Bramhall: Course buyouts happen all the time, let the union do it they way department’s typically do it. Sometimes % of salary, sometimes replacement cost of an adjunct, etc. Gleason: Prices would be negotiated case by case? Cecil: Yeah, if there’s no set rate. We could set a rate, if that’s easier for you. 
    Blandy: Release time usually requires Dean approval. Cecil – sounds reasonable, lets work it out. Rudnick: OK.
    Big change in the level of cooperation from the admins here – good sign.
    Art 32, Sabbatical:

    60% for full year, 75% for two quarters, 100% for one. (Change from current 80%).
    Cecil: Caucus break? Rudnick: We’ll be back on these on Tuesday. I was told by Scott Coltrane to tell you that we appreciate your significant movement on this proposals. We appreciate it. So, there you are.
    AEI issues:

    Mauer: Some upheaval at AEI, raises concerns that if these are not addressed it may disrupt the bargaining process. Some refusals by the admin to explain what’s going on. We’re proposing substantial changes in use of adjuncts and NTTFs. Once we have a contract, we expect it will include stronger definitions of adjunct and career. People who are currently adjuncts will move to career. At AEI, some current adjuncts are now being told it’s up or out. Aside from the legal problems with what’s happening, it’s disruptive. Related problems with reducing contracts from 9 to 3 months, and the date to report for work has been changed. Finally, there are rumors about contracting out the entire operation. This would substantially affect what we need to address at the table.
    Rudnick: No plan to disband AEI. Some thoughts about looking at tuition structure. Regarding the reporting change, they are being paid and they have to be available for training and meetings. It may be a chance in that no one has ever done it before. As for contracts, it remains that the AEI contract will not be up or out. They are creating 15 career positions, trying to move adjuncts into them. For the specific cases you mentioned on the phone, the woman will get a contract for fall. For the man, they can apply for the career position. We will sit down with them at $300 an hour and make sure they handle the transition to career positions better, since they seem to have some issues.
    Mauer: Thanks, we appreciate it. Rudnick: We will also figure out contract terms. 
    Lunch break, back at 1:15. They’re back:

    Mauer: We’ve made a substantial move on the economics, we wanted to send a clear message and we expect reciprocation. Rudnick: I’ll meet with Gottfredson and Geller and Moffitt tomorrow morning, and we’ll get something done.
    Olson: We’ve heard from the faculty, the perception, especially after the Football Palace, is that the university needs to show that its main priority is not athletics. (The athletic subsidies are enough for about 2/3 of the diff in raises. And lets not even talk about what the perception is for parents of potential University of Nike students in the state, or the rest of the country, thanks to Craig Pintens and the NY Times!)
    Rudnick: It’s unfortunate that you have that perception and we wish you would stop reinforcing it. It’s too bad, but it’s your fault. The facts show otherwise. (She’s incorrigible – and so easy to set off.)
    Appeals for promotion and tenure: Gleason speaks, Rudnick shuts him up, he looks pissed. 
    Some stuff about what happens if new stuff comes to light during appeal – book gets accepted, etc.
    Cecil: Under current law if denied tenure you can pursue a grievance and a civil case. You want faculty to pick one or the other? Rudnick: Yes.
    More back and forth on details of tenure denial grievance process.
    Art 49: Acceptable use of UO information assets. Admin counter.

    See the live blog from XXVII: They Own Us for background. The synopsis:

    In their Art 49, the admins assert ownership of all information stored by faculty on UO info systems. The old policy? The state may or may not have a property interest in information stored on University systems. Mere physical presence of information on a University electronic information system is not sufficient to conclusively establish the ownership and control of that information, just as physical presence of a paper document in a faculty member’s desk or filing cabinet does not establish an irrefutable presumption that the document is owned or controlled by the University.

    Rudnick: Gleason found a typo on line one, good boy. We are trying to fix some of the more egregious claims in our previous proposal.

    But, they still claim UO owns everything you store on a UO computer or network unless otherwise expressly stated in the article, and they can take away internet access if you misuse it. Crowd breaks out laughing.

    Cecil: You’re insane, but if you want to claim the right to do this, it’s discipline, it’s grievable, and we’re going to want to see what UO administrators do with their computers too, to argue it’s not disparate treatment.

    Rudnick: Oh.

    Green: You’re serious about claiming you own family pictures and MP3’s I store on my UO computer? Rudnick: Yes. You own them too. (WTF?) We asked Geller about the practicality of this – carry two computers with me. Rudnick: That’s why I carry an iPad.

    Seriously? She’s using her experiences at a law firm where things are subject to discovery to tell faculty at a university what to do?

    Davidson: I understand that UO has a reason to access what’s on a computer for legal reasons – but why insist on ownership?

    Rudnick: Some of that will have to be addressed in the Intellectual Property article. But the default is it belongs to UO.

    Remember, at the moment UO has no written policy or procedures regarding who in the administration can read your emails or your files or for what purposes.

    Gleason: What if I create on my UO computer but store on the cloud? I read this to say it’s mine.

    Rudnick: Hold that thought.

    Cecil: Suppose I post an anonymous comment on UO Matters? There’s a long tradition on the constructive use of anonymity for public comments. (Yup, back to at least Silence Dogood, a.k.a. Ben Franklin.

    Rudnick: OK, come back with better language.

    Rudnick: Even what you do at home on your own computer is a public record by Oregon law if it is related to you work at UO.

    Mauer: Is complaining about work “work related”? Rudnick: No.

    Rudnick: Work related stuff is public records and you don’t own them. (Really? She’s confused. You can own them but they can still be subject to disclosure and vice versa.

    Cecil on it: Why can’t faculty have an expectation of privacy? Rudnick: A bunch of reasons. Work of the university, monitor university discipline, etc.

    Cecil: Why not a rule saying you have some expectation of privacy – e.g. prior notification. Rudnick: We’d agree to notification after the fact. We are trying to be very clear: The default is that we own it.

    Cecil: Suppose I own it and store it on computer – e.g. class notes. We’re going to propose some exceptions.

    Gleason: Your class notes are a public record. Rudnick: Maybe not Tim.

    Bramhall: So, if I do personal stuff on a personal computer hooked up to a UO network, I do have an expectation of privacy? Rudnick: Yes.

    Davidson: Would you be open to limiting searches to cases where there’s a reasonable suspicion or public records? Seems unreasonable for there to be *no* expectation of privacy.

    (I wonder if this all applies to students and their email too?)

    Section 11: No using UO computers or networks to sell University of Nike t-shirts.

    Rudnick appears to have second thoughts on all this: Maybe we should take a bunch of this out, and just reference the law? 

    Moving on to promotions.

    Rudnick making some concessions. Blandy still hasn’t spoken, but does nod occasionally. All this sounds good for the AEI folks.

    Quick break, come back for IP.

    Art 51, Intellectual Property, union counter.

    Rudnick: If we pay you to think, why do you think that your thoughts belong to you, not your employer? (Uh, check the work-product stuff for lawyers and their clients, Sharon.)

    Cecil: So, if we faculty are paid to teach students, does the university then own the students? Or just their brains?

    Pratt: Idea is founded in academic freedom, and the idea that the business of the university is to help faculty in the creation and dissemination of knowledge, not to control that knowledge.

    Rudnick: We own you and what you do. We get to profit from it, not you. You’re talking about academic freedom, not intellectual property.

    Gleason: I’ve actually done my homework this time and read the AAUP stuff. We hire in the sciences, invest $1M in startup. Your proposal will mean we have to write a separate agreement for each such hire. You’re right, our proposal is draconian in the opposite direction. So, we need a compromise that’s workable.

    Rudnick is so used to Gleason not making sense she even interrupts when he does.

    Cecil: This language is from another university contract – they seem OK with it. Why not UO?

    Rudnick: Sec 6 says it’s up to the BU member to disclose.

    Olson: This comes from the standard Dept of Commerce deal, required by patent law for things developed by federal funds.

    Rudnick: Sec 6 does not give ownership, just requires disclosure. But you want faculty to ave ownership.

    Cecil: Maybe you should work on better language.

    Olson: Which law do you think this is consistent with?

    Rudnick: I don’t think it’s useful to talk about the law. My approach is more pragmatic, lets make a deal.

    Mauer: I get it that you think it’s consistent with the law, Sharon. So are other ownership arrangements. So, what law are you talking about?

    Rudnick: We can agree to very different ownership rights.

    Olson: Look at the Stanford case, where the SCOTUS said university did not own IP, but could work out arrangements with university. UO currently does this well. Why do you want to mess this up?

    Mauer: How much money is involved? Rudnick. No. But we’re worried about owning on-line courses, don’t want faculty to take them somewhere else.

    Cecil is all over Rudnick on this.

    My thought: We are going to end up with different rules for faculty in the bargaining unit and out of the unit. And since people move in and out, it’s going to be a mess.

    Gleason: If I was hired by a corporation to do work, they’d own it. The university is just like that corporation. …. He’s slowing down, realizing this isn’t going in a good direction.

    Pratt tries to make it clear to Gleason that universities have a slightly different social mission than corporations do.

    Gleason: I don’t get the connection between academic freedom and intellectual propoerty.

    Cecil: As technology progresses and the amount of money at stake increases, so does the importance of this. We’ve got competing interests, need to make a compromise.

    Rudnick: I agree, let’s ignore the law which is very unsettled, and cut a deal.

    Cecil: University currently shares 50/50 – why do you want to change it? We need more explanation – maybe we should get Randy in the room?

    Rudnick: We spent the morning on economics, we’re going to cut a deal. But in exchange the university wants the money from your IP. So, we’re frustrated with you.

    Almost 4:20, they’ll be back Tu at 10AM with a counter on raises. Be there.

    Bargaining XXXIII:

    7/30/2013, Tuesday: 9am-4pm (Picnic outside from 11:30am-1:30pm)


    Wednesday: 9am-2pm
    Thursday: 9am-4pm

    Your Guarantee of Truthiness: All UO Matters bargaining posts are publicly fact-checked by Geller and Rudnick’s secret team of well paid consultants. Their latest fact-check is here, and if you pay Dave Hubin $285.98 he’ll even tell you who wrote it.

    Disclaimer: My opinion of what people said or were thinking but were too decent or well-paid to say. Nothing is a quote unless in quotes.

    Synopsis:

    Prologue from XXXII on Monday:

    • A generally productive session, with only a little “loss of institutional control” from the admins.
    • Usual from Rudnick about not “enshrining shared governance” in any sort of legally binding agreement. This time she did manage not to call the single faculty member of the UO Board “better than shared governance” She also avoided saying this intransigence was on instructions from President Gottfredson, Randy Geller, or any potential UO Board members that might or might not be appointed by the governor in the next few weeks.

    Cast: 

    Live-blog: Sorry, not today. Try Luebke’s blog? https://www.facebook.com/groups/126059310737990/ or post comments if you are there.

    Taken verbatim from Luebke’s blog:

    UA counter (re)introduces language from the mission statement and the university charter; section 1 lays out parameters of Academic Freedom; UA accepts that academic freedom entails certain responsibilities, e.g., to avoid “controversial” topics in the classroom that are not directly related to the topic of teaching. Section 5: lays out the bases of academic freedom in law, state and federal.

    Rudnick: We don’t have any fundamental disagreement over most of this. My question has to do with your Section 2(c), i.e., the freedom of faculty to address any matter of institutional policy with impunity?

    Mauer: Yes and no. We believe that academic freedom encompasses more than the First Amendment, which is not sufficient to protect it. But we also do not accept that academic freedom gives anyone the right to say anything anywhere.

    Rudnick: You are free to criticize admin under the First Amendment, so why add more?

    [Answer: because the SCOTUS decision in Garcetti has been interpreted in the lower courts to allow Universities to discipline faculty for criticizing administration. Rudnick surely knows this]

    Mauer: We are going beyond what the First Amendment allows, but not giving carte blanche. This is an extremely important matter, but I’d like to defer to Ernie Benjamin on this.

    Ernie Benjamin: The reason why we have language about the First Amendment is because SCOTUS, in its wisdom, has placed limits on the First Amendment as it appies to universities; at issue here is the Garcetti decision [TOLD YA!] which has been interpreted wrongly by the lower courts to mean that administration can discipline faculty for opposing its decisions vocally. We are not asking for carte blanche. We are, however, asking for protection from the [evil] SCOTUS decision in Garcetti.

    Benjamin: We believe, and we hope you believe too, that faculty members should not be punished for opposing admin.

    Rudnick: Show me where it says that the speech of faculty is not unrestricted.

    Mauer: The First Amendment doesn’t give you the right to defame someone (to use Rudnick’s example), and the contract doesn’t allow anyone to violate the law.

    Cecil: The contract cannot shield any faculty member from the law.

    Blandy: I’d like you to speak to the question of civility.

    Benjamin: We at AAUP oppose inclusion of language about civility as actionable; we heartily endorse civility on the part of faculty, but also hold that civility has no legal definition. “Civility” can only too easily be used as a cudgel against unruly faculty.

    Regarding governance: union bargaining is different from other kinds of bargaining, because unions are not the only entity representing faculty, among other things. I understand faculty bargaining to protect certain procedures, but I also understand that unions have no business making academic decisions, which is for departments and university senates to determine.

    There seems to be a tension with respect to shared governance. I’d like to read AAUP’s position on shared governance; a CBA should not replace shared governance, but ensure its continuance. Unions should not be involved in the actual decision-making. I’ve seen a lot of bargaining around the nation over the past four decades, and we’ve seen that bargaining reinforces shared governance, does not replace it.

    There needs to be a shared governance clause in order to ensure that decisions are reached in an orderly manner. A governing board doesn’t do itself any favors by giving the impression that it wants to overthrow the University Constitution. It would be in your interest and the board’s to yield a little on this.

    Nothing I’ve said is unusual. We’re aiming at mutuality.

    Mauer: Ernie, can I ask you to comment on the new board, and the fact that it will have a faculty member?

    Benjamin: The AAUP approves the idea of including faculty on governing boards. In Canada, interestingly, boards often have many faculty, and unions thought it was a bad idea. The union has a special duty to the fair representation of the faculty, whereas the faculty member on the board does not; I don’t think that that is any substitute for shared governance. It’s largely irrelevant to what we’re doing here.

    Cecil: We accept that there won’t be a committee, and that the Provost will make the decision on reclassification, with right to petition the decision. We struggled with how to handle what constitutes a “year” of service (FTE equivalent, some portion of that, one course in a year = a year?). We decided that it would be best to forgo formulas and get to the principle of the thing, which is that no one who is teaching indefinitely should be “adjunct” faculty, because “adjunct” is by definition temporary. If we inscribe that principle in the contract and everyone agrees to that principle, we can deal with individual cases individually.

    3:25, I’m blogging now. Missed some stuff on classrooms and chairs.
    Union introduces Art 50, replacement for 51 and 52, on conflict of interest and commitment.
    Cecil: So, we looked at your proposal and laughed at the ground. So we went back to existing policies. Most of what we are proposing is current UO policy. We are open to UO having a larger conversation about improving UO policy. PI’s should be involved.

    Current policy for COC is one day in seven for consulting type work. Union says one day per week, “apart from personal time” noting that this outside work can and often does provide benefits to UO.

    Parts 6,7,8,9 are from admin proposals. Activities that require prior approval from UO are $5K or $10K?. UO policies are all over the map and are inconsistent. Union was unable to find anything on VPR website, this policy reflects current federal regs – $5K. Union is fine with whatever the regs say.

    Another example of the union doing the admins job for them. Cecil very conciliatory, asks admins to check it over, make counterproposal as appropriate. Rudnick: OK. Arbitration? Cecil: Possible. Rudnick: How does this square with employee confidentiality if it goes to arbitration. Cecil: To go to arbitration the employee would almost certainly have to waive confidentiality.

    Cecil: Section 9 on private sector. We wanted some language about this, let us know what you think. Rudnick: We’ll take this back to Geller and come back, maybe even with an OK.

    Rudnick: We owe you Information Assets. I need to sit down with the right people and understand your counter, and the many questions and giggles I got on our proposal.

    Cecil: Let’s go back to academic freedom. We are trying to reflect the fact that current law has become more restrictive than traditional notions of academic freedom. Rudnick: We are trying to figure out how to word this so as to give people the right to criticize the administration, just in the right way. I’ll go back, read the Garcetti decision, and work on this.

    Mauer: Our view is that Garcetti was not so bad but subsequent circuit court decisions were. Gleason: There could be a philosophical problem … Give me an example of speech other than employees criticizing the administration that needs protection. (Is he being deliberately obtuse?)

    Rudnick tries to clarify: If we clarify protections under the Oregon Constitution, and resolve Garcetti in favor of protecting faculty speech and making sure it extends to criticism of admin policies, are we OK?

    Mauer: You are saying we mutually agree Garcetti went the wrong way? Blandy: We’re just trying to frame the debate.

    Davidson: State and Federal laws have tried to make the encouragement of civil disobedience illegal, this sometimes puts faculty teaching and writing about these issues on sketchy ground. We need to discuss this more on this side of the table.

    Rudnick: We can’t help you if you violate the law, but why wouldn’t this be protected under current law. Davidson: What if a donor doesn’t like it and tries to defund a program. Rudnick: We couldn’t do that under the first amendment.

    Cecil: Admin proposal added plenty of limitations on what’s appropriate speech. Rudnick: We get it, we’ll take another stab at this one.

    They’re done, some discussion about scheduling secret small group meetings.

    Union bargaining XXVII live-blog: They own us.

    Wed 7/10/2013, 9-4. I’ll live blog it, also try Luebke’s blog.

    Your Guarantee of Truthiness: All UO Matters bargaining posts fact-checked by Randy Geller, HLGR, and their lobbyist and public relations consultant Marla Rae.

    Disclaimer: My opinion of what people said or were thinking but were too polite to say. Nothing is a quote unless in quotes.

    Synopsis:

    • In their Art 49, the admins assert ownership of all information stored by faculty on UO info systems. The old policy? The state may or may not have a property interest in information stored on University systems. Mere physical presence of information on a University electronic information system is not sufficient to conclusively establish the ownership and control of that information, just as physical presence of a paper document in a faculty member’s desk or filing cabinet does not establish an irrefutable presumption that the document is owned or controlled by the University.
    • JH admins already got their raises and are out on vacation, unlikely they will have a counter-proposal on faculty raises anytime soon.
    Prologue:

    In March the administration made the union a take it or leave it ultimatum on raises. Their “fact check” website says:

    Briefly summarized, the FY13 and FY14 Salary Increase program grants eligible faculty a 1.5% increase in base salary for FY13 retroactive to January 1, 2013 and an additional 1.5% increase in base salary for FY14 effective July 1, 2013. The program also calls for merit increases, based on a 2% pool of all eligible faculty salaries for each unit, to be distributed based on performance as evaluated and allocated at the local level. For more information about the FY13 and FY14 Salary Increase program, visit http://around.uoregon.edu/salary-adjustments.

    As of the penultimate meeting, the admins had increased their offer to 10.5% over two years, and the union’s counter was

    2013: 1.5% ATB, retro to 9/16/2012.
    2014: 2% ATB, 2% Merit, 2.5% Equity.
    2015: 2% ATB, 3.5% Merit, 1% Equity.
    2014: 3% of current NTTF salary in a pool for floors.
    10% raises for promotions.

    So, basically 14.5%.

    Live-blog:

    Present: The usual faculty volunteers, Cecil, no Mauer, Rudnick, Gleason, Grado, no Blandy.

    Strikes and lock-out (admin counter):

    I got here late, sounds like Rudnick is back-pedaling a tad on efforts to make faculty do GTF work if GTFF goes on strike. Cecil: suppose faculty ethically believe they shouldn’t scab. Goes to arbitration. Arbitrator looks at notes from this session? Rudnick: Put in the notes that the admins believe that requiring faculty to scab is potentially a reasonable refusal. Cecil: What is your concern about just putting this in the contract? Rudnick is not making much sense, basically she dug a hole on this long ago and is trying to get out. Cecil: And any extra work would be overload? Rudnick: Yes, we will pay our faculty scabs extra.

    Faculty criminal checks (admin counter):

    Rudnick is being reasonable again, this allows admins to make checks, does not require faculty to report their new crimes. Many billable hours wasted on this one, lots of rancor, now she folds.

    Art 4, Policies and practices (admin counter):

    To me, this sounds like a big one.

    Rudnick: Faculty must comply with all new UO Board policies and practices unless they conflict with contract. Past practices are only binding with mutual consent. So, the board can change any past UO practices at their whim, and unless the union has put them in the contract we’re screwed. Cecil: Why did you strike all references to the UO policy library? Rudnick: Lots of it is out of date: Pratt: That’s not what we’re usually told. Rudnick: We don’t want to confuse anyone. Gleason: The policy library is a work in progress. It’s a transitional moment. We haven’t been taking it seriously, now we’re really nervous. Pratt: But old policies are binding? Rudnick: Yes. (I’m confused. Sounds like they are binding but can be changed with notice but without faculty input?) Pratt: What about college level policies. Maybe not “duly adopted” by our clueless former provosts, but substantial. Rudnick: We’re trying to find a balance. Pratt: So if they’ve been published or distributed to the faculty, they will bind? Gleason: Admin is going to have to get its act together, we don’t want to make this stuff binding until we’ve had a change to look at it and change it. Cecil: Management typically does has the right to change policies, with notice. Rudnick: We’re worried some current published unit policies may conflict with UO policy. Bramhall: Explain again why you don’t want the policy library stuff in here? Rudnick: We don’t trust our policy library. Bramhall: What are the procedures for changing policies? Rudnick: Lots of ways, we don’t want to spell them out and potentially limit them. Bramhall: Do you agree that the policy on policies is the way to change policies? Rudnick: It’s one way. Davidson calls her on this – the admins are making sure the contract doesn’t limit the board’s ability to change policies.

    Cecil: If we think of past practices as mostly at the department level, who are the parties that can rescind? Rudnick: We’re open to written policies, unwritten stuff should be written down as policy or we should agree it’s important and put it in contract. (So, this is an attempt to remove all the protections of past unwritten practices.) Cecil’s on it, in his usual polite but exact way. Rudnick is willing to compromise. Pratt: Lots of practices that involve way the work gets done – e.g. rotations for committee chairs. Not all of it’s written. Lots of work to write all this crap down – for both sides. Braun: What about giving course releases for new faculty? Common practice, not always a policy. Rudnick’s open to a compromise.

    Art 5, Union rights (admin counter):

    Rudnick: Section 2, union access to campus meeting rooms, etc. Union must pay same rates as other university entities. We did this because Dean’s like Gleason have been saying they are uncomfortable just letting union faculty use available department rooms. Petty shit.

    Union must apply to the Provost before sending group email to bargaining unit members via UO addresses. WTF? Rudnick: Apparently outside email only gets through the spam filters if it’s approved each time. Bullshit, and Cecil calls her on it. Gleason tries to make this plan sound reasonable. Rudnick ignores him as usual. He looks so sad. Rudnick tells Cecil to just cross out the Provost approval part.

    Art 45, Summer session appointments (admin counter):

    Rudnick: We agreed to most of your language, but not willing to pay for canceled classes. In CAS 46 classes were cancelled last summer (out of how many?) the cancelled ones are often opened at request of faculty but too few students enroll. Pratt: Departments should do a better job managing summer, this would be a good incentive. Offering classes and then canceling them hurts faculty and students. Gleason talks again, gets ignored again, Rudnick then gives Pratt a lecture about how to manage a department. All very reasonable. Gleason keeps talking, Pratt patiently explains to him that students enroll with plenty of time to allow cancellation before faculty would need to be paid.

    Art 49, Use of UO Information Assets (admin counter):

    Reading this from the UO network? Not for long, if Rudnick and Geller get their way. Meanwhile, don’t forget to donate $5 to pay Dave Hubin’s public records fees for copies of the Rudnick invoices:




    Rudnick: All info stored on UO networks belongs to UO. (Really? UO owns all my family pictures and the emails from my wife and mother?)

    UO can cut of access without notice, like they did to Jean Stockard when she blew the whistle on PPPM’s Korean scam. UO networks can’t be used to view anything that is harassing, discriminatory, threatening, obscene, defamatory, etc. Can’t access third party networks without their permission. (They can’t mean that.)

    Faculty cannot use UO network to host personal websites, … . Funny, UO has a whole wordpress system that specifically allows this, even encourages it. This means stuff like Peter Gilkey’s humor page will be forbidden? Hmm, our administrators must have a lot of free time.

    UO can monitor and read your email and web use without notice, just like in China. You cannot encrypt your hard drive data without the Provosts’s permission, or use a VPN and if you are struggling to find one check out vpn service reviews. You cannot send encrypted email to people in countries with repressive governments.

    Cecil: We brought a counter to this crap:

    Delete bit about UO owning faculty info they happen to store it on UO websites. This is not just Orwellian, it’s impractical. Cecil’s on it. Asks what does the UO really want to own? Rudnick: OK.

    Cecil: UO can’t withdraw email, use of wifi without cause.

    Cecil: Some faculty, as part of their research, intentionally view obscene, harassing, etc… Rudnick: How about if we put in exclusion for work related? They’re back on the child porn thing, Gleason keeps his head down this time. Bramhall: You’re going to ban online solitaire and chess? Rudnick: Whoops, we were just trying to ban gambling.

    I wonder if any of these rules will apply to students?

    Cecil: We struck the section about monitoring. Rudnick: We’re a public institution, 4th amendment issues, we’ve put this in their to make clear faculty are waiving their constitutional rights. Cecil: That’s why we don’t want this in the contract. Rudnick: We need this. Cecil: Search without notice? Rudnick: Yes, that’s important to us. Bramhall: Dropbox syncs my laptop, personal and work stuff. UO’s policy is just not practical given what’s happening on the cloud. Gleason: This is current law, maybe it really doesn’t need to be in the contract. Or does it? Putting it in the contract puts you on notice. Davidson: The law allows these searches, it does not require them. University should give more protection. Why not also tap our phones? Gleason: This is all about giving the university the ability to properly maintain its IT systems. WTF? Rudnick: University also must follow the public records law. But John is right, we don’t have to have this right, we could waive it, but we are not willing to compromise on this. We will monitor you. Non-negotiable.

    Current UO IT Acceptable Use Policy is far less restrictive than what our admins are trying to cram down on us:

    Appropriate Use of Computing Resources

    When you are provided access to university computing resources, your use of them may be explicitly or implicitly limited. For example, if you are given access to an administrative computing system solely to enter accounting information or prepare class rosters, it is inappropriate for you to use the system to play a compute-intensive online computer game. Access to administrative systems should be used solely for the purposes for which the access was provided.
    The situation with academic timesharing computers and microcomputer labs is less narrowly defined. As with the university library, access to academic computing resources is provided in part so you can learn, explore, and grow as part of your education or employment at the university. However, activities related to the university’s scholarly mission take precedence over computing pursuits of a more personal or recreational nature. For example, those completing class assignments or conducting research for a graduate program or publication have priority over those using computing resources to process personal email, explore network resources, etc.
    Some applications (such as Muds/Moos/Mucks/Mushes, IRC, Talk, and online computer games) may be unsupported or actively discouraged, due to the demands they place on our limited modem pool, CPU, and lab resources. Please cooperate with Computing Center staff if you are asked to refrain from running applications like these when resource use is heavy.

    Prohibited Conduct

    The University Conduct Code, OAR 571-21-030, also applies to electronic forums. The code prohibits, among other things, lewd or indecent conduct, threat of imminent physical harm, sexual or other harassment, stalking, forgery, intentional disruption of university services, and damaging or destroying university property. Similarly, the code’s prohibitions against illegal discrimination, including discriminatory harassment and sexual harassment, also apply to electronic forums.

    Here’s an older policy that specifically addresses ownership:

    Information and Data. The state may or may not have a property interest in information stored on University systems. Mere physical presence of information on a University electronic information system is not sufficient to conclusively establish the ownership and control of that information, just as physical presence of a paper document in a faculty member’s desk or filing cabinet does not establish an irrefutable presumption that the document is owned or controlled by the University.

    At the same time, the University does clearly own, control, or have a custodial relationship with respect to certain classes of information stored on its electronic information systems, including, but not limited to
    • administrative data (such as payroll and personnel data; student enrollment and grade information; accounting records, such as accounts receivable, accounts payable, and general ledger information; etc.)
    • records required to be retained for archival purposes, including electronic messages pertaining to University planning, budgeting, operations, governance, and deliberative activities
    • proprietary information produced as a work for hire or produced during the course of University-subsidized research or investigations, subject to the University’s established policies for technology transfer and intellectual property rights

    Back to the debate:

    Cecil: You’re going to try and stop someone from sending a gmail over the UO network? Rudnick: Maybe I don’t really understand, I’ll go back and learn some more – it’s all billable. Olson: Why do you prohibit encryption? Sometimes it’s required, e.g. by IRB. You really want to do that? Rudnick: Whoops, we’ll change it, and send you the bill.

    Davidson: Reality is we are all doing personal and private work, all the data is intermingled. I’ve got confidential info on my children, for example. I understand UO needs to monitor criminal behavior, get public records. As you’ve written this there is no right to privacy. Need limitations.

    Rudnick: Too bad. You made that choice when you put personal stuff on the university system. Now she’s using the public records law to justify this Orwellian policy. Shameless. Where are those invoices, Sharon?

    Cecil: So, Sharon, you never go on gmail from your office computer? Rudnick: You’re right, I do, so since this is a problem for me personally I’m willing to consider addressing it for you, at $300 an hour.

    Braun: What are the details of the random, without cause internet and email monitoring that you want to do on the faculty faculty? Rudnick replies with harmless example.

    I wonder what sort of monitoring is currently done, whether the GC’s office has requested logs for particular people.

    Cecil: Why don’t you go back and try again on this. Rudnick: OK. I don’t think we’re that far apart. Crowd giggles.

    Lunch break, back at 12:30

    Art 35, Health and safety, Admin counter:

    Cecil tries to get Rudnick angry about the abusive work environment language. Low hanging fruit Dave.

    Art 34, Facilities and Support, Admin counter:

    Admins get priority for offices over instructional faculty. They can’t promise separate voice mail accounts for faculty because they can’t give everyone a phone number. Hmm.

    Long debate about classroom space. It sucks, too bad Frohnmayer let Frances Dyke spend $2.4 million renovating JH instead of classrooms, right in the middle of our enrollment boom.

    Art 16, Arbitration, Admin Counter:

    Snoozer. Sorry, I know this is important. Cecil proposed a sensible compromise, Rudnick had to go to JH to confer with Geller about it, since he’s scared to show his face in front of the faculty. Back in 30 min or so.

    They’re back. Rudnick: Randy’s bottom line is that the arbitrator can do everything except override academic judgement about tenure or academic standards. OK with union.

    Back to policies and practices: Geller still insists on language letting the UO Board change policies willy-nilly. But not much the union can do about that, except specifically put them in the contract. Cecil: Unit policies too. Rudnick, we’re there. Cecil will write it up. I’m still confused about unwritten practices.

    Back to summer: Cecil: Each department will have to establish a policy on paying faculty something for cancelled classes. Rudnick: OK.

    Back to Art 36, strikes: Cecil: Insert “Any work previously performed by a striking employee assigned to a BUFM shall be considered an overload assignment”. Rudnick: OK.

    Cecil: We’re OK with criminal back check proposal, now that you folded after wasting hours of our time and thousands of dollars.

    Cecil: Union rights. Small changes, we want more places to meet, including Gerlinger. Rudnick: I’ll have to check with Randy but sounds OK.

    What’s left? Economics, shared governance, academic freedom. Rudnick has to redo information services.

    Cecil: Are you going to bring your economic proposal by Tuesday? Rudnick: Doubtful, lots of JH people got their raises July 1 and are now on vacation. Your raises aren’t a high priority for them.

    Last thing, ethics. Here’s your proposal. back at you. It’s poorly written. Additionally, you’ve objected to our proposals as too vague. We’re not sure if we should rewrite your sad attempt, or give you a chance for a revise and resubmit. Rudnick: I get it, I’ll talk this over with Geller.

    Union bargaining XXVI

    6/25/2013, 9-4. Sorry, no live-blog on this one but I’ll post a synopsis later. Meanwhile try Luebke’s blog.

    Your Guarantee of TruthinessAll UO Matters bargaining posts fact-checked by Randy Geller, HLGR and their lobbyist and public relations consultant, (and former Frohnmayer aide) Marla Rae.

    Disclaimer: My opinion of what people said or were thinking but were too polite to say. Nothing is a quote unless in quotes.

    Prologue:

    In March the administration made the union a take it or leave it ultimatum on raises. Their “fact check” website says:

    Briefly summarized, the FY13 and FY14 Salary Increase program grants eligible faculty a 1.5% increase in base salary for FY13 retroactive to January 1, 2013 and an additional 1.5% increase in base salary for FY14 effective July 1, 2013. The program also calls for merit increases, based on a 2% pool of all eligible faculty salaries for each unit, to be distributed based on performance as evaluated and allocated at the local level. For more information about the FY13 and FY14 Salary Increase program, visit http://around.uoregon.edu/salary-adjustments.

    As of the last meeting, the admins had increased their offer to 10.5% over two years, and the union’s counter was

    2013: 1.5% ATB, retro to 9/16/2012.
    2014: 2% ATB, 2% Merit, 2.5% Equity.
    2015: 2% ATB, 3.5% Merit, 1% Equity.
    2014: 3% of current NTTF salary in a pool for floors.
    10% raises for promotions.

    So, basically 14.5%. We’ll see what happens next.

    Summer union bargaining sessions

    6/23/2013: The faculty union has released the dates that the admin is willing to meet over the summer to get this contract wrapped up. I’m going to miss a few sessions, but I’ll post summaries of all. And of course you can always check out Barbara Altman’s site for the admin spin. Speaking of which, they are still trying to make me pay $285.98 just to see the list of names of her ghostwriters.

    June 25th: 9am – 4pm
    July 10: 9am – 4pm
    July 16: 9am – 4pm
    July 22-24:  9am – 4pm
    July 29 & 30: 9am – 4pm
    July 31: 9am – 2pm
    August 1: 9am – 4pm
    August 29: 9am – 4pm
    September 3: 9am – 4pm
    September 6: 9am – 4pm

    Bargaining XXV: Union to accept JH leftovers? Hell no.

    6/6/2013, 8AM, usual suspects. Coffee and croissants, courtesy of economics. Forgot the cream.

    Your Guarantee of Truthiness: All UO Matters bargaining posts fact-checked by Randy Geller, HLGR and their lobbyist and public relations consultant, (and former Frohnmayer aide) Marla Rae.

    Prologue from Tu:

    • Moffitt finds another 0.5% for the faculty.

    Synopsis from Th:

    • Union cuts their economic proposal 0.5%
    • Gleason makes his pitch for a job with Mike Andreasen in advancement.
    • Rudnick offers Moffitt’s help for a faculty dumpster-dive search for $8M in recurring funds to fund their raises. The Senate has already found $2.5M in athletics. There’s another $1.5M there at least. Any thoughts on where to get the rest? A few admin units that don’t really need to keep growing at 6% a year?
    Live-Blog disclaimer: My opinion of what people said or were thinking but were too polite to say. Nothing is a quote unless in quotes. Check out Luebke’s facebook blog too, here8:16. Still sitting here waiting for Rudnick to show. She’s probably talking legal ethics with Geller. 

    Doug Blandy
    Sharon Rudnick
    Tim Gleason

    8:25: Rudnick finally shows. Let it begin:

    Mauer: We’re good on drugs and alcohol. Let’s start with Art 5, professional responsibilities. Six days shalt thou labor and do all thou art able. And on the seventh, holystone the decks and scrape the cable.   Rudnick: Sounds like we agree on policies. Mauer: great. But wait: Gleason finally gets around to reading this article, and feels the need to chime in. Pratt patiently explains it to him. Rudnick moves on to what’s fair. Could they file a grievance because it’s “not fair”. Mauer: People can always file a frivolous grievance, the union wouldn’t support that. Cecil: Exactly. Grievances are expensive, we’ve got a plan to work with the admin to develop fair policies, very consultative, why expect trouble. Rudnick: But fairness and equal treatment are in the eye of the holder. Why put them in the contract? Mauer: We’re trying to set some clear guidelines. Maybe you should try drafting some language that will make you comfortable about the goal of reducing grievances. …. snoozer. Pratt gives Gleason a lecture about how to run a department.

    Long discussion about teaching overloads. Anyone know if Gleason’s $20K “administrative stipend” is related to his work on the admin bargaining team?

    Art 31: Release time for union work
    Mauer: 3 FTE for union officers, extra time for contract negotiations. Union can buy more release time at the department rate. Rudnick: We’ll go talk to people with authority, seems reasonable though.

    Art 32: Sabbatical
    Mauer: Union’s asking for 60%, 80%, 100%. Rudnick says this is higher than comparators. Mauer: So, you look to the market comparators when the comparison will reduce what the faculty get. But when it comes to salaries, you laugh when we bring up comparators? Rudnick says she’ll take this back to Gottfredson.

    Art 33 Professional development:
    Snoozer. Gleason tries to pick another fight, Blandy shuts him down.

    Art 42 Criminal Records Checks:
    Rudnick has collected many thousands of dollars in billable hours on this one. Mauer goes through the union’s counter. Rudnick: I’ll have to take this back to Geller.

    Break, they’re back.

    Art 20, Salary:

    Economic proposals:

    Original admin proposal was 5%, union counter was 18%

    Admin’s previous counter:
    2013: 1.5% ATB, retro to 1/1/2013.
    2014: 1.5% ATB, 2% Merit, No equity.
    2015: 1.5% ATB, 3.5% Merit, No equity.
    No money for floors, but a committee to set them?
    No change in promotion raises.
    So, basically 10%.

    Union’s previous  –
    2013: 1.5% ATB, retro to 9/16/2012.
    2014: 3% ATB, 2% Merit, 2.5% Equity.
    2015: 1.5% ATB, 3.5% Merit, 1% Equity.
    2014: 3% of current NTTF salary in a pool for floors.
    10% raises for promotions.
    So, basically 15%.

    Tuesday’s admin counter:
    2013: 1.5% ATB, retro to 1/1/2013, only on base salary.
    2014: 1.5% ATB, 2% Merit, No Equity.
    2015: 1.5% ATB, 3.5% Merit, No Equity.
    2014: 1% of current NTTF salary in a pool for floors.
    6% raises for NTTF promotions, 8% for TTF. Close to current practice.
    Separate pools for TTF’s and NTTF’s.
    So, basically 10.5%.


    Union’s counter today:
    2013: 1.5% ATB, retro to 9/16/2012.
    2014: 2% ATB, 2% Merit, 2.5% Equity.
    2015: 2% ATB, 3.5% Merit, 1% Equity.
    2014: 3% of current NTTF salary in a pool for floors.
    10% raises for promotions.
    So, basically 14.5%.

    Mauer: You may be willing to give up on external equity and compression, we are not. You need to start rewarding faculty for their work and give them incentives to stay at UO. We are trying to get faculty closer to comparators. University is harmed by current low salaries. We know this can’t be resolved in one contract, but the university needs to at least try. Also needs to deal with gender and compression inequities. For retention, we understand the need for administrative discretion, but we want public and transparent criteria spelling out the scope of that discretion.

    Rudnick: We’ve been back and forth, the university has already spent the money. Moffitt will look at the athletic subsidies and the other issues you raised – AHA and advancement costs. Mauer: We mentioned the $2.5M Senate resolution. Rudnick: I’ll get you the facts. It’s not accurate to say that money is flowing from academics to athletics. But Moffitt will look into it. We don’t have this information. Mauer: It’s going to astound me if you come back without data that shows these flows, actually they are larger than 2.5M. Cecil: There was just a reduction in PERS costs – why didn’t that result in a larger salary proposal from you? Rudnick: I’m sure that’s where part of the floor money came from. Cecil: So, if faculty salaries are job #1, where are you spending the extra savings?

    (The two sides are $8M apart, and UO just found out they’ve got lower PERS costs and maybe $15M in new recurring tuition. What’s the problem here?)

    Cecil: So you’re looking for $8M. Rudnick: No, it’s your problem. You find the money. Cecil: Isn’t that Moffitt’s job? Mauer: We agree the university spends money on lots of things. Time for you to re-optimize. Rudnick: You are assuming that JH is not doing a good job! This is a very lean budget and is very underfunded! I’m frustrated! There is no $8 million dollars, except the $100 million in reserves and the new $15M in tuition! Blandy: spending money on faculty will damage the university by taking away from important needs like administrative sabbaticals, sports. Psaki: Lots of damage, lots of lost faculty. Blandy: We are retaining our faculty. Psaki: What are the reserves for? Rudnick: We don’t have the money! We do not have another $8 million for you, it would compromise the integrity of the university! (Reserves are above the OUS ceiling. They are ~$50M higher than OSU’s.)

    Rudnick: Tuition will bring in $12M in new funds, (on top of the $29M from previous increases. All recurring.) You can’t have it. Pratt: You had said you could pay $10M for raises even without the tuition. We got the increase. Put some of the new money into increases. Rudnick: The cuts we would have had to made would have hurt the university. Gleason: But we won’t show you the cuts that were proposed. Core functions. Pratt: What was the plan? Blandy: 5% cuts to administrative functions and student support, which have grown at very high rates over the past 5 years, far higher than faculty:

    So the admin will not even stop the growth in these other areas to fund the faculty raises!

    Pratt: Point is you had a plan to control the administrative bloat – and now that you’ve got the tuition money, you’re going to renege on that plan and keep the money. Rudnick: Yes, we are. Pratt: We know that the cuts were not going to al come out of student services, right? Rudnick pulls the Statue of Liberty ploy: “People were discussing closing the library for 2 days a week”. Gleason: After years of neglect, I can tell you that in the next two years UO will finally reallocate more of the new money that is coming in to faculty than to administrative bloat. We are frustrated by your ungrateful response.

    Cecil: You need to be more transparent. Show us your contingency plans and projections. Rudnick: We gave you all that! Bullshit:

    Mauer: There is no 2014-15 budget yet? Rudnick. Right. You have everything Moffitt has she gave you everything. WTF? Green: I looked through what Jamie gave us. No history, no explanations, not much in the way of projections. No detail. Not enough information. Rudnick: Public safety increase came from a recent discovery they were out of compliance. I’m happy to drag Jamie back to answer more questions or get her to give more detail. Green: If we don’t have a budget but we do have projections, there’s still time to prioritize faculty raises. Right? Rudnick: She’s done that. The JH executives got together and decided this was all you were going to get, no matter how much new tuition revenue comes in, or how much PERS goes down.

    Green: Equity and inversion are big problems. Why not start dealing with them now instead of kicking the can down the road? Gleason: We’ve got no problem with you reallocating your gruel between ATB, merit, and equity. We really don’t care. But you’re not getting any more.

    Green: How is Gottfredson going to hire 200 more new faculty at market rates when you pay current faculty like this? You sure as hell wouldn’t treat your fellow administrators like this, right? You have the ability to reprioritize for 2015 – start doing it.

    Bramhall: Suppose we show that academic money is subsidizing athletics. Will you fix it? Rudnick: We are certainly willing to consider it. Davidson: “Go Ducks”, but how we get to the place where that’s more important than the rest of the university. I asked this last week – can we tax athletic donations for the academic side. Why is this a taboo topic amongst the administration?

    Gleason: Having recently been on a Fiesta Bowl junket, I can speak to this. Athletics is too large a percentage of fundraising, solution is to raise more academic money. We waste too much time arguing. They are mostly successful on their own money, and with inadequate resources. They need a bigger stadium. We will get you your numbers but you are wasting your time. (I think Gleason is auditioning for a fundraising job.)

    Cecil: You say you sweat about finding money for academics – but it turns out you have never thought about looking at the athletic budget? Why should we trust you?

    Psaki: $5M for trees at Autzen, with no academic benefit, and you think there’s no slack in the athletic budget to help the academic core? Gleason keeps quiet.

    Rudnick: Whatever information we give you it’s never enough, you never trust us you are so unfair to us! Cecil: So, can we hire a forensic accountant? Rudnick: NO! Trust us!

    Cecil: You need to give us real information about your priorities and spending.

    Rudnick: Moffitt was told to make as large a sustainable raise proposal as possible. She obviously didn’t look to hard. You need to take the little information you have and try to find more. If you do that, I’ll go back and push on Moffitt. You may not believe it, but the three of us our your best friends in the administration when it comes to looking through the budget for more money. We’ll make Moffitt come back and answer questions, though she may run out again, or stall with a lot of irrelevancies if your questions get too tough.

    Mauer: Lets start with the athletic stuff. We want the detailed documents.

    Pratt: We’ve made progress. You’ve revealed you have contingency plans, seeing them will certainly help us help you readjust UO’s priorities. Blandy: These cuts would hurt our other benchmarks that are used to compare us to other universities. Cecil: The faculty are frustrated that they’ve been totalled kept in the dark when it comes to setting university budget priorities.

    Rudnick starts backtracking – we will not talk with you about budget priorities.

    Green: I agree. I do want to know what is the administrations real long-term plan for salaries.

    12:20: The End

    Bargaining XXIV: Any leftovers for the faculty? Nope.

    Tuesday 6/4/2013, 8-12 AM, Room 122 Knight Library, open to the public and reporters, free coffee and donuts.

    Live-Blog disclaimer: My opinion of what people said or were thinking but were too polite to say. Nothing is a quote unless in quotes. Check out Luebke’s facebook blog too, here.

    Latest Fact Check:

    Your Guarantee of Truthiness: All UO Matters bargaining posts fact-checked by Randy Geller, HLGR and their lobbyist and public relations consultant, (and former Frohnmayer aide) Marla Rae. My post from Session XXIII came through squeaky clean.

    Synopsis:

    • Moffitt finds another 0.5% for the faculty.

    Prologue:

    The administration is expected to present their counter-counter-counter-counter on raises. Last month the union and the administration were about $7M apart – 15% versus 10%. After bringing in another $29M in tuition revenue this year, Jamie Moffitt is still piling on reserves to prepare for tornadoes. The OUS F&A committee just voted to recommend UO raise tuition ~6% next year, which should bring another $15M(?) or so. Plenty in the academic budget to cover top JH priorities such as the new cop car fleet, Portland subsidies and administrative sabbaticals, the $350K presidential sky-box suite at Autzen, and potential bowl-game junkets (or NCAA penalties). Come by and see if there are any leftovers for the faculty!

    Live Blog: The usuals:

    Doug Blandy
    Sharon Rudnick
    Tim Gleason

    Rudnick starts w/ strike, lockout, Art 36:
    Union wants a clause allowing faculty w/ strongly held ethical views to not do work of strikers, say if SEIU goes out. Cecil: Of course you’d pay the scabs? Rudnick: Of course. Mauer: You’re suggesting faculty might even have to participate in hiring scabs? Rudnick: We prefer to call them “replacement workers.” Mauer: What would admins do? Rudnick: I imagine it would be all hands on deck. We might even require Bean to teach! Just kidding. Cecil: And if faculty don’t agree they’d be subject to discipline? Discipline? Gleason looks up from his ipad, smiling. Davidson: If this went to arbitration they’d ask if you agreed that an ethical refusal to cross a picket line was reasonable. Rudnick: It’s not reasonable.

    Drugs and Alcohol:
    Rudnick: We are willing to let faculty have a beer with students after a seminar. It’s even OK if you spill it and smell like beer. But you can’t display and articulable effect on performance. “Dave was giggling. You know what I mean.” If you do, we can test you. Mauer: Suppose the test is positive? Rudnick: Then you take it from there. Cecil: What’s the problem you are trying to address? Rudnick: Several times a year we get reports of faculty acting like they’re under the influence around students or in their office. Bramhall: So, positive test could lead to LOP, referral to EAP. Rudnick: We could say you can’t go back to the classroom, have to work in JH as an administrator. Gleason: Lots of employees, it’s a given that some have substance abuse problems. Cecil: It would have been helpful if you’d started with that, instead of crafting language and providing examples aimed at dinner drinks and wasting 5 months of our time. Rudnick: Point taken, but billable hours are not wasted time.

    Economic proposals:

    Original admin proposal was 5%, union counter was 18%

    Admin’s previous counter:
    2013: 1.5% ATB, retro to 1/1/2013.
    2014: 1.5% ATB, 2% Merit, No equity.
    2015: 1.5% ATB, 3.5% Merit, No equity.
    No money for floors, but a committee to set them?
    No change in promotion raises.

    So, basically 10%.

    Union’s most recent –
    2013: 1.5% ATB, retro to 9/16/2012.
    2014: 3% ATB, 2% Merit, 2.5% Equity.
    2015: 1.5% ATB, 3.5% Merit, 1% Equity.
    2014: 3% of current NTTF salary in a pool for floors.
    10% raises for promotions.
    So, basically 15%.
    Today’s admin counter:
    2013: 1.5% ATB, retro to 1/1/2013, only on base salary.
    2014: 1.5% ATB, 2% Merit, No Equity.
    2015: 1.5% ATB, 3.5% Merit, No Equity.
    2014: 1% of current NTTF salary in a pool for floors.
    6% raises for NTTF promotions, 8% for TTF. Close to current practice.
    Separate pools for TTF’s and NTTF’s.
    So, basically 10.5%.
    Cecil: Why did you reject our argument for paying 1.5% retro for the full year, given Moffitt’s bloated reserves? Rudnick: Our intent was not to pay you money, it was to increase your base salary. Cecil: We’re only talking about $300K. Rudnick: I can’t give you an answer.

    Back and forth on merit, review policies.

    Mauer: Where did you get the money for floors? Rudnick: Oh, I don’t know. Mauer: You found extra money? Rudnick: You are not getting the leftovers! I don’t know why you people keep saying that. It’s a matter of shifting costs and budgeting, and we are not going to tell the faculty how we do it!

    Mauer: We need to understand how you found this money, so we can help you find some more money. 

    Blandy: There will be cuts in other areas, to be determined in a secret ELT meeting.

    Economists show up with donuts. Yum.

    Cecil: Equity and compression? Rudnick: We can’t deal with equity and compression in this first contract. We are completely abandoning the Lariviere plan. We have spent the money he had budgeted for getting you to the AAU peers on other stuff. Sorry. We are willing to accept that people with more seniority will get paid less than new faculty. Mauer: We accept individual merit differences. Our issue is the structural problem – UO’s compression problems are systemic.

    Rudnick: We agree that our faculty should get paid at AAU peer levels, but UO does not have those resources, and we’ve pissed away what we do have on other stuff. You cannot ignore that fact. Of course, we can pay comparable salaries to administrators.

    Cecil: So you are saying that UO’s long held goal of getting faculty salaries to peers is unreasonable? Rudnick: Yes. We don’t have the resources. Blandy: The president is committed to getting new resources, just as Dave Frohnmayer was when the 2000 Senate White paper cam out. So, wait another 13 years.

    Cecil: So, catching up with comparators is no longer “Job #1”? If it is, where is your proposal? Gleason: We have to make tradeoffs. It’s quite simple. We are not going to let the faculty help set UO budgeting priorities! Rudnick: Some people just got 30% equity increases!

    Green: Your spin is that you are emphasizing merit, not equity. Problem is that your merit proposal is minuscule.  5.5% will be the first merit raise since 2007. So, about 0.75 % a year for merit. We are dead last in the AAU and after this we will still be.

    Davidson: We are doing fine keeping up with AAU comparators when it comes to athletics and administrative salaries. Rudnick to Blandy: You want to respond? Blandy: No.

    Rudnick: We got another $29M in tuition last year, and are looking at $15M for future years. We are not going to give you any more money! But you can move these merit and ATB raise numbers around, we don’t care about that. (Wait, didn’t she just say the admin wanted to put money into merit?)

    Mauer: My understanding is that you are saying that without new revenue UO cannot address the equity gap with comparators? Rudnick: No, I am not saying that! (Then she pretty much says exactly that.) You are being really unfair! Mauer: You say you are open to addressing external equity, but not willing to put any money on the table.

    Cecil: Explain retention raise section – just a license for the provost to give raises whenever he wants. Why not spell out a policy? Rudnick: ? Cecil, Mauer: Why not say something about having a credible outside offer? Rudnick: What about preemptive raises? Cecil: Sure – our proposal gives the provost power to set almost any reasonable policy – what’s wrong with having it written down? Rudnick: Noted.

    Art 32 sabbaticals, admin counter:

    Our VP for Portland’s sabbatical deal? 60% of her $201,667 administrative salary, and from what I can tell she’s getting that for the full FY, not just 9 months. Presumably Doug Blandy and Jim Bean signed off on this?

    Rudnick: We did a little research and most AAU’s give 50% for a year and 100% for a semester. So we agree to pay 100% for one quarter (up from 85% currently.) Not retroactive. We spent a lot of money on Jim Bean’s sabbatical and can’t go higher.

    Art 24, Leaves:

    Rudnick: We still haven’t figured out track changes in Word, sorry.

    Changing the subject for a moment, I got curious about what Randy Geller is doing to monitor Sharon Rudnick’s billing, which is probably up to $420K or so by now. NYT piece on the prevalence of bill-padding here, PR request here:

    Dear Ms Thornton –  

    This is a public records request to the University of Oregon for any documents showing
    a) who in the UO General Counsel’s office is responsible for monitoring invoices and billings by the HLGR firm, regarding the faculty unionization drive and contract negotiations, and
    b) any audits done by the UO General Counsel’s office, and any documents showing questions about rates, expenses, work effort, time-keeping or other similar issues, and their resolution, for invoices submitted for this work by HLGR.
    This request covers the period from 9/1/2011 to the present. 

    I ask for a fee waiver on the grounds of public interest, as demonstrated by the substantial public funds involved and by the fact that this matter is relevant to Oregon HB 3342, regarding the use of state funds to hire outside attorneys and consultants during union organizing drives, introduced by Rep. Michael Dembrow in the legislature this year.

    Long back and forth about leaves, Green is on it. Gleason gets confused, Rudnick straightens him out.

    11:00. I gotta go, check out Luebke’s facebook blog, here.

    Bargaining XXIII: Intellectual property

    Thursday, 5/23/2013, 8-12 AM, Room 122 Knight Library, open to the public and reporters, free coffee. Bring some donuts.

    Your Guarantee of Truthiness: All UO Matters bargaining posts fact-checked by Randy Geller, HLGR and their lobbyist and public relations consultant, (and former Frohnmayer aide) Marla Rae.

    Check out Luebke’s facebook live-blog on this session too, here.

    Latest Fact Check:

    Synopsis:

    Prologue from Tuesday:

    • Still no admin counter on raises. After bringing in another $29M in tuition revenue this year, Jamie Moffitt is still piling on reserves to prepare for tornadoes. Top priorities such as the new cop car fleet are fully budgeted for, and there’s no money left for professors, unless OUS agrees to another round of tuition hikes. 
    • UO’s reserves are about twice OSU’s. We are sitting on ~$63M more cash than they are, but somehow can’t afford the ~$12M difference between the admin and union raise proposals.
    • Faculty will be required to tug the forelock and address administrators as “The University”, because the administrators in Johnson Hall are just that petty and insecure. President Gottfredson does not care what Frank Stahl and the Senate say about what the university is. It’s him. 
    • Faculty support for boycott of Mike “The University” Gottfredson’s Matt Court investiture ceremony grows. 
    • After calling for proposals to find money for raises, The University is now going to ignore the Senate resolution calling for a cut in athletic subsidies.

    Live-Blog: My take on what people said or meant to say. Nothing is a quote unless in quotes.

    Cast: Mauer is out for the day, the usual cast of overpaid bill-padding HLGR types, Gleason and Blandy, and Chuck Williams from RIGE:

    Meeting begins with a brief moment of silence for the UO Constitution. Outgoing Senate President Kyr and President Gottfredson (and most of JH) are up in Salem now, making their last pitches for keeping it in and out of SB270, respectively. Meanwhile, still no response from President Gottfredson on whether or not the board will be bound by Oregon public meetings and records law.

    Art 50: Ethics:
    Rudnick, yes Rudnick, will introduce the administration’s article on ethics. Presumably “$1 million AAD heist” Blandy and Tim “no public records” Gleason will have a lot to say as well.
    Rudnick: Research ethics, conflicts of interest, conflicts of commitment, outside activities.
    Cecil, Pratt get into the gritty of what they mean. Williams: Most of this comes from current policy.

    Art 52: Outside activities:
    Davidson, Cecil, Bramhall point out some problems. Blandy and Gleason and Williams don’t even appear to have read this thing. Rudnick charged UO $300 an hour to write it, but she doesn’t seem to have read it either. What a waste of time great opportunity to pad the invoice with more billable hours. Cecil: Knows this cold and starts doing Rudnick’s work for her. Can you teach at UO and LCC? Wouldn’t that be  a competing institution and a conflict of interest? Blandy: I don’t think UO competes with LCC, my AAD classes have a much easier grade curve than LCC does.

    Art 51: Intellectual Property:
    Gleason tries to figure out what library space means in the article. Cecil and Rudnick explain, patiently. Do your homework Tim, or just keep quiet. Cecil: Who owns course notes? Rudnick: The university owns them but lets the faculty use them. This is current law. Pratt: Suppose you turn your class notes into a book or a textbook? Williams: You are in the COE and you right a book explaining an intervention – UO owns it. Pratt: Suppose you write a textbook? Williams: It would belong to UO but they could license it to you. Williams: I’d be in charge of deciding if you can use your notes for this purpose or if you need a license. Key is that there are not other copyright holders, e.g. a grad student. Cecil: UO could ask all professors for their notes and post them to be used for online courses? Williams: Can’t imagine that would happen. Davidson: Suppose I move to another university. Can I take my carefully prepared blackboard pages with me? Rudnick: You were paid by the university to prepare that material, and they own it. Williams: For copyright stuff, 50% goes to authors, 25% to department, 25% to UO. Gleason: Complicated because faculty typically work under the assumption that their work belongs to them. It doesn’t. That’s the law. University has never exercise these rights in the past, but they could. Green: So I can’t take blackboard with me to a new job, can I take handwritten notes? Rudnick: The notes belong to UO, but UO has never exercised those rights. Rudnick: Legally, UO would give you a license. I will look into some way to add a clause giving a license by default to these kinds of things. (The University’s team came in very poorly prepared to deal with these issues. Don’t they talk this stuff over before they bring their proposals to the table?) Cecil: Don’t worry, we’ll make a counter, we know that some rogue board of trustees could go wild and seize all these rights and we’ll protect the faculty from the university.

    Cecil goes to town on a host of other issues with this proposal. Rudnick doesn’t have answers to them either. Davidson asks who owns posts on scholarly posts. Williams brings up question of professors putting out software under open-source licenses. We’d help people set up those agreements. Anderson: Suppose students take notes from my notes and sells them. Rudnick: I don’t students can do that. Rudnick, Williams have no idea.

    Pratt: Can you explain section 10? No, they can’t. Green confuses them some more. I create courses here, move, write a textbook. Does UO have an interest? Gleason thinks not. Cecil: You write a book while at UO you grant UO the right to use it in the classroom royalty free.

    Massive confusion on very important issues that are going to get more important quickly. Faculty team is doing a good job working this out. Rudnick seems amenable to changes.

    Union’s turn:

    Art 4: Policies and practices.
    Cecil: Incorporates past policies and practices if published. Rudnick: My concern is the diffuse nature of practices – vary across departments. How does this apply if someone in another department gets disciplined for a practice that was never applied in that particular department. Cecil: I’d make a disparate argument. We just don’t want to write out all these practices from the contract. We know we’d have the burden of showing it was a well established practice. Rudnick: OK, this addresses a lot of The University’s concerns with your previous proposal.

    Art 6: Dues Deduction: 
    Cecil, Rudnick: We now have about 10 articles we’ve both agreed to, except that sticky “The University” nomenclature issue. This is one of them. (Amount of dues still to be determined.)

    Art 9: Contracts:
    Cecil: You need to give the faculty contracts. Rudnick: We don’t want dept chairs to make non-binding oral promises. Gleason: What substantive change does your deletion make? Cecil: Oral promises would be binding … Gleason’s confused, so am I. Cecil: Oral promises that you will get a contract, are binding.

    Cecil: Gotta put job description and other terms of employment into contract. Rudnick: We were just trying to separate the notice of appointment from the list of conditions of employment. Your language requires the notice to include all that stuff to make the notice binding. Blandy: should include unusual conditions. I’m snoozing, sorry. Cecil’s on top of it, no worries.

    Bunch of stuff about timely notice for adjuncts and instructors, career appointments. Cecil’s on it. Very productive discussion. Rudnick hasn’t lost it once, and only 22 minutes, or $110 billable to go.

    Luebke’s got the scoop on the career NTTF issues here. Current UO policy gives a fair amount of protection, union is attempting to put it in contract, good debate.

    Art 36: Strike and Lockout:
    Cecil: Faculty with a sincerely held ethical belief can’t be required to do work replacing striking employees.

    Art 43: Drug and Alcohol policy:
    Cecil: Makes clear that the behavior has to affect the faculty members job to invoke discipline. Rudnick: When would it be OK to be under the influence while performing job responsibilities? Cecil: Dinner after a seminar. Rudnick: You can have a drink without being under the influence. Cecil: That’s our point! Rudnick: You’re right, we need to think about how to include your points and tone this down.

    We will have economics counters for you next time. (Tuesday June 4th.)

    Rudnick makes it! 4 hours at $300 per, without shouting at the faculty. Hearty congratulations all around. 

    Senate: Wed May 22, 3 to 5:30. Updated with proposed motion of no confidence.

    Update: A hearty congratulations to the losers of the Senate and committee elections. Names of the unfortunate winners are posted here.

    Agenda:  Here and below. Legal services, new course approvals, perhaps a motion calling for amendments to SB270 to incorporate the constitution.

    Regarding the UO Board legislation, SB 270. FAQ here.

    Live blog disclaimer: My interpretation of what people said, meant to say, or what I wished they’d said. Nothing is a quote unless in quotes.

    3:00 pm 1. Call to Order
    3:02 pm 2. State of the University


    2.1 Remarks by Robert Kyr, Senate President
    Meet w/ Rob tonight, 6:00-9:00pm at Collier House to give him input for his testimony tomorrow the the State Legislature on SB270.
    Kyr: We’ve been dealt a bad hand over the past few years, as a university we’ve done as well as possible with it.

    3:20 pm 3. New Business

    3.1 UO Senate Leadership and Service Award for Officers of Administration;
    Presented to Stephanie Bosnyk, Assistant Dean of Operations, Lundquist College of Business (Jim Bean came in second.)

    Standing ovation, very nice remarks. 
    3.2 UO Senate Classified Staff Leadership Award; 
    Presented to Richard Daniels, Outgoing Mail Specialist
    Unable to make the meeting, he’s enjoying his retirement traveling. Very personable written remarks – handy with plumbing and can run a sewing-machine! Slips in a pitch for SEIU and for higher compensation for staff. Slick.

    3.3 Wayne Westling Award; 
    Presented to Paul Engelking; Professor (Chemistry)
    Kyr: Paul’s put UOCC minutes and process onto the web, improving transparency and efficiency.
    Engelking: Remembers Wayne Westling with admiration. Great story about how he (Paul) was tricked into becoming Senate president.

    Paul Simonds, Senate Parliamentarian: As oldest “dead president” he inducts Kyr into the society, with two bottles of wine, one for each year. Might be worth showing up at Collier House tonight.
    3.4 Motion (Legislation): Spring Curriculum Report
    Paul Engelking, Chair; Committee on Courses
    Approved. 

    3.5 Motion (Legislation):
    Authorization to Award Degrees; Robert Kyr,  Senate President
    Approved.

    3.6 Announcement of
    Spring Election Results (Kyr) 
    3.7 Introduction of New Senators (Kyr) 
    Yeah. Good group.

    3.8 Signing of
    Facilities Scheduling Policy & the Conferral of Posthumous Degrees
    Policy (Kyr) 
    Pres Gottfredson has agreed and is signing. Free at last.

    3.9
    Academic Freedom & Freedom of Speech Policy (Kyr) 
    Gottfredson wants to divide these into 2 policies, so we’ll put these off until next year. Strange – the union contract has a lot to say about these issues as well.

    3.10
    Legal Services Policy; Margie Paris (Law), Senate President-Elect & Chair, Legal Representation Policy Review Committee 
    Paris: Harbaugh noticed that the UO is now independent of the DOJ, Stahl suggested removing that part. She now proposes delaying until fall so she can consult with UO’s General Counsel.

    3.11 Senate-Administration Joint Review of the Office of Research, Innovation,

    and Graduate Education [RIGE] (Kyr) 
    Committee’s report was due June 15, but it will take much longer.
    Blonigen: We have a big charge, putting the committee together took a long time, lots to deal with here. Hopes to meet with stakeholders and with the many complainants about RIGE’s operations and Espy over the rest of the term, then work over the summer to benchmark RIGE with other universities, hope to have report in the fall. 

    3.12 Motion (Legislation):
    Committee Requirements with Moderate Revisions, Slate 2
    (Tenth-Year Review 2013); Robert Kyr, Senate President & Chair, Tenth-Year Review (Committee on Committees) 
    Kyr: Moderate revisions to campus planning and the committee on committees.

    Campus planning: “Committee shall be consulted early in the process”
    Harbaugh and Mitchell propose amendment to include all facilities controlled by UO. Keyes brings up land use issues. Paris proposes postponing til we can figure it out. Approved.

    Committee on committees: This committee is supposed to appoint the faculty members of the administration’s advisory groups, when appropriate. Gottfredson has not been doing this. Motion strengthens the Senate’s hand a little.
    Approved unanimously.


    3.13 Motion (Legislation):
    Working Groups for Administrative Advisory Groups (Paris) 
    Paris: During the review of committees we discovered that there are a lot of administrative advisory groups that are “owned” by specific administrators. Sullivan: Amendment to allow looking into all such working groups. Approved unanimously.

    3.14 Motion (Legislation):
    Working Groups for Faculty Research Awards  Committee (Paris)
    Approved unanimously

    The Senate is now an hour ahead of schedule!

    5:25 pm 4. Open Discussion

    Stahl: Announces that Nathan Tublitz wants to submit a notice of motion for a vote of no confidence in President Gottfredson.

    Woah! Here is the text of Tublitz’s motion, posted with his permission:

    Dear Senate President Kyr and Vice President Paris:

    Last week I put forward to the Senate a motion of no confidence in President Gottfredson. The following day, after a meeting with the Senate Executive Committee and some FAC members, I agreed to hold off submitting my notice of motion only if the President endorsed the University Constitution and put forward his best effort to ensure that SB270 contained a clause guaranteeing our right to develop and maintain our own internal governance system free from interference by outside groups, including any future UO Board. 

    The statement released yesterday by the President on his website (http://president.uoregon.edu/content/president-gottfredson%E2%80%99s-comments-shared-governance [1]) contained no such statement. Neither did the “press release” issued today on his behalf by Administrative Spokesperson Barbara Altmann. Nor has such a statement been issued at the current union negotiations by the Administration’s bargaining team which speaks for the President. It is clear that the President has no intention to ensure the continued existence of our ability to generate our own internal governance system, a right enshrined in the 1876 University Charter and which has been the foundation of our governance system for the past 137 years. 

    The President’s unwillingness to go to bat to secure our governance system is the latest of many his actions since he took office that, taken together, demonstrate a disturbing lack of leadership and understanding of the University’s history and traditions. 

    Therefore, with this email I formally give notice to the Senate Leadership of a motion of no confidence in President Gottfredson. There is no Constitutional reason not to accept my notice of motion. Thus, please add my notice to the Senate agenda for tomorrow’s meeting and announce the notice of motion at the Senate meeting. 

    Please confirm in writing that you will add the motion to the Senate docket and that the motion will be announced at tomorrow’s meeting. 

    Sincerely, Nathan Tublitz

    Kyr: This is now an executive session, under the Oregon public meetings law, because this is a personell matter.

    No blogging about the exec session, because I am registered with the Oregon Secretary of State as an “Institutionalized News Media Organization” and the public meetings law forbids me from reporting on this. I’ll be back when the executive session part is over.

    5:32: Executive session is over. Can’t say what was discussed, but the Senate will not be voting on this proposed motion at this meeting, which is the last until Fall.

    Kyr: I am very happy that Margie Paris is now taking over as Senate President.

    Long standing ovation for Kyr. My opinion is that Kyr has done a stellar job as Senate President and has fully earned the respect of the faculty which he now holds, for his untiring, selfless, and productive service during two incredibly difficult years. He’s negotiated many minefields and has come out of them with the respect of those who’ve worked with him, and at times against him. I say that despite having had him shoot me down on a few issues. We’ve been lucky to have him, and it’s great news for UO that he will continue to serve on the Senate.

    5:35 pm Adjournment

    Bargaining XXII: Admin counter on raises?

    Tuesday, 5/21/2013, 8-12 AM, Room 122 Knight Library, open to the public and reporters, free coffee and maybe donuts.

    Your Guarantee of Truthiness: All UO Matters bargaining posts fact-checked by Randy Geller, HLGR and their lobbyist and public relations consultant, (and former Frohnmayer aide) Marla Rae.

    Latest Fact Check: HLGR’s fact checkers agree with UO Matters that their colleague Dave Frohnmayer was negotiating his fat golden parachute retirement deal with Pernsteiner, at the same time he was trying to convince the faculty to take 5% furlough pay cuts. My post here, Frohnmayer’s pissy email here, their fact check here – they misinterpret my statement about his pay and ignore the screen shot of his pay records, don’t explain how it is that he’s listed on the HLGR bargaining invoice but is supposedly not advising the admin bargaining team, and then let the furlough/parachute statement pass their fact-checking without comment.

    Synopsis:

    • Still no admin counter on raises. After bringing in another $29M in tuition revenue this year, Jamie Moffitt is still piling on reserves to prepare for tornadoes. Top priorities such as the new cop car fleet are fully budgeted for, and there’s no money left for professors, unless OUS agrees to another round of tuition hikes. 
    • UO’s reserves are about twice OSU’s. We are sitting on ~$63M more cash than they are, but somehow can’t afford the ~$12M difference between the admin and union raise proposals.
    • Faculty will be required to tug the forelock and address administrators as “The University”, because the administrators in Johnson Hall are just that petty and insecure. President Gottfredson does not care what Frank Stahl and the Senate say about what the university is. It’s him. 
    • Faculty support for boycott of Mike “The University” Gottfredson’s Matt Court investiture ceremony grows. 
    • After calling for proposals to find money for raises, The University is now going to ignore the Senate resolution calling for a cut in athletic subsidies.


    Prologue:

    • 2 to 1 that Rudnick will come out of the turn and into the backstretch all nicey-nice, and fold on the we are “The University” language. No give on governance. More stalling on pay – though the news that Gottfredson’s compensation is in the top quartile, and UO’s reserves are twice OSU’s, might even embarrass her. No, I’m not putting any scotch on that last one.
    • Time for the administration to get serious – they’ve been sitting on the union’s raise counter for weeks. Meanwhile Rudnick and her consultants are charging UO about $50,000 a month, for every month they can drag it out. Or maybe more – President Gottfredson’s public records office now wants me to pay $550, just to see one month of invoices.

    Live-Blog: My take on what people said or meant to say. Nothing is a quote unless in quotes.

    Cast: The usual cast of overpaid bill-padding HLGR types, Gleason and Blandy, no Cecil.

    Rudnick: Nominations for Safety Committee.

    Rudnick: Passes out summary of Moffitt’s revenue forecast for 13-14 and 14-15. Tries to use this to argue they can’t afford faculty raises. Bulk of it is a fall in grant funding, even though much of that has little to do with money available for faculty salaries. Fall in sports action lottery revenue that goes to the jocks anyway. Irrelevant. Sneaky attempt to confuse the faculty, Jamie. But we expect no less from you at this point.

    Rudnick: Costing information for your last round of economic proposals. Always amusing to hear Rudnick stumble her way through a spreadsheet. “Um, line item so to speak … Um overall the proposal that you made came down about $2M.” “Needless to say we were very disappointed in you”. But we don’t even have counter proposals for you yet, we will wait to hear from OUS about tuition increases.

    Mauer: We understand there is a limited amount of money and competing demands. We don’t accept your premise that faculty salaries depend on new revenue. Your thinking is that all other existing costs are immutable. We don’t accept that. We think the university has a large amount of money, needs to prioritize and budget. ($750M budget, we’re arguing about $12M.) We come to the table with an important set of priorities that need to be a priority. We are not here to take the leftovers. Whatever happens with tuition will determine the budget but it will not change the relevant priorities. It’s been 4 weeks now since we put our proposal on the table. They were reasonable (say 2% of the total budget?). Even if you accepted these, we would still be at or near the bottom of the AAU. (President Gottfredson’s pay is in the top 25% of his peers – first year in the job.)

    We have many suggestions about where to cut. Your thinking is skewed. Faculty pay should not be at the bottom of UO’s priorities.

    Rudnick: I reject your claim that priorities are wrong. You are ignoring the fiscal realities of this university. (Now she’s an expert on fiscal realities?) The people working on this are working hard to keep the university’s priorities secret from the faculty, that’s why President Gottfredson has set up a Budget Committee outside Senate purview. We cannot ignore the fiscal realities. Police, athletics, administrative pay, and my hefty feees all come first. That’s just the reality. We only have $63 million more in reserves than OSU does, and we cannot afford to pay you $20 million of that. We will have a counter proposal for you next session, but it’s going to be far from what you are asking.

    Mauer: You should say “we are going to pay the faculty and then decide how much to spend” on fluff. So, the proposal on the table is funded and will not be withdrawn? You are saying that if there are tuition increases you will re-examine your office? Rudnick: Yes. Gleason: We will not come back with a smaller offer. Rudnick: Correct. OUS F&A committee will recommend tuition increases at their Friday meeting, they won’t be approved until June.

    Rudnick and Gleason now get flustered about these increases. The tuition increase money will not be available dollar for dollar for raises. It’s a matter of fiscal prudence. We can’t give you more money without the increases. We have incorporated these tuition increases into our budget, but not into your raises.

    Mauer: So, why not bargain with us assuming you will get these increases, in the same way that you form the rest of your budget, and then come back to readjust if the increases don’t come through? Rudnick: Because your raises are the last priority of the administration. Mauer: It’s frustrating when you come to the table with no authority. Rudnick starts to flip out again: “We represent the University!” Where the hell did this outburst come from? Mauer: You come to the table and tell us this is the way it is because Bean says it is, then you won’t bring him to the table to talk to the faculty?

    Mauer: Let’s take a short break… We’re back.

    Rudnick, snidely, “Are you ready to get back to work?” Mauer: We are working, lets get back to the economics, then do new counters.

    Mauer: You are claiming there’s no money, we want you to show more specific information to support that claim. Rudnick: Tell me what you want. Mauer: We want to see your projections for spending by administrative unit, so we can figure out why faculty salaries come last. I’ll get you specific questions in writing. On the general topic of tuition and faculty salaries, it’s a fact that there have been large increases in tuition revenue, but little change in faculty salaries. We need to understand this. Rudnick: Doesn’t understand the question, tries to blame this on the comments by the OUS Chancellor on tuition increases. Green: Let me explain the question again. Faculty see tuition go up, more students, no raises. So we don’t see an empirical correlation between tuition and salary. And yet now you are trying to assert one in order to argue against raises. You’re new here, so maybe you don’t get this. But explain yourself. (Perfect opportunity for Gleason or Blandy to jump in and embarrass themselves. Gleason gives it a shot, but Rudnick interrupts him. Come on Sharon, let Gleason run free, it’s part of the fun of this all.)

    Rudnick: After years of no raises, some faculty did get raises! And we are proposing ones that will still leave you at the bottom of the AAU. And we’ve increased administrative hiring 20% over 5 years, and only 9% for TTF’s. You people are already taking to much of the pie. You may not like the fact that we don’t have economic proposals yet but we are building a budget and we will not let you see it! I’m going to lecture you some more about budgeting, and then accuse you of stalling. We are going to wait for Friday’s F&A meeting before we talk money anymore. Mauer: Our philosopher would like to explain some things.

    Pratt: Were have you cut and were will you cut next. This is a chance for you to build some much needed credibility, Sharon. Rudnick interrupts. Gleason interrupts. He can’t make a sensible statement. Pratt: What else might be cut? Rudnick: Books, IT, … Pratt: Have you told units that cuts are coming? Blandy: Money was held centrally for raises. Whoops, he didn’t mean to say that. Pratt asks about enrollment advancement, etc. Their budgets are way up. Blandy: Don’t know about that. Davidson: Stop calling a 10% raise after 10 years for NTTF’s “generous” especially when the central administrators have seen regular raises to keep them at comparators. There’s no shared sacrifice, and so I don’t take it seriously when the president claims he represents the entire university. Rudnick: There’s no fat in the administration to cut. Goes on to lecture us … Pratt: I was asking where you would cut if tuition is not increased. Blandy reveals there’s a plan. Gleason: blah blah incoherent blah … He thinks he’s being clever… “These are the hydraulics” Gag me. Please Tim, do tell us more.

    Here are some places to cut:

    Academic Affairs: 100% increase or $3.5 million, and they can’t even find the faculty handbook any more:

    Police: 150% increase, or $3.1 million:
    LCB: Gotta love these guys: Instructional salaries up about 45%, administrative costs up 200%.
    College of Ed: Overall budget up 40%, Dean and Central admin costs have more than doubled, to $5.4 million.
    Enrollment Management. Roger Thompson’s shop. Overall budget up only about 50%, but administrative costs are up 600%. 
    General Counsel’s office: Randy’s now hiding all the money he’s paying Sharon Rudnick and her friends, but his un-top-secret budget has doubled anyway.
    Provost’s Office: Up 130%. An extra $1.1 million for the jock box. $1.2 million for “Provost Reserve”.
    Portland: Most of these costs are hidden in colleges, but general fund subsidies are up by 200% or $1 million. 
    University Relations: Michael Redding more than tripled his office’s budget. An extra $2.2 million a year. Impressive.
    VPSA Robin Holmes: Succeeded in almost doubling her administrative costs. Bowl junkets not included.
    Institutional Research: Knowledge is at the heart of any modern, well-run organization. And sure enough, UO’s IR budget has increased by 5% over the past 5 years. Total. 
    OK, back to bargaining:

    Blandy: We need more money for administration – we can’t administer with our current budget. More important to increase administrative spending than hire more faculty, that’s why we’ve piled on 20% more admins and only 9% more faculty of the past 5 years. And these our still our priorities – we need to build up “The University” and that means more administrators.

    Psaki: You need money? Look at the Senate resolution to cut athletic subsidies. It will bring in $2.5M in recurring funds for faculty by ending a few of the athletic subsidies, and another $1.8M for scholarships.

    Green goes on about how out of touch Rudnick is. Anyone who’d been around campus would understand why the faculty knows it is not the top priority. Gleason: That’s not what I hear from my faculty (I can’t imagine why they don’t talk honestly with you, Tim.) Rudnick is insulted because the union called her last proposal ludicrous and insulting. She’s insulting me. She’s ludicrous. Then she goes into a long lecture about perceptions and cognitive psychology. Then she tells us we should stop talking economics and get on to counterproposals on other articles. Then she goes back to her talk about how it took years for Frohnmayer to get the faculty into this hole and it will take years of pain and suffering by you faculty peons before you are even close to being made whole. Then she gets onto the question of tornados. I’m not making this shit up.

    We have $63 million more in reserves that OSU does, but we cannot pay the faculty an extra $12M because we are worried about a Tornado. Fire this woman now, President Gottfredson.

    Mauer: Before we move on: You’ve said you are talking about a 10% raise by July 1 2014? Rudnick: Yes. Mauer: You understand that all the merit will not happen by then? Anyway, let’s move on.

    Rudnick: Ethical conduct, Consulting and IP will be on Th, with Chuck Williams from RIGE.

    Preamble: Admin counter.
    Rudnick: We accept all your changes except you are still going to have to address us as “The University” because the senior administrators in Johnson Hall are just that petty and insecure. There will never be a contract that does not call them “The University”. 

    Art 2: Classification and rank. Admin counter.
    Snoozer, lots of productive back and forth.

    Art 16: Arbitration: Union counter.
    Rudnick: Under what circumstances could an arbitrator award tenure? Mauer: They couldn’t. We agree about this last time.

    Art 18: Discipline and Termination for cause. Union counter.
    Gleason makes an ass of himself again over the definition of a phone call. Rudnick tries to smooth it over. “We’re very close on this article too.”

    Art 32: Sabbatical. Union counter.
    Mauer: Minor changes in accordance with our last discussion.

    Gotta go, see you Th.