Articles by Kristy Hammond

Dear Colleague, It’s a new academic year and there are new challenges to face. United Academics is here to support you. Who YOU are. You are the faculty represented by United Academics! You are tenure track faculty at the assistant, associate, and full professor levels. You are research faculty such as research assistants, associates, technicians, and research professors. You are librarians and you are instructors. You are Career faculty and you are pro tems. Together we are UNITED ACADEMICS! Who we are. We are a community of scholars and our (proverbial) doors are open to discuss issues that arise on…

We are pleased to inform you that the membership has ratified the Memorandum of Understanding to restore Career faculty FTE, institute a payroll reduction plan, and allow faculty to resubmit requests for promotion by a vote of 461 to 34. The negotiations over this agreement were not easy, and UA leadership appreciates everyone who watched the bargaining and lent their support. We still have work to do to change the Career contract system. We will keep you informed of the progress we are making. We anticipate asking membership to ratify an agreement on a new system in fall. Again, thank…

Last Wednesday, Provost Philips sent instructional faculty and graduate employees a message describing a change in the approach to in-person teaching in the fall. Instructional faculty and GEs have been given the option to opt out of in-person teaching in the fall, if they have not done so already. This is great news, and we welcome this new decision by the Provost. We recommend that faculty take the opportunity now to consider the latest available information and decide whether or not they would like to opt out of in-person teaching in the fall. We have studied the university’s plans for in-person…

After four weeks of tough bargaining, we struck a tentative deal with the administration over the restoration of FTE, a progressive salary cut package, and the outlines of how we will revise the system for employing Career faculty. The bargaining team believes this is a good deal and a vast improvement on the salary cut plan offered in April.Before we get to the details, the bargaining team would like to give a hearty thank you to all the members who tuned in to watch. Over 200 unique viewers joined some part of the sessions. Bargaining via Zoom is new to all of us, and…

United Academics and the administration reconvened last week to discuss potential salary cuts, the restoration of fall FTE for affected Career faculty, and a plan for expectation of continuing employment for all Career faculty. The bargaining conversations have begun with each side presenting and discussing the principles that inform their thinking on the issues we’re bargaining. Our primary goals are to restore FTE for those who were renewed with low FTE in the spring and to institute an expectation of continued employment that would eliminate the administration’s ability to dramatically change career faculty FTE year to year. We have also…

Dear Colleague, The United Academics bargaining team met with the administration bargaining team for four hours on Friday, June 26, to begin our summer bargaining sessions. In these sessions we are attempting to find agreement on restoring FTE for Career faculty who had their FTE cut in May, a fair salary cut plan to address anticipated deficits, fixing the broken Career contract system, and a better retirement/buyout plan for our tenured faculty. This first session was designed to have the parties discuss principles as we attempt to solve our mutual problems. Our team presented some basic bullet points and we discussed how…

On Friday, June 26, from 1-5 pm, the United Academics bargaining team will begin conversations with the administration bargaining team about restoring the FTE of Career faculty scheduled to work reduced FTE next year, fixing our broken system of employing Career faculty, revising our current TTF tenure reduction/retirement program, and determining what a fair and equitable salary cut plan might look like if one is needed. This bargaining session will be on Zoom. Your video and audio will be muted, and the chat feature will be disabled. Neither party has bargained remotely before, so your patience will be appreciated if…