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 they might be implemented. We tried to emphasize two points: One, that the parties should work together to find ways to save or raise money before turning to employees for wage cuts, and two, that the administration must stop thinking of Career faculty FTE or jobs as their “flexibility” to address short-term budget problems.
We return to the virtual bargaining table on Tuesday, where we are scheduled to hear the administration’s thoughtful response to our points and their team’s guiding principles.
You can register in advance for the Tuesday, June 30 webinar and the Thursday, July 2 webinar by using the dropdown menu at this link: https://aft.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_fA7tQgv7TUmzuLbYOO61aw
We anticipate the Tuesday, June 30, session to run from 10 am to 3 pm with a lunch break scheduled from noon-12:45, and the Thursday, July 2, session to run from 9:30 am to 5 pm with a lunch break scheduled from noon-12:45. It is possible that the sessions may end early if there is not fruitful discussion.
We hope you’ll take some time this week to watch.