During the last negotiation session on July 18, which was fully online, the two parties split the day, exchanging counterproposals on different parts of the contract. The University spent its time sharing a general budget narrative and another counter proposal on adjunct orientation and onboarding. In the second half, your PSUFA team focused on grievances and arbitration—the main ways our contract is enforced. In the last half hour, we discussed the University’s questions about course appointments and your assignment rights. Here are a few bulleted takeaways from the meeting:
SNAPSHOT: What PSU had characterized as a comprehensive financial presentation at a previous meeting was little more than a high-level fiscal snapshot that included scant substantive information, emphasized their budgetary pessimism, and offered no direct relationship to adjunct faculty.
ECONOMICS: PSUFA passed a first proposal on wages and benefits back in May, but PSU has yet to respond directly with any economic proposals. When asked when they’d have an economic proposal ready, PSU committed to discussing wages, benefits, and appointments & assignment rights at our next two sessions in late August. Your bargaining team has discussed the possibility that this is a strategic silence on their part. Their narrative of the University's “budget shortfalls” is used as a justification for austerity and to underpay you for your work. Stay tuned next session to see if they make good on their promise to bring numbers to the table.
ORIENTATION: While we have, after years of effort, finally gotten the University to agree to a centralized paid orientation and onboarding event for new hires, PSU is still creating confusion about how they plan to implement the program and pay faculty in an equitable way. The PSU team seemed to demonstrate a stubborn self-satisfaction that this last counter proposal on Article 4: Orientation and Onboarding, claiming it should be sufficient, since it meets the minimum legal obligation that requires all employers to give unions access to new hires. They seem to think that a centralized orientation run by the Office of Academic Affairs is all that’s needed to give a successful start to new faculty. PSU declines even to encourage (not require) departments to hold adjunct orientations and invite PSUFA to them. As former new hires ourselves, many of us having never received an orientation, we know how crucial it is to meet colleagues, staff, and supervisors at the program level in order to get vital departmental information, be ready for first classes, and better prepared to serve students, and how alienating it is when we haven’t been giving that onboarding. It’s also crucially important for members to know how union protections apply to adjunct instructional and research positions, and the University remains unwilling to elaborate on how to create the kind of robust, supportive start for new faculty that would allow for all of this.
GRIEVANCE PROCESS: Currently, adjuncts have to go through an overly lengthy five-step grievance process in order to address contract violations. Your union team presented a first counterproposal on the subjects of grievances and arbitration, which included revisions meant to simplify and streamline things. Our presentation was met by just a few questions from the administration, the general tenor of which was decidedly suspicious and judgmental.
STREAMLINING GRIEVANCE FILING: One surprisingly controversial aspect of our proposal was our suggestion to substitute our outdated and deficient grievance form with a simple list of items that would need to be included when filing a grievance. Our hope is that by eliminating the mandate to use the grievance form we can minimize confusion and make the grievance process more accessible and more efficient for members. It seems like both parties are looking to make changes to the overall process of addressing contract violations when they come up, so we remain open and curious to what PSU will come back with. Hopefully, we can work together to improve a vital aspect of our contract.
JOB SECURITY: Adjunct rank, appointments, and job security are covered in Article 8 of the CBA. The University closed out the session by asking questions about PSUFA’s proposal on these important topics. Your PSUFA team really shone, taking turns responding in a collaborative fashion to a range of questions from management, some that were about clarifying aspects of our proposal language and some more foundational or philosophical touching on big topics like why a two-year contract matters. As we struggle for our aspirations to improve our working conditions, the tone of these negotiations have made it evident that it may take some fight to maintain the protections we already have, and certainly to win the contract you deserve.
HIRING PRIORITY: Another highlight of the day was PSUFA’s response to PSU questioning our language guaranteeing interviews for qualified adjuncts who apply to open full-time positions at the University. You ranked job security as a top priority in contract negotiations in your bargaining survey last fall, and clear pathways to full time employment are one of the most important ways that security could be achieved. PSU shared concerns that this is a vision for a “pipeline” of sorts that would bump up against their federal hiring obligations like giving priority to veteran applicants or to to meet “diversity” goals. Your team responded by speaking eloquently about the many shapes that equity takes, including the economic precarity of many adjuncts already working at PSU. Nurturing a consistent faculty body, retaining and promoting existing adjuncts, is an important component of what we see as an equitable hiring practice. PSU has a large and diverse pool of qualified faculty already working at the University in adjunct roles. Moreover, continuing to hire historically marginalized people into adjunct positions that are underpaid and precarious is deeply problematic. If PSU truly cares about diversity, it will make hiring faculty into permanent, fairly paid positions with benefits a priority.
We will be back at the bargaining table August 22nd and 29th, and we anticipate some heat at those sessions as we hear back from the University on weighty proposals that affect your working conditions as adjuncts at PSU. We know that an active membership is a powerful membership so you are urged to join sessions and let PSU know you are watching!
RSVP to observe Friday August 22nd and 29th.
Solidarity!
Your PSUFA Bargaining Team