Read our previous Bargaining Intensive Recaps here: Day 1, Day 2, Days 3 & 4
Friday, August 21, was the fifth and final day of our bargaining intensive, and it had strong ups and downs. We’ll start with the ups: We came to agreement on an improved grievance process in Article 10 and came close to agreement on another Article, as well as provided an update on the ongoing health care task force about possible paths to accessing support for health insurance and/or health care. The second half of the day brought what looks to be the first in a series of many sobering conversations about economics. Our team members, applying bargaining strategies discussed during multiple PSU Admin requested caucuses, brought the heat as always.
Article 10: Grievances and Article 16: Progressive Sanctions
During the morning, teams were able to come to tentative agreement on the grievance process as outlined in Article 10. (The designation of “tentative agreement” means the Article is ready for membership approval and ratification at the end of the bargaining process.) We also came very close to a tentative agreement on Article 16; however, given PSU’s concerns about the application and legality of certain terms—terms they had previously suggested—we accepted that we were not ready to conclude that negotiation. The document will return to the internal group and we await PSU to agree to their own previously presented terms.
Both Articles include expansions of the Grievances and Progressive Sanction process language (read: we now have agreed upon a step-by-step process). These improvements make it easier to protect the rights of our members during any potential complaint, grievance, or sanction. We needed clear, followable steps for both; we needed a process to not only know how but who was handling this at PSU. We feel confident that with the resolution of these two Articles, we will have secured a collegial and supportive structure to handle all sanction or grievance processes, as well as solidified our right to Union representation at every step along the way, ensuring our members receive the protections they deserve.
Health Care Task Force Report
This joint task force is exploring strategies to ensure access to affordable health care for part-time faculty at PSU. One strategy is legislative: PSUFA has enlisted PSU to help lobby the state for an adjunct health care bill that would provide state-supported insurance for many of our adjuncts. Recent federal government attacks on health care access made it more difficult for employers to offer options while preserving our members’ right to buy subsidized insurance through healthcare.gov. The task force is working with a consultant and exploring more affordable and legally sound options. We look forward to sharing a full report with members after it is presented at the next bargaining session.
Article 7: Member Rights
There are sticking points in this Article, which teams continue to negotiate: adjunct faculty representation in departmental governance, including faculty meetings; acquisition of two-year appointments for long-term adjuncts without the need for a formal evaluation; and improvements to the professional evaluation process.
On Friday, we heard a report from our team members on a breakthrough meeting with PSU’s Faculty Senate and AAUP (the full-time faculty union) about the issue of adjunct inclusion in governance and university-wide committee work. Key points: There is nothing in the Faculty Senate constitution that bars adjuncts from attending department meetings, and the Senate is already looking for ways to revise the narrow, distorting definition of “faculty” that includes only full-time employees working .50 FTE and above. A potential change in adjunct faculty representation at the University will be slow, but we see this as the first signs of a potentially transformative shift in recognition and inclusion.
As a result of this meeting and our negotiations, we are looking for ways to increase adjunct inclusion in their own department faculty meetings. And at the request of Faculty Senate leadership, we plan to appoint adjuncts to serve as paid members of the Senate committee tasked with redefining the definition of faculty and investigating ways to recognize our significant contributions to the essential functioning of our institution.
Economics
In the afternoon, the PSU team shared their costing model spreadsheet with us, which is a tool intended for the bargaining teams to test the cost of different financial options and see how the various economic components of our plans—such as raises, cost of living increases, and benefits funds—interact with each other. Our astute members noted several errors and discrepancies in both the spreadsheet and the justifications of certain costing details. After the presentation, critique, and discussion of the model, PSU immediately called for an additional caucus.
Once the PSU group rejoined us, we asked the University to share their economic vision for our union and how they envision moving us toward pay equity. It was concerning that their response was just to tell us they have no money.
Our team leadership pressed PSU again to state where they stood on some pretty basic financial questions: 1) Do they agree with PSUFA’s calculation of $1,178 per credit as the rate that would bring us to pay parity with our full-time non-tenure-track-instructor colleagues? and 2) How does PSU envision remedying the pay inequity between adjuncts and full-time faculty?
PSU refused to provide any answers. They repeatedly stated they don’t have any money to offer at this time, citing drops in fall enrollment and general uncertainty about our future financial situation for their inability to negotiate. This was met with alarm and confusion by the PSUFA team members, who were unsure as to why the University would have gone through the trouble of creating and presenting a costing model if there is to be no monetary increases to consider or calculate at all. This made the earlier discussions about equity being a shared interest for PSU and PSUFA feel performative and futile. PSU did note they desired more time to think through “creative” solutions beyond money. We look forward to learning what this might even mean.
We aren’t giving up hope, and we too believe there are creative solutions to this underwhelming budget situation, some of which we offered during bargaining. Given the crisis and the pandemic, this is not an easy moment to be in negotiations, but we are committed to getting the best deal we can for our members! We are not giving in to intransigence, and we are not acquiescing to strategic inefficiency.
We won’t be back at the table to address these things until September 4, but in the meantime our team will be working internally and in subgroups with the administration to make progress on a number of issues, most importantly job security and assignment rights.
Some of the ways we plan to approach that is strengthening PSU’s accountability to honor assignment rights/credit load minimums, prioritizing adjuncts for full-time hires, ensuring timely notification for reappointment year to year, and creating fair and transparent mechanisms for tracking seniority for adjuncts instructors.
We welcome your feedback and testimony and have been very grateful for our member observers, AAUP observers, and supporters throughout this week! Thank you for reading this update.