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
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Sharon Rudnick
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Tim Gleason
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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.