In sum, Friday’s bargaining session was fraught, hot, and, apparently for management … triggering?!  

After over a month away from the bargaining table, your PSUFA bargaining team returned to negotiations on Friday. Adjuncts showed up virtually in record numbers to observe Admin’s excuses for continuing to withhold summer Professional Development and Adjunct Financial Assistance Funds, and to hear Management’s proposals on working conditions and economics, none of which Admin produced over the intervening month. 

Your union kicked off the session with its 5th counter-proposal on Article 4, which covers orientation and onboarding for adjuncts. The teams are nearing agreement, and your union maintains that adjuncts deserve reasonable and incentivizing compensation for attending their one-time new hire orientation. 

After presenting Article 4, Admin provided counters on Articles 10 (Grievances) and 11 (Arbitration), and then unveiled their solution to the stalled summer funds in the form of a package of proposals on Articles 13 & 15. Together, these articles cover the adjunct support funds, including Professional Development, Faculty Education, Technology, and Adjunct Financial Assistance. So, rather than signing an agreement to simply and humanely resolve the current issue around summer funds, Admin is using this opportunity not only to enact continued harm on Adjuncts actively waiting on their funds but also to pressure PSUFA into accepting language that would threaten adjunct access to these resources in the future. It’s also unfortunate that Friday’s session was taken up with this distraction manufactured by the University that kept us from meaningfully negotiating over our next CBA. 

A few highlights (or lowlights) from Management's proposal: 

  • Complete eradication of the technology fund, which is the only source of codified technology support (such as laptops) for adjuncts, including adjuncts who teach fully asynchronously 

  • No increase to the Adjunct Financial Assistance Fund—essentially a de facto reduction to the emergency funds available to adjuncts, given inflation

  • No more rollover of unspent funds to subsequent years

  • Narrowing of eligibility criteria for qualifying adjuncts

  • No mention at all of the $5,000 Minority Serving Institution Fund that PSUFA proposed

After a brief caucus, PSUFA returned with a response directly from adjuncts—in the form of powerful testimony about the impact of the withheld PD and AFAF funds. Your union then outlined, fund by fund, the stark differences between PSU’s proposal, PSUFA’s proposals (from back in May), and the current CBA. Unfortunately, PSUFA never completed the presentation, as Admin grew more and more agitated, eventually interrupting the presentation to provide “corrections,” feign concern about the current AFAF process (which they signed off on in the last round of negotiations), and argue about the technicalities of the unreleased summer funds. 

Eventually, PSUFA pointed out that Admin had been non-responsive to multiple emails and solutions (including a draft memorandum of understanding) because of their vacations, at which point Admin called for an emergency caucus, claimed to be “triggered,” and refused to return to the bargaining table for the rest of the day. Unwilling to address these issues further in front of an open audience, Admin requested a series of sidebar conversations over the next three hours, approaching PSUFA with multiple iterations of a deal to address the summer funds, none of which your union signed because they all contained poison pills affecting your future working conditions. 

Given how little it took for Management to erupt, it’s clear your March on the Boss emails, the turnout of adjuncts at bargaining, and the Unfair Labor Practice your union filed are wearing on Admin. We can’t let the pressure off now; here are three actions to take: 

And don’t forget to sign up for Strike School!