Greetings, my excellent colleagues! First of all, I want to express enormous gratitude for our Bargaining Team: Maram Epstein (East Asian Languages and Literatures) Jake Searcy (Data Science) Charlene Liu (Art) Dan Howard (Business) Debbie Green (Religious Studies) Josh Razink (CAMCOR) Keaton Miller (Economics) Nathan Whalen (Romance Languages) Heather Wolford (UA staff) They met, planned, and drafted proposals for months before negotiations started on Feb 1 of last year. Over the following fourteen months they met innumerable times to plan, strategize, and draft (and re-draft, and re-re-draft…) proposals to bring to the table. Anyone who observed the public bargaining sessions knows that our team…

An Overview of the Tentative Agreement We would like to provide a more comprehensive message about the Tentative Agreement to prepare members prior to a vote on ratification. Thank you to the nearly 600 members that tuned in for our emergency meetings (sorry for those folks that couldn’t get into the first one). And of course, to everyone that has showed up consistently over the last 14 months – the Bargaining Team, the Contract Action Team, our Reps and Stewards, and every rank-and-file member that came to bargaining sessions, walked the halls talking to members, and supported us all throughout…

Sign up for Your Strike Shifts! We need everyone to sign up for their picket shifts now.  For members who are not based in Eugene, we have a remote picket line where members can meet a few times weekly by Zoom and help with some of the behind-the-scenes activities necessary to support the strike. Please check out the #remote-strike-planning channel on Slack to connect and lend a hand if you cannot make it to the physical picket line. If you are concerned that you might be targeted because your identity, immigration status, etc, or if you have accessibility concerns that…

We all recognize that we are living in increasingly challenging times.  Bargaining is rarely a pleasant process, but the upheaval and chaos in our federal government has created a context that we had not contemplated a few months ago, let alone when we began the bargaining process.  At the same time, we continue to make amazing strides collectively in this fight for a fair contract.  We have expanded our collective power, faculty have become activated and come together to engage with our union at unprecedented levels, and we have secured changes that will improve transparency and strengthen shared governance at…

Dear colleagues, As Spring Break progresses, you will likely see messaging about the two visions for our university. While the administration wants faculty to focus on the risks of striking, we must remember that our primary goal is to secure a fair contract in order to improve faculty wages and working conditions and to strengthen the academic mission of the university. What are the risks of not securing a fair contract? Inflation would continue to chip away at faculty wages, our contributions would remain undervalued in the university’s mission, and the administration would feel emboldened to use the same tactics…