Negotiations and mediation have been the primary focus of our union activities for the last several months. Nevertheless, as our campus community continues to engage in shared governance, a couple of systemic issues have cropped up that need attention.
Unit Policy Development
Units were charged with revising their Assignment of Professional Responsibilities policies last year. In many units that process played out as described in our Collective Bargaining Agreement, but we have heard concerns from many other corners of campus. Some faculty were not informed whether or not submitted proposals were approved by the Office of the Provost. Some were informed in the last week of Spring term, making it difficult to request a dean's presence at a faculty meeting to explain any substantive alterations to the faculty-developed policies. In a few places on campus, processes played out in even more surprising ways.
If your unit made proposals that were rejected and you did not have the opportunity to meet with the appropriate dean to speak about the process, please let us know. This has been an ongoing topic of conversation in our Joint Labor Management meetings. The administration tells us they understand the importance of units’ conversations with deans (theoretically, after the feedback from faculty, deans could revise the policy to address the faculty concerns) and have hinted that they would be flexible with deadlines to request said meetings, given that many departments were never informed or found out too late to set them up. If deans prove to be resistant to such meetings, there are ways that we can ensure follow-up so that they comply with this important step in shared governance.
If there were irregularities in the process for your unit, or you have not had the opportunity to speak to your dean about their imposed changes to your unit’s Professional Responsibilities document, please reach out to us at [email protected] with any information or to set up a time to talk.
Course Releases for Administrative Work
We have also heard increasing dissatisfaction with the way in which course releases are being clawed back in some colleges. In many units, positions like program administration or supervision, advising duties, committee work, serving as an associate head, undergraduate and graduate directors, etc that previously received course releases, have been denied course releases moving forward.
While some of these reductions might make sense in a given unit (for example, if advising duties have diminished locally due to increased advising at the college level), many faculty members have spoken to us about long-standing arrangements being altered drastically. We are currently in conversations with administration on this issue but would like to gather more information from the faculty who have been affected by these clawbacks. This will help to inform our conversations going forward by giving us a broader sense of this trend.
There are protections in the Collective Bargaining Agreement for faculty with proposed increases to workload and we are happy to speak to individuals that find themselves in an untenable situation or are being pressured to accept lower levels of course release that are unsustainable. The University prides itself on some of the programs in question, but if there is not adequate support given to those that administer such programs, it will be impossible to maintain their excellence.
Please reach out to us at [email protected] with any information you have or to set up a time to talk.
We will continue to focus on bargaining/mediation as we attempt to get a fair contract, but we always have time to talk to faculty about all issues they face, whether it be a particular or systemic problem. Reach out anytime to your union.