Bargaining Recap: 12/19/2025

Instead of waiting for President Ann Cudd to be supernaturally terrorized into caring about adjuncts over the holiday break, your PSUFA team took time to meet with members of her administration for what was the last bargaining session of 2025. At the meeting, your Union presented its proposal for rethinking the regional hiring policy, and it heard back from Admin on such issues as academic freedom, union privileges, and adjunct protections from discrimination and exploitation. The session also set the stage for a tentative agreement on a matter that PSUFA has spent years pioneering and fighting for—paid orientations for new adjunct faculty.

Regional Hiring Policy

Since PSU announced its intention to implement a regional hiring policy—a guideline to prioritize employing faculty and staff members who reside in Oregon or Washington—PSUFA has demanded that the preference rules be subject to negotiation at the bargaining table. Though your Union has a shared interest in encouraging future hires who can play a role on campus and in the local community, PSUFA is committed to protecting the jobs of those adjuncts who already work remotely from out-of-state locations. In responding to the University’s proposed memorandum of understanding on the matter, your Union explained the unintended impact that the proposed form of the rules would have, harming individual faculty members and their students and representing a serious loss of perspective and expertise critical to the University’s minority-serving mission. In light of these concerns and the operational difficulties that the University has already faced in attempting to roll out this policy, PSUFA has proposed that adjuncts currently employed from out of state be exempted from the new rules.

Academic Freedom

Months ago, PSU had attempted to use an underhanded technicality to dodge even addressing academic freedom issues in this round of contract negotiations. Shamed into reversing course, Admin presented their latest proposal on Article 6 (Academic Freedom) still refusing to accept any enforceable language to protect adjuncts from interference and retaliation. Minimizing these concerns, the Vice Provost of Faculty Success at first claimed that he has never received any complaints alleging academic freedom violations during his time in office—a claim he retracted later in the day in light of the concerning suspension of a full-time PSU faculty member for extramural speech on Palestine. Admin’s arguments fail to take seriously the active threats to academic freedom within higher education across the country, and their team refuses to acknowledge the precarious predicament of adjunct faculty, who have neither the protections of tenure nor the security of continuous employment. Your bargaining team demanded that the administration show some contractual commitment to safeguarding these rights either in the language of Article 6 or in the just-cause procedures stipulated in Article 16 (Progressive Sanctions) or the job security provisions of Article 8 (Appointments and Assignment Rights), giving the University a multitude of options for meeting a critical vulnerability for adjunct faculty at PSU.

Union Prerogatives and Member Rights

Admin also presented on an eclectic set of concerns related to union privileges and general member rights. In their presentation on Article 3 (Union Rights and Prerogatives), their team continued its puzzling refusal to grant building access to any future staff members that PSUFA might employ. While they showed some movement on a provision to allow adjuncts to ask if responsibilities assigned to them during a strike action by another unit would violate the picket line, Admin refused to commit to any contractual obligation for the supervisor to answer that question or for the adjunct to be protected from any potential retaliation. The University’s team also proposed language that would limit the administration’s legal responsibility for properly managing union dues deductions. Currently facing an unfair labor practice complaint filed by your Union earlier last year, PSU is attempting to indemnify itself from the kind of systematic error it committed when it failed to implement the new dues structure voted on by PSUFA membership in May 2022, causing a critical financial loss for your Union that Admin has refused to remedy. In their presentation on Article 7 (Member Rights), the Admin team showed signs of accepting at least some of the protected classes and activities that your Union has been fighting for. However, PSU has continued to refuse to make any contractual commitments for workplace technology and privacy, failing to address concerns about digital surveillance or exploitation of your course materials and Canvas activity data for AI training.

Paid Orientations

The major success marked by this session, though, was the final-stage exchange of proposals on Article 4 (Orientation and Onboarding). Long before the University even acknowledged the need to provide orientations for adjuncts, your Union began organizing and offering these essential events in order to welcome and provide guidance to new members of the adjunct faculty. Since that time, PSUFA has fought to make orientations subject to compensation. After months of bargaining on this issue, PSU has finally conceded, with both teams at last committing to a tentative agreement that will ensure that newly hired adjuncts have consistent access to paid orientations that will help support their professional success at the University.

Pledge to Strike

Despite this incremental gain, though, PSU has shown no sign of relenting on academic freedom protections, fair pay, uncompromised benefits funds, and job security. Your collective action is the only pathway we have to an agreement that will empower adjuncts. After nearly a year of bad faith obstruction and unlawful manipulation from the Administration, you and your fellow adjuncts will need to demonstrate a credible strike threat in order to force these much-needed concessions on the University. It is up to you to ensure that 2026 is remembered as a year when, in the face of rank administrative malfeasance, PSU’s adjuncts stood up, fought, and won the kind of contract that they deserve. To do that, sign up to attend a strike school and join your colleagues in making the pledge to strike if the University fails to meet your demands.