Negotiations Update:

As you know, our contract expired on June 30th. We began the Negotiation process on February 15th with the exchange of proposals. There have been several significant barriers. The Administration put together an inexperienced Management team to bargain a faculty contract which is impeding the process. It’s frustrating and unnecessarily time consuming. We have literally been educating them on how this process works. At the last session we needed to remind them of what good faith bargaining is; it means consistently working towards agreement. This is most difficult for them at the table because they have no decision-making authority. 

Our proposals that we have presented so far include the following:

1.    An increase in the number of personal days.

2.    A change to the Faculty Librarian schedule.

3.    A comprehensive dental proposal to update and modernize the existing coverage.

4.    A joint AI committee.

5.    A faculty hiring process.

6.    An updated promotional process.

7.    Removal of the 90-day waiting period for health insurance.

8.    The removal of a credit cap on adjunct courses taught by full-time faculty. 

Management’s response to every proposal has been a hard no.

We also submitted salary proposals: to double the adjunct course rate of pay, a 5% salary increase, in addition to proposing an increase at each rank in the amount of $15K.

Last year, this Administration gained $1 million in salaries, and the faculty lost $1 million in salaries - that is not a coincidence. We lost 6 full-time faculty positions - they gained 6 more administrators.

We are severely lacking in Administrative academic leadership and innovation, yet they want to impose AI into our curriculum, without discussion. That, we cannot allow.

Next steps: We're setting up our text messaging system and we are attempting to schedule bargaining sessions for the Fall. Once that schedule is set, we'll let you know what dates and times we'll be bargaining. When we need your help, we'll issue the call!