Friday, October 9
After several weeks of negotiating in subgroups on various topics and articles, we returned October 9th to the full, virtual bargaining table with PSU.
PSUFA had high hopes of taking on the previously agreed upon agenda of topics, including the economic considerations of minimum teaching pay, cost-of-living increases commensurate with other bargaining units, and financial compensation for members whose contracts or assignment rights are violated.
Unfortunately, due to several stated issues on PSU’s part, we were unable to fully depend on that agenda. In essence, PSU noted they were missing needed members; they felt haggard from an earlier session of bargaining with our colleagues in PSU-AAUP; they were unable or unwilling to provide detailed cost assessments to any of our previously stated interests, as agreed upon.
This was a frustrating day, and our bargaining team made that known in unequivocal terms. PSU is continually noting their goal is financial sustainability, without providing meaning to this platitude. Despite these setbacks, we were able to arrive at an understanding and commitment pertaining to our next full bargaining session. These agreed upon commitments include:
1. To reach agreement and finalization of an article for the future collective bargaining agreement that will fully detail progressive sanctions and procedures that will, we hope, provide more clarity on a discipline system that existed in name only.
2. We asserted for a fourth and hopefully final time that our interests are not served by “clearing” all supposedly non-economic interests while saving economic interests for one final bargaining session. (We see this as a transparent strategic maneuver that neither serves our members’ interests, nor accurately depicts how negotiations have proceeded, so far.)
3. We shared with PSU how we arrived at the “costing” of our interests and encouraged them to be ready to offer more details, considering we are using the same model PSU invented for that exact purpose. They expressed admiration of the labor we expended and how prepared we were. We expressed our hope for them to model the same in future bargaining sessions, especially since this was previously agreed upon during our September 18th bargaining session.
4. We continued to share our research results about the state of adjunct researchers and the need for PSU to begin allocating funds so researchers might actually participate in the extension and procurement of additional research funding without working for free. PSU seemed cautiously curious about this idea.
5. We reminded PSU that Oregon House Bill 2016 advocated for our interests in securing release time for members to work for and advance PSUFA. This was met with shared recognition of the legal requirement, but disagreement about how this would or should be paid for. We reminded PSU this was a similar stipulation already provided in our fellow union’s contract (that of AAUP).
All in all, we ended the day of bargaining quite discouraged, but certainly not defeated. One of our team members reminded us to keep our eye on the bigger picture. We are ready, prepared, and more than willing to take on the vital economic interests of our members when PSU is able to be more fully prepared at the negotiating table.
Friday, October 16
PSU started the session stating that they were not clear on the process being used to discuss economic topics, which was at the top of the day's agenda. Rather than reaching out before the bargaining meeting to clarify the process so that we could have a productive session, they required us to spend the whole session discussing how to discuss economics. No progress was made on any topics, and the economic discussion has been pushed off for three weeks.