Bargaining update for July 2, 2024

We hope that everyone is enjoying their summer, whatever that may entail for you and yours.  Though there is a bit of a lull on campus, your bargaining team will continue to meet with the administration throughout the summer. Please remain engaged to help us secure a dignified contract. Attend sessions when able! Thank you for your presence in the room, showing the united support of our faculty, even in the summer months. Our next session is on Monday, July 15 from 12:30-3:30 pm in Lilis 440 [a different location than usual].

We met with the administration on July 2nd and managed to engage in frank discussions surrounding provisions related to Pro Tems and salary, though the administration did not bring a salary proposal to the table.  We managed to achieve tentative agreements on three articles. In Article 6: Policies and Practices, we secured language that mandates faculty be informed of newly instituted policies that affect working conditions.  In Article 10: Dues Deduction, we successfully fought back against attempts by the University to radically alter our deduction system.  Finally, in Article 13: Health and Safety, we were able to secure language that mandates a deadline for initiating the University's process for faculty with ADA accommodations.  You can see all our tentative agreements, as well as the most recent proposals here. 

Our rational and sensible proposals represent important advances for our successor agreement.

During the session, your team presented proposals for Article 4: Unit-Level Policies, Article 15: Academic Classification and Rank, and Article 32: Leaves.  Of note, we are pushing hard to limit the use of Pro Tem employees on campus (by attempting to strengthen the reclassification process) and to expand options for leaves for faculty.

The administration presented counterproposals on Article 9: Union Rights, in which they remain adamant about not supplying data on denials of retention raises, and denials of recategorizations and reclassifications.  We need access to this important information for a number of reasons, including in terms of diversity and equity.  In Article 12: Facilities and Support, we are getting closer to agreement on language we can use to address temperature and air quality conditions in work/class spaces and offices.  With Article 22: Grievance Process we still have quite disparate visions of how conflict resolution should play out on campus.  We are much closer to agreement with Article 36: Professional Development after this round of discussion. Finally, they rejected our proposals on Article 28: Miscellaneous Benefits and Article 33: Sabbatical.  They contend that our proposals, of modest effect on the institution financially but important for individual faculty members, have such an economic import that they cannot move until we get closer to an agreement on salary.

Of course, the salary article is in their court, and we are not sure when they will be bringing their next counterproposal.  We spoke about our hopes for their next proposal and they expressed concern, as they have for every round of bargaining since United Academics unionized ten years ago, about the state of enrollment. This is the justification preventing them from moving from the extremely low proposal they presented to us, with raises that don't even come close to representing anything but a cut in real wages. They must address several years of neglect in addressing our salary needs. They must invest in faculty as we advance the core educational mission of our university.

At our next session, regardless of whether the administration comes with a salary proposal, we will present our counterproposals on tenure review and promotion, facilities and support, and the grievance process.  Many of the remaining proposals are still in the administration's court, so we will see what they bring.

We hope that you can attend and even bring a colleague or two to the next session, on Monday, July 15 in Lilis 440.

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In related news, we are sending a letter directly to President Scholz to ask him about the vision he has for the University of Oregon's trajectory in the next several years.  Though we hear a lot about the importance of faculty flourishing (and perennial smashing of fundraising records), the current state of eroding salaries, untenable workloads for a large portion of our members, and an increased adjunctification of our teaching faculty paint a picture more of languishing than of flourishing. We hope that President Scholz takes our concerns to heart.

Dear President Scholz:

Faculty are concerned about the direction of our university. Years of below-average raises have weakened the ability of the University of Oregon to recruit and retain the best talent and lowered the morale of committed faculty at every rank. We do not see how this is a viable path forward for an Oregon public university and an AAU institution, and we are inquiring as to your plan to address salary and workload inequities with our comparators. It is important to note that this is not rhetoric developed by United Academics. These findings were apparent in the IDEAL Climate Survey of 2022.

Members of United Academics are committed to the success of the University of Oregon. Indeed, we agreed to shoulder much of the institution’s financial uncertainty when we agreed to potential wage cuts early in the pandemic. We again agreed to shoulder ongoing financial uncertainty by accepting raises that fell short of anticipated inflation rates later in the pandemic. The result is that today, summer of 2024, faculty are far behind our comparators in salary and far ahead when it comes to workload. And while the worst-case financial scenario did not come to pass, we have yet to be made whole.

We ask for your plan to tackle these challenges. We have presented ours: raises that bring us back to the average of our comparators over three years, and approval of unit policies that respect and reflect the actual workload of faculty.

You say you want faculty to flourish. You tell the Board of Trustees that you want metrics to help faculty flourish. One important metric will always be the ratio of faculty pay to comparators. Another is the amount of work expected as compared to our peers. How do you propose we address these metrics to move the faculty to a place of flourishing? What is your plan?

Finally, our proposed economic package is based on real economic data.  This is a negotiation based on the needs of the University, the needs of our students, and the needs of our members. Tell us how you would meet those needs, so we can continue productive conversations at the bargaining table. To date, we have heard critiques of our analysis and lamentations about the University’s financial constraints. Still, we have not heard how your proposed economic package will address recruitment, retention, and climate issues on campus.

We look forward to hearing your plan to address these issues and your vision of the future of our university as a preeminent research institution.

Sincerely,

The Executive Council and Staff of United Academics