The two sides met again last week on Thursday, July 15.
We had been scheduled to negotiate twice last week, but the Tuesday session was canceled by the administration due to a personal matter of their lead negotiator (their attorney).
On Thursday, we revisited tentative agreements discussed at our negotiation updates last summer. Two of the three tentative agreements were reaffirmed by Administration and Union teams.
The first reaffirmed agreement incorporates three-year contract language for non-tenure track faculty into the CBA. This is important because it codifies the right of non-tenure track faculty to apply for these extended contracts. Three-year contracts provide additional job security and protections for non-tenure track faculty during the duration of the three-year period.
The second reaffirmed tentative agreement provides additional definitions and guidance for academic ranks and titles.
The third tentative agreement, which has not been signed off on yet by the Administration team, seeks to improve the functioning of the very important Promotion and Tenure (P&T) Committee. It remedies some unfair voting issues (i.e., librarians currently can only vote for the at-large member) and provides for additional required steps for the P&T Committee (most changes have been well received and have been already implemented, such as the practice for allowing candidates for promotion or tenure to appear before the Committee to answer questions).
Finally, we spent time discussing the administration’s proposals on workload, mandatory training, and scheduling. We presented our concerns about how the proposed changes may impact student mentorship, faculty-student interactions, and student choice in creating schedules (e.g., to work around other commitments, such as E360 experiences and internships).
Regarding recent discussions of health insurance coverage, we have requested additional information based on your feedback. Some of you graciously provided us with estimates of how your costs based on your current premium and copayments would increase under the new plans. Any additional information in this area will help to further inform how changes could impact faculty.
If you have a chance, please calculate your annual premium and out-of-pocket costs for this year based on your current plan and your choice of the new plans. Knowing the difference in cost would be immensely helpful to the negotiation team (send to esambris@gmail.com).
If you would like to be more involved with discussions or activities, please reach out to me, Ed or Ellen. We are eager to have more people involved. Fill out this interest form and we can plug you into our activities: https://forms.gle/tQGbFwzdhBZcdnq37
Our next negotiation session is planned for Thursday, July 22. Keep an eye out for updates!