Bargaining Recap 6/18/24 Session

Last Wednesday’s session marked four months at the bargaining table. Management kicked off the session with another counter to Article 4 (Orientation and Onboarding), this time extending orientation compensation to include paying adjuncts for the orientation event, as well as any other mandatory onboarding or new-hire trainings (as is their legal responsibility). Because it will now be paid, Management also tightened up language to require adjuncts to attend orientation, and proposed an alternative asynchronous option for adjuncts who cannot attend the live orientation event. Although PSU claims that they want robust onboarding for Adjuncts, they are buckling down on their refusal to keep PSUFA included in departmental level orientations (a right your union has under the current CBA).

Following Article 4, Management fully rejected PSUFA’s Article 6 Academic Freedom proposal from May 5 Your union’s proposal, which developed out of hours of research and consulting with experts and other contracts, included specific language and protections related to teaching, research, and extracurricular speech and activities. Instead of engaging meaningfully with PSUFA’s proposal, management simply copied AAUP’s academic freedom article and maintained the provision in our current contract that states that  academic freedom can not be grieved. Any language on academic freedom that is not grievable has no contractual force and is only symbolic. Your union demands that Adjuncts have real protections for academic freedom, and PSU’s refusal to grant this during the most draconian crackdown on academic freedom in recent history is remarkable! Without tenure (or any other meaningful job security) to protect our professional right to academic freedom, our contract is the only mechanism we have to secure one of the most basic rights without which we can’t do our job.  

After a long caucus, management presented a counter to PSUFA’s May 23 Article 3 proposal (Union Privileges and Limitations). Their presentation highlights two primary areas of disagreement, both of which have to do with the timeliness of the university providing information to PSUFA. Under the Public Employee Collective Bargaining Act (PECBA), PSU is legally required to provide PSUFA with contact information for all new hires to the bargaining unit within 10 days, but we disagree about what constitutes as the date of hire (and PSU is regularly in violation of this requirement). Further, while your bargaining team proposed a 30-day timeline for PSU to fulfill information requests (another PECBA requirement for the University), PSU is proposing 14 days just to acknowledge our information request . PSU has still not fulfilled information requests made for bargaining in January of this year, and the language that they propose would only continue to allow them to take a very long time to fulfill requests, slowing down your team’s work and the bargaining process.   

Next, PSUFA presented and opened Article 8 (Appointments and Assignment Rights). This is a dense article, colloquially known as the “job security article.” Following your input in the bargaining survey, your union proposed a slew of changes to strengthen Article 8 and show that we are worth more, including:

  • Requiring letters of appointment to be sent out earlier 

  • Extending the break in service from one to two years

  • Detailing out the acceptable “academic judgement” reasons for a change in an adjunct faculty member’s appointment

  • Giving adjuncts the right to request a recalculation of their assignment rights 

We also added a new Article 8 section on recall rights—an important protection for adjuncts who are not renewed. These rights would give adjuncts who experience nonrenewal priority for reappointment before new hires are considered for available positions. Adjuncts with the highest number of accumulated credits would be recalled and offered courses first, in alignment with the priorities adjuncts voiced in the job security straw poll. Further, in an effort to carve out pathways for long-term employment, we proposed language which would require the University to interview adjunct applicants for University positions (over .5FTE) when they meet  the minimum qualifications for the position.


The session concluded with discussion about the upcoming expiration date of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement (June 30), and the process of extending the contract to maintain the status quo while bargaining continues. An extension would be crucial not only to maintain adjuncts’ current rights, but also for your union to effectively administer critical adjunct support funds over the summer, including the Professional Development and Adjunct Financial Assistance Funds. Despite extensions being commonplace, Management was not forthcoming about the process, again showing little regard for adjuncts experiencing financial crisis over the summer.