Tag Archives: Sharon Rudnick

Rudnick’s law firm loses contract

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7/21/2013: Edward Russo has the story in the Register Guard:

The city had relied on Harrang Long since 1971 for virtually all of its legal advice, a sizeable task that produced big billings for the firm. 

Since 2000, the city has spent a total of $21.4 million — or an annual average of $2.1 million — on legal fees, most of which went to Harrang Long. …

For all other legal work that Klein and Jerome did for the city that year, the city paid Harrang Long $180 an hour, which produced a combined bill of $430,701.

OK, that story is from 2009, when Eugene city manager Jon Ruiz ended the contract. And $180 an hour ain’t much these days. Sharon Rudnick of Harrang, Long etc. now bills UO for $300 per. And she charges Mark Long – the son of the Stan Long in her firm’s name, $400. No family discount? That’s stone cold. Wow. 

Rudnick, Gary, and Geller respond to ethics allegations

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7/5/2013: My complaint to the bar is here, the Jaquiss story is here, Rudnick and Gary’s retraction demand over the headline is here. In response I’ve changed the headline on the post to more accurately reflect the facts: “Bar investigates Rudnick, Gary and Geller for allegations of lack of candor with the tribunal, in an attempt to pad legal fees”.


The responses from Geller’s attorney Bradley Tellam and Rudnick and Gary’s attorney Arden Olsen are here. An excerpt from Tellam:
Actually, Geller’s declaration to the court had plenty to do with HLGR’s hourly rates. He had recently signed a contract with HLGR for billing rates that were as little of half of what HLGR were arguing that state taxpayers should have to pay the same HLGR attorney’s for the public records case, and he’d have to have been pretty clueless to not understand that his affidavit would be used by Gary and Rudnick as support for their attempt to convince the judge to then double those higher rates.
An excerpt from Olsen:
He seems particularly upset about the fact that HLGR’s efforts to get $860K in public funds are being publicly discussed here and by Nigel Jaquiss in Willamette Week. I’m no literature professor, but I think they call that irony. My response to the Bar is due Tuesday, comments and suggestions welcome.

Bar investigates Rudnick, Gary and Geller for allegations of lack of candor with the tribunal, in an attempt to pad legal fees

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7/1/2013 retraction, per ORS 31.120
The original headline on this post, on 6/10/2013, was “Bar investigates Rudnick, Geller and Gary for alleged bill padding.”
On 6/20/2013 I received a retraction demand from Ms Rudnick and Mr. Gary per ORS 31.120, which gives news organizations 2 weeks to retract allegedly false and defamatory statements, before they can be sued for defamation. They wrote:

Every day for the past week, you have published information concerning your defamatory statements on your blogspot under a headline saying “Bar Investigates Rudnick, Gellar[sic] and Gary For Alleged Bill Padding.” [Emphasis added.] This headline is itself false and defamatory. The frivolous complaint that you filed with the Oregon State Bar does not allege “bill padding.” Because this headline is republished on Google and other search engines the republications of your original defamatory claim that we committed perjury and your subsequent deliberate misstatement of the nature of your complaint threatens to cause us and the law firm with which we are associated to suffer irreparable harm to our professional reputations.

Pursuant to ORS 31.120 we hereby demand that you publish a retraction of your false and defamatory statements concerning us as provided in ORS 31.215.

(Full letter below). The ethics complaint to the bar which they refer to stated, in paragraph 2:

In brief, I believe that Mr. Gary, Ms Rudnick, and Mr. Geller may have violated the ethics requirement for “candor with the tribunal”, in an attempt to pad the legal fees HLGR was trying to get from the state of Oregon as the result of a public records case, and that Mr. Geller may have violated rules regarding conflicts of interest stemming from his support for this effort, and may have used his public office to try and delay or prevent release of public records related to it.

Ms Rudnick and Mr. Gary argued that my headline summarization of “alleged bill padding” was not factually accurate, given that my complaint does not accuse them of bill padding per se, but rather of a lack of “candor with the tribunal”, in an attempt to pad their legal fees.

My headline was not factually supported, I retract it, and I regret publishing it.


6/19/2013 takedown update: 

The good news: UO’s attorney’s at HLGR finally admit that UO Matters is news media. This will certainly help me argue for public interest fee-waivers. I’m no law professor, but it also seems that they agree I’m protected under ORS 31.150, Oregon’s law regarding “Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation”, which Randy Geller has argued in the past is not true. The law firm of Davis, Wright and Tremaine has information on this law here.

The bad news: They’ve sent me a “take-down” notice demanding a retraction of this post, particularly the headline. Under Oregon defamation law (ORS 31.120) plaintiffs can’t recover damages against news media unless they first request a retraction. ORS 31.125 explains the rules:

The correction or retraction shall consist of a statement by the publisher substantially to the effect that the defamatory statements previously made are not factually supported and that the publisher regrets the original publication thereof.

I’ll have a response to Ms Rudnick and Mr. Gary’s letter after due consideration. Meanwhile, comments are welcome. Full text here:


6/12/2013 update. I’m not the only person who’s unhappy with what Rudnick and Gary charged the taxpayers. Oregon AG Ellen Rosenblum appealed the $550,000 in HLGR billings to the Oregon Court of Appeals back in July 2012 – apparently one of her first official acts – and it’s still in court. More docs soon:


6/10/2013. Nigel Jaquiss has a detailed story in Willamette Week, here, with brief responses from Geller and Gary.

It’s only tangentially related to the bills Rudnick and HLGR have submitted to UO for legal work involving the faculty union, here, which are probably close to $500K by now.

Elevator version?

  • Sharon Rudnick of HLGR got UO lawyer Randy Geller to go along with a plan to try and make taxpayers pay $860K in billings for a public records case related to the Mark Long / Cylvia Hayes energy consulting scandal. 
  • The Oregon Bar Association is now investigating allegations that Rudnick exaggerated HLGR’s rates when the judge was determining how much taxpayers would have to pay the firm, 
  • that Geller was less than completely forthcoming about HLGR’s contracts with UO when he submitted an affidavit in support of the $860K figure, 
  • and that given his conflicts of interest he probably shouldn’t have been the one setting UO’s public records fees and doing the redactions on the HLGR invoices for work billed to UO.

My ethics complaint to the bar is here, the affidavits from Rudnick, Geller, and Bill Gary are here (big file) and the letter from the bar’s Assistant General Counsel Chris Mullman giving them until 6/20/2013 to respond to the initial intake query is here.

More on how UO came to hire Rudnick and HLGR here, more on Mr. Geller’s fury over John Kroger’s investigation of UO’s general counsel’s office and Geller’s August 2012 appointment of Melinda Grier as UO GC Emeritus (sic) here, and more on his past problems following public records law here.

Fact check update: My bar complaint states that the Frohnmayer/Gary bar ethics complaint against DOJ attorney Sean Riddell led to sanctions against him. Actually, the bar dismissed their complaint in Sept. 2012, finding he had made no violations of the bar’s rules of professional conduct. My apologies to Mr. Riddell for the error.

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

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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, here. 8:16. 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.

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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.

Are Rudnick and HLGR also writing the UO Board legislation?

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5/16/2013: Presumably Randy Geller is getting competent legal advice somewhere. Frohnmayer wrote the original version. And if it’s HLGR it would help explain Rudnick’s bargaining table outbursts about keeping shared governance out of the contract. HLGR wrote the Nike tax relief bill that Kitzhaber pushed through in special session, so they’ve got Phil Knight’s trust. The legislative site on the bill is here. I’ll do some more digging, if anyone knows anything please pass it along. Meanwhile the UO Senate will hold a vote of no confidence in Mr. Geller this fall. More on that soon.

Negotiating for Dummies – foreword by Frohnmayer

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5/10/2013: I expected venality from Sharon Rudnick and her HLGR team, but like everyone else I’ve talked to I’ve been surprised by the incompetence. Maybe I shouldn’t have been though, given who wrote the foreword to “Negotiating for Dummies”:
Yup, right at the bottom: David Frohnmayer, President of the University of Oregon, and now “Of Counsel” at HLGR. Dave’s no dummy about deals that involve money for himself though. He’s now working for Randy Geller, as a member of Sharon Rudnick’s legal team. He charges UO ~$270 an hour to help screw over the UO faculty:

while also getting paid a $201,028 salary as UO faculty, at 0.5 FTE:

Plus $257,353 PERS. He set up his sweet retirement deal with Pernsteiner at the same time he was trying to persuade the faculty to take 5% furloughs. That’s leadership for you.

Get your copy from Amazon.com, and try and predict what stupid stunt the UO administration’s bargaining team will try next. Now on Kindle too. (Full disclosure: If you buy it through the link below, I get a small commission which I’ll spend on public records about HLGR.)

Help us pay President Gottfredson $300 to see Sharon Rudnick’s invoices

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4/3/2013: The smart money says she’s billed us more than $200K so far. Now UO’s Public Records Office is charging $300 for people to see copies of the latest invoices from Sharon Rudnick and HLGR:

We asked for the documents 12 days ago, and found out about the fee today. We paid it, and expect to get these public records “within a reasonable time”. That would be this Friday, according to the two-week time recommended in the Attorney General’s manual. If you want to help out with the fee, click on the paypal button below:

Donate $5 to pay Dave Hubin’s public records fees


Dear Ms. Thornton and Mr. Hubin:

This is a public records request for copies of any UO contracts and invoices for legal advice or consulting assistance related to the UO faculty union, from Nov 7 2012 to the present, redacted only to the extent allowable by Oregon public records law.
If you are contemplating charging for these documents I ask for a public interest fee-waiver. These public records document the expenditure of substantial amounts of state funds. The UO administration’s response to faculty unionization will affect the lives of the UO faculty, students, and the people of the state in many ways. These groups and the public at large have an interest in understanding who is advising the UO administration, and what that advice is costing.
I also ask for a timely response to this request. The Oregon Legislature is currently considering HB3342, which would impose additional regulations on how state agencies can use public funds to discourage unionization efforts. I am scheduled to go to Salem on Wednesday 3/27 to meet with legislators, and it would be very helpful to have these documents for those meetings.

OUS cuts special deal for Frohnmayer and Rudnick

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3/29/2013: OUS’s Oregon Administrative Rule 580 exempts a few things from the normal transparent competitive bidding process for state procurement:

(k) Goods or services related to intercollegiate athletic programs.
(L) Cadavers or cadaveric organs.
…
(u) Contracts for professional or expert witnesses or consultants to provide services or testimony relating to existing or potential litigation or legal matters in which an Institution is or may become interested.

At its April 5 meeting the board is going to amend that a little, adding all legal services to the list, so that UO can hire firms like Rudnick and Frohnmayer’s HLGR in secret, and without competitive bids:

I’ve written before about Dave Frohnmayer’s success at using his state funded sabbatical to restart his legal career at Harrang, Long, Gary and Rudnick. (Full disclosure: Frohnmayer emailed me back in January, taking umbrage with some of my statements about the golden parachute deal he negotiated with Pernsteiner while simultaneously trying convince the faculty and staff to take furloughs.) HLGR then used Frohnmayer’s UO connections as a hook to get legal work from UO and OUS, while simultaneously promising there was no conflict of interest – thought they neglected to note Frohnmayer was still on the UO payroll. It took a petition to the AG and the help of Phil Barhart’s office to get UO to fork over the proposals. I love that “and at your discretion” part of the HLGR proposal:

Meanwhile Randy Geller – in charge of hiring extra lawyers for UO – wrote a brief for HLGR, supporting their claim in a public records case, arguing the state should have to pay the firm twice the regular rate, or $866K total. Nigel Jaquiss has the story here, my take is here. What’s Frohnmayer’s cut? Not sure, but he bills at $550 an hour, so figure a couple hundred large:


The NYT, Piper Rudnick, and billable hours

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3/28/2013: The NYT editorializes about the economic foundation of US law firms, the billable hour:

For partners, billable hours are a key measure of associate and partner productivity. More is better. The resulting culture pushes everyone harder. Meanwhile, each partner strives to maximize individual client billings that he or she controls. Those billings in most cases determine a partner’s annual share of the firm’s profits. Their clients also become tickets to other firms. That makes partners reluctant to share too many important client responsibilities with their associates and fellow partners.

It was prompted by emails like this, released under court order in a legal dispute involving potential overcharges by the Piper law firm:

Piper used to be known as Piper Rudnick. I assume that Rudnick bears no relation to Sharon Rudnick of HLGR, who writes UO bills like this, which President Gottfredson would only release after we paid him $240:

Nothing to see here folks, move along. I do have a public records request in for more recent invoices though.

How did Sharon Rudnick end up across the table from the UO Faculty?

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12/14/12: And what’s it costing us? Long story. The short version, with my opinion?

The UO administration’s current lead negotiator, Sharon Rudnick, (from Dave Frohnmayer’s firm, HLGR) was originally hired by Interim UO President Bob Berdahl to fight faculty unionization.(That’s my opinion – under state law UO has to officially profess neutrality.)

Rudnick has no particular expertise in higher education. We have spent $X on her firm so far: $Y before certification, and $Z since. (X,Y, and Z are coming soon).

The union is now at the table, putting forward concrete proposals. All the faculty (pro-union, anti-union, or rationally ignorant) should want these proposals to get careful analysis and see responses and counter-proposals developed by people with authority, knowledge of how universities work, and respect for the UO faculty.

The lawyer that Berdahl originally hired to fight union certification (my opinion) is a very poor choice for this new task.

President Gottfredson should fire Rudnick and HLGR and put someone like CAS Dean Scott Coltrane in charge of his bargaining team. Unfortunately, under new OUS policy it is not clear if President Gottfredson can get rid of Rudnick (or Randy Geller) without Chancellor Pernsteiner’s permission.

Long version (in progress).

Please keep in mind that when most of this went down I was opposed to a union for TTF. You can thank Geller, Bean, and Berdahl for changing my view. Also note that obtaining these documents from Randy Geller’s office cost me many hours of time, many fights with the UO administration, and more scotch than I care to remember. So far, UO has hired 3 firms to fight faculty unionization and now negotiate with the faculty union. I’m no history professor, but here’s the history. Comments and corrections welcome.

Fall 2009:

At this point the union drive was a homegrown effort led by Marie Vitulli from Math and a few others, with a little AAUP support. But new President Lariviere was worried enough to sign a secret deal with the Stan Mcknight consulting firm to try and respond to the union’s organizing efforts. $300 an hour with a $25,000 limit. Exactly $1 under the amount that would have required public notice – just like Chip Kelly did for Willie Lyles.

Fall 2011: 

The union organizing drive started heating up, with professional organizers from the AAUP and AFT. Around the same time, Oregon SB 242 (Pernsteiner’s milquetoast response to Lariviere’s New Partnership bill) removed responsibility for UO/OUS legal services from the Oregon DOJ and gave it to OUS. Pernsteiner took this opportunity to centralize authority over legal matters with himself, part of his successful efforts to kneecap Lariviere. The OUS policy is here:

I don’t know exactly how to interpret the policy, but my read is that George Pernsteiner, not Mike Gottfredson now hire and fire UO’s legal advisors.

Around the same time Geller put out an RFP for outside legal help to replace the DOJ. Harrang, Long, Gary and Rudnick responded with this proposal, which emphasized the fact our own Dave Frohnmayer was now working for them (he’d restarted his legal career while on a UO paid “research” sabbatical) and noted their expertise in dealing with unions:


Winter 2012:

Things got hot with the organizing drive. Berdahl was UO’s Interim President and adamantly anti-union, particularly when it came to tenure track faculty. It was clear that there was lots of adjunct and NTTF support for unionization, but that the TTF faculty were divided, and Berdahl thought maybe he could split the TTF out of the union.

So in February, Berdahl and Geller hired two firms to try and stop the union organizing drive (my opinion). One was from San Francisco: Curiale, Hirschfeld, and Kraemer. Among other things, they run seminars on “Maintaining Union Free Status”. Not sure how that squares with Geller’s claims that UO was neutral on the organizing effort, but that’s water under the bridge, right, Randy? Their contract with Geller and the initial invoice for $7,834.71are here. Additional invoices thru Nov 2012 here.

The other firm was Frohnmayer’s “Harrang Long Gary and Rudnick”, a.k.a. HLGR, with Sharon Rudnick as the lead attorney. (This summer Geller wrote a brief defending HLGR’s efforts to double a legal bill to the state to $864,000, of which about 20% was for Rudnick). Their initial contract is here. Invoices through Nov 2012 here.

So, what’s the damage so far? (Check back for updates, I’ve got a big stack of invoices to wade through)

No Sharon, we are UO

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Unlike some UO administrators, UO Matters is not living in a lucrative business school case study. Demand for Frank Stahl’s “No Sharon, the Students and the Faculty are the UO” buttons is dropping. I think it’s my butt-ugly design and the high price. If anyone is willing to try redoing it, maybe with some graphics, I’ll get them printed and try to get the price down to $3.33 – the cost of 30 seconds of Rudnick. Email me a hi-res jpg or similar. Free button and coffee cup for the best design! 2/23/13.

Union bargaining IX: 2/19/2013

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Prologue: If I was Tim Gleason I’d be worried about how to top the “UO professors posting child porn on Facebook” meme that he and Barbara Altmann started in session VIII when academic freedom came up. What will our administrative colleagues whip out this time? Sweet and innocent, because they didn’t really understand the part of Dixit and Nalebuff that covers mixed strategies?

Dave Hubin has now been sitting on my request for a copy of President Gottfredson’s official calendar for 6 weeks – after I paid him $108. And he wants $193 for 4 pieces of paper showing how much we paid Sharon Rudnick for November and January. When the ODE interviewed President Gottfredson last month about transparency he said:

“I absolutely support it.”

Right. I’m guessing Rudnick alone is going to bill UO $400,000 for this before it’s over, more if she can drag it out til summer.

Summary:

  1. Rudnick seems to be scheming to weaken the Faculty Personnel Committee. Check out last year’s FPC report, chaired by Mike Russo, here. It includes three pages on issues with current procedures, here. Looks like considerable overlap with the issues the union has identified. Also see the last page: Acting Provost Lorraine Davis refused to meet and discuss cases where he over-rules the FPC, and the FPC has concerns about recent decisions to give particular administrators academic tenure even though they have no recent research output. (Thanks to Russo for correction in comments – it was Davis, not Bean last year. Bean was on sabbatical, how could I forget? See here for a bit about Jim Bean’s past intransigence on this issue.)
  2. The administration seems to have decided to stop fighting with the union over the small stuff. The big stuff – raises – will come up in a month or two.

Live blog disclaimer: Don’t link to this on Facebook, Randy Geller is watching you. It’s for the children, of course. This is my opinion of what people said, meant to say, or were really thinking, in the depths of whatever once passed for their soul. Nothing is a quote unless in ” “. If you don’t like my blog try Luebke’s.

Cast: No Geller, no Altmann. Gleason’s late.

8:00 AM, room 450 Lillis. Act 1:

Art 13: Tenure and Promotion, Admin’s redlined counter to the union’s proposal

Rudnick: Tenure comes from the Provost. (Not from your faculty colleagues?). Provost also approves the criteria and the departmental procedures. Mauer: Shouldn’t there be a way for some give and take? Rudnick: These are the legal minimums. Mauer: Why did you take out the part of our proposal requiring discussion? Rudnick: 3rd year reviews. (Time’s up, Bean). Evaluations: Admin’s want to prevent faculty from using unsigned teaching evaluations in their tenure file. Whatever.

Green: Why do you want to take away a faculty member’s right to have a colleague present at the third year meeting between the Dean and Provost and the faculty member? These are often emotional, good to have a supporter. Mauer: But the Dean could have a lawyer present taking notes? Gleason: Hell yes. Davidson: Why do you want to take this right away? Psaki: This just ain’t right. Rudnick: This is an evaluation, we want it be a conversation between the Dean (and Randy Geller if the Dean wants backup) and the faculty member sitting alone on the other side of the table, so we can keep you people in your place. (Armed UOPD too?) Green: Why do you see this as adversarial? This is the tenth time we’ve presented a plan to make things more collegial, why do you keep slapping us down? Blandy: OK, tell me more. Green: The assistant prof has to respond in 10 days. People are nervous. Need to give them the right to have a friend to take notes, talk with them afterwards. Psaki: This is all murky to the junior faculty going through this. Give them the right to have a colleague there. (Easy fix, just do it. This is a test for the admin side: can they back down and go with a reasonable request like this from the union?) Green: We heard this from many faculty when we talked with them about this clause. Pratt: Having sat at the other side from the faculty, as Assoc Dean, this would help. Anderson: As a former head, it would often have been helpful to have another person there with the faculty person. (Check Luebke’s blog, he’s got more on this). Rudnick: Would this also apply to annual reviews? Maybe there’s a middle ground here. (Wow, this is a first from her.)

Timeline:
Rudnick: We want a timeline and a deadline for submitting tenure materials. Mauer: So, why isn’t there a timeline in your proposal? Rudnick: Whoops, will you write that for us?

Criteria:
Pratt to Gleason: You’re missing the point. We ask best people in the field to write reviews. We want  to send them our tenure guidelines, ask them to consider those when they write the letter. Currently it’s too vague. (He’s right, I write these letters and it’s very helpful when the school sends their criteria). Gleason: I write these letters all the time, no one has ever asked me if this person should get tenure under these criteria. (Weird, I get this frequently).

Faculty Personal Committee’s role:
Rudnick: We are reviewing the role of the FPC, because you went union!!! This is big, big big. Are they going to try and grab power from the faculty on tenure now? Bastards! Cecil: Why did you weaken our language requiring the Provost to provide full and complete justification for a tenure denial? Rudnick: Because we want Bean to have the right to sit down with Geller later, and fabricate new reasons for a denial.

Grievance: New language, we will let people grieve over violations of procedures and practices, and we will then eliminate current practice for appeals. You can grieve, take it to the President, if you can argue that our Provost’s denial is arbitrary and capricious. No recourse to arbitration except on procedural grounds.

Break

Art 15: Grievance Procedure

Rudnick: Calendar days versus working days. She’s insisting that we use the Julian Calendar, or something like that. Cecil: We’ll have to consult with our astrologer, but we’ll get you some latin.

Rudnick: Another concession! Union can institute a grievance over an action (not over an interpretation that doesn’t lead to an action.) Another compromise: additional 180 days to file a tort claim notice over discrimination. Grievant can bring union rep, but must be present themselves. Mauer: Can union rep be there if grievant doesn’t want them to be? Rudnick: That’s your problem, work it out with your member. Rudnick: If faculty member wants to grieve with say Provost and doesn’t want to send a copy to the union, we don’t want to require that they do. Cecil: Send copies of decisions to union. Rudnick: Makes sense.

Art 16: Arbitration

Rudnick: Lots more concessions. Sticking point is no arbitration of matters of academic judgement. Arbitration over procedural issues e.g. about tenure. Not over the decision itself. University should not have to re-employ someone who has been convicted of a crime. Mauer: Regardless of the crime and circumstances? Arlo Guthrie: Littering? Mauer: What if the university disbanded a dept, claiming financial exigency? Lots of productive back and forth between Cecil and Rudnick. Rudnick: We can pay people if they testify for our side, but we won’t agree to pay people who testify for the union. Huh?

Next Session: Admins will have counters on Union rights, Drugs, Discipline. Gleason looks up from his iPad with a weird smile.

Rudnick: Maybe we can get to your economic proposals the week of March 19, so I can get in a lot of $400 billable hours over spring break, reviewing your costly proposals to give you already overpaid faculty excessive raises. Mauer: Thanks.

Child porn update: Union Bargaining VIII for 2/7/2013.

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Update:

Prof. Barbara Altmann accuses faculty union of supporting child pornography.

Update #4 on the Admin blog, for today 2/7/2013:

In perhaps the most extreme section, the Union proposed that “[t]he content of faculty profiles in social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc) shall not be considered during any evaluation of a faculty member.” What if a bargaining unit member is using social media to threaten and intimidate colleagues? What about in a case of child pornography?

I’m no child pornographer although I will admit I have watched the occasional adult movie on videos hd from time to time, but I’m guessing if I was, and posting it on Facebook, the Dean would be the least of my worries. Ok, maybe it’s not really Barbara writing this garbage – maybe JH is just putting her name on something written by one of their law firms, or Randy Geller. Her blog invites people to email her and ask her questions. So what the hell, lets see who is behind the Johnson Hall child porn ring:

Subject: public records request: union child pornography

Date: February 7, 2013 7:21:59 PM PST
To: Lisa Thornton , David Hubin
Cc: Barbara Altmann , Randy Geller , Doug Blandy , Tim Gleason , James Bean , doug park

Dear Ms Thornton:
This is a public records request for a copy of any emails containing all of the words “child”, “pornography” (or porn) and “union”, including any email that simply contain links to porn websites like go now sex-hd.xxx for example, this is for all sent or received by Michael Gottfredson, Randy Geller, Doug Park, Tim Gleason, Doug Blandy, Barbara Altmann, or Jim Bean, from 1/1/2013 to the present.

I ask for a fee waiver on the basis of public interest, as demonstrated by the “bargaining update #4” on this topic, posted by Professor Altmann on the official UO administration information blog at http://uo-ua.uoregon.edu/


Today’s Bargaining session:

Thursday 2/7/2013, 8-12 AM, 450 Lillis: Be there. Word is that Sharon Rudnick will buy all the faculty who show up Voodoo donuts out of her $3200 daily take, or roughly what our students pay for 16 credits of in-state tuition.

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

Prelude: UConn has a faculty union and is in the middle of a big push to be the next university to get into the AAU, including hiring of hundreds of tenure-track teaching and research faculty. UO hired a total of 17 new TTF last year (net) and our research plans are in total disarray, thanks to Interim Provost Jim Bean’s incompetence,lack of focus, and distraction by athletics.

Live-blog: No donuts. WTF? And why does everyone on the admin team have the same smile? Is this why they don’t let Geller show up anymore – he can’t do it?
Doug Blandy
Sharon Rudnick
Tim Gleason


Today’s Cast: No Blandy, no Cecil, no Altmann, no Geller. Where is Geller – still working for Gottfredson?

Scene I:

Rudnick: You’ve been talking out of two sides of your mouth when you say you will talk with the deans but don’t accept that they will talk with faculty. “I don’t mean to be judgmental but it seems you have a schizophrenic view of things.” Mauer: We need a certain amount of trust.

Academic freedom and responsibility:
This should be good – presumably Geller’s had a hand in it after being read the riot act by Gottfredson over his prior attempt at a university policy. Rudnick: I’ll let Tim Gleason talk about this. Then she keeps on talking… We took this from the UF CBA and the AAU Red Book and Oregon law. Gleason: I don’t have much to add. Freedoms and responsibilities. Mauer: We can find the policy on-line? Rudnick: Yes. (Actually, No. A substantially revised policy is currently up for Senate approval, probably in April, but Geller has been sitting on it for 18 months. Check this link for an old redlined version, this was a huge fight with the Senate Executive last year, Geller wouldn’t appear to defend it, much to Dave Hubin’s embarrassment.) Rudnick: Starts lecturing Mauer about faculty, gets that loud angry thing going again. Does this work for her in court? Gleason: Def of disruptive is based not on content, but on how disruptive the context is in which the speech is made. Mauer: These other clauses look good. Mauer: What about g): “Seek change only in ways that don’t obstruct the functions of the university.” (Me: Frohnmayer, Lariviere, and Berdahl all accused much of pretty much exactly this for running UO Matters, requesting “too many” public records, etc.) Same with Geller and his GC Emerita Melinda Grier. Gleason: I don’t think we mean’t this to address civil disobedience. Rudnick jumps in again: nothing in this article would prohibit that. Mauer: pitch a tent outside JH? Rudnick: that would be OK. Mauer: We’ll see what happens when the Dalai Lama appears. Green: Suppose students and faculty block catering trucks from getting to a donor dinner (because the donor got rich off Philip Morris work). Gleason: Say it’s trespass. This policy would be irrelevant because that would be civil disobedience. Rudnick: Nothing in this policy would discourage that, but we could have our cops arrest you and then fire you for illegal activity. Pratt: Suppose the admin decides they want a particular program or course content, but faculty disagreed. (I’m thinking the sports conflict program in law). Would that constitute obstruction? Gleason: That wouldn’t be obstruction. Pratt: Better if it said obstruct “mission of university” rather than “functions of the university”. Rudnick: OK.

(Commenter: “Nothing in this Article affects the University’s right to determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study.” Me: That’s new. by “the University” they mean “the Administration”. Sneaky one, Gleason.)

 Rudnick: What faculty say in public must be said with restraint. (WTF?) Threshold for university to take action is very high – must show person is not fit for position because of their conduct. (Me: Both Frohnmayer and Berdahl have used my statements on this blog to accuse me of being a bad social scientist – Berdahl while he was Interim President. This clause seems to protect them, and to allow UO to discipline me for my speech?)

 The bargaining team has been hammering Rudnick and Gleason on this, they keep backing down, but they are going to need to revise this language a lot.

Blandy enters. ~20 faculty also show up. You missed the nasty part, guys.

 Mauer: Can you identify yourself as a UO professor when making protected speech? Green: What about a blog. Rudnick: Should have a disclaimer (whew, I’m good). … Mauer: Lets move on for now and come back to this.

Article 12: Admin’s response on NTTF evaluation and promotion.

Rudnick: I’m just going to walk through to justify my $400 an hour, then Blandy will answer questions since he only gets $75 – what we charge you for a stenographer. (Lots of productive back and forth here, Rudnick’s decibel level is appropriately modest, for once.) Rudnick: We’ve finally figured out librarians. We talked to the librarians, they want to stick to annual. Mauer doesn’t miss a beat “You consulted with them how?” Rudnick: Uh, we talked with their dean, who said everyone was happy over there. (Lots of unusually productive back and forth on this between Rudnick and Mauer, she’s earning a little of her pay this time. Say $150.)

Mauer: Break time. Rudnick: I’ll make a donut run.

Scene II: Still no donuts.

Art 38: University counterproposal on Jury duty. Snoozer.

Art 15: Union counterproposal on Grievance Procedure.
Mauer: Union must have the right to file grievances on behalf of members. E.g. an individual is reluctant to file for fear of retaliation. More than one person might be effected, more efficient for union to file one, rather than many. This is standard procedure. Rudnick: We want to be sure a grievance is about an actual problem that has an impact (OK) and we want to talk to the faculty who are being impacted (what if they want the union to do it?) Don’t want a grievance over, say a difference in interpretation that doesn’t lead to action. Mauer: First is fine, Second not, Third craft some language for us, not a problem. More talk on dates.

Art 16: Union counterproposal on Arbitration.
Mauer: going through this line by line, … agree, disagree, …

Next time: Mauer: You’ll be prepared with more counters next time? Rudnick: yes.

The end. See you in 2 weeks.