Bargaining Update
Last Friday was our sixth bargaining session. After signing tentative agreements on the four articles we agreed on last time, we continued looking at Hours of Work & Commitment.
In the last session, multiple specialized faculty members came and spoke about their experiences of serious overwork. Currently, in instances where a faculty member is concerned about their excessive workload, the only person they can go to is their unit’s Executive Officer (generally, the department chair). Here are some reasons why this is highly problematic:
- The executive officer is often the same person who assigned them excessive work to begin with.
- For non tenure faculty with little job security, the executive officer has sole discretion of whether the faculty member is to be reappointed for another contract.
- The executive officer is under no obligation to justify non-reappointment decisions. So specialized faculty have no protections against retaliatory or capricious non-reappointment, making the fear of retaliation very real.
- To resolve a disagreement between two parties, it is a best practice for a third party to mediate the conflict. Especially when there is a significant power differential, as in faculty and EO’s, a third party is needed to ensure protections for the vulnerable complainant.
Our proposal involves defining clear job duties for each position, and allowing bargaining unit members to file a grievance with their union if they feel they have been assigned an excessive workload. The grievance procedure will effectively hold administration accountable, while protecting bargaining unit members from retaliation.
We presented our comprehensive proposal back in December, so the ball was in the admin’s court to present their own proposal on Hours of Work & Commitment.
The admin team’s proposal was shocking in its lack of substance. They proposed maintaining the status quo and codifying it in our collective bargaining agreement. Despite our lead negotiators’ clear explanations of why the current procedure lacks proper checks and balances, the admin team made it clear that they value flexibility for management over protections for faculty.
Another concerning moment came when the admin team flatly refused to discuss the possibility of the University funding the collective bargaining agreement. This is worrying because in the case of an increase to the salary floor, for example, units/departments will be squeezed financially due to higher expenses without corresponding increases to their budgets. We will have more information soon about a resolution to be brought to the University Senate to remedy this problem!
How You Can Help
The admin team is giving us poor quality counterproposals to see if we have the support of our membership behind us. If we lack that support, they will keep hammering us with empty language and nonexistent protections.
Even if you have not come to union events often or at all, you have an important role to play! Our Flyering Scavenger Hunt is coming up on Friday, March 29, 2-4pm, and it would be wonderful to have as many specialized faculty there as possible to show support! We’ll have more information in a separate post. In the meantime, mark your calendars!
Next Session
As we are still very far apart on Hours of Work & Commitment, we will table it for now and will await more proposals from the admin team at our next session.
- Friday, March 29, 9am-12pm
- Location: TBD
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In Solidarity
Theresa Dobbs
NTFC Communications Chair
ntfc6546@gmail.com