Bargaining Recap: 1/16/26 & 1/23/26

With the anniversary of one full year at the bargaining table looming, your PSUFA team returned to the negotiations for two sessions in January that confirmed what we know about the University’s bad-faith agenda. It is clear that earnest efforts to deliberate with the administration and its lawyers will not be enough to win the fair contract that you and your fellow adjuncts deserve.

President Ann Cudd’s administration has demonstrated a track record of unlawful and reckless actions that have not only broken trust with PSU’s faculty and staff, but that have also upset our students’ faith in the University’s leadership. Though your Union has secured some tentative agreement wins in this round of bargaining—such as more accessible grievance procedures and regular paid orientations for newly hired adjuncts—Admin’s team has failed to take seriously the most critical issues faced by adjunct faculty members, continuing to threaten the limited protections that you currently have, from assignment rights and two-year contracts to resources like the Adjunct Financial Assistance Fund (AFAF).

Our only viable way forward now is for you to join your fellow adjuncts in collective action, pledging to strike if PSU fails to meet your demands for fair pay, preserved benefits funds, improved job security, and academic freedom safeguards.

Fair Pay

Both parties submitted competing economic packages in the January sessions. While Admin’s bare minimum proposal for Article 12 (Salaries and Payroll) betrays the limitations of the University’s commitment to the material wellbeing of adjuncts, your PSUFA bargaining team countered with another argument for the principle of equal pay for equal work. In this proposal, your Union called for a raise of the per credit minimum to $1,584 with a 3.3% cost-of-living allowance, a higher percentage than in previous versions in order to keep pace with regional price increases.

Just as they have refused to take the prospect of meaningful raises seriously, the Admin team also rebuffed PSUFA’s proposed reform to the adjunct sick leave program articulated in this article. Resisting your team’s effort to transform sick time into a shareable resource, the University seems to have embraced the limited use of paid sick leave benefits as a virtue for its budgetary bottom line. Stymieing changes to the program, Admin has ensured that vulnerable adjuncts will only have access to a limited allotment of sick leave time, while the bulk of adjunct leave hours (especially leave for those who teach remotely) will remain an unused resource by design.

Benefits Funds

Alongside their proposals for wages, both teams’ packages also addressed the benefits funds included in Article 13 (Education Fund and Professional Development), with your Union fighting back against significant cuts to these reservoirs of support. PSUFA is nearing an agreement with the University on the changes to the structure of the education fund, which offsets the costs of taking courses here at PSU, aligning that resource with the staff fee structure enjoyed by other campus workers. However, important battles remain for the other benefits funds. Your team countered Admin’s proposal to eliminate the technology fund, arguing that the University still has offered no alternative mechanism to ensure that adjunct faculty members have the equipment needed to succeed in their work. PSUFA has also resisted Admin’s effort to reduce the professional development fund and restrain eligibility for its use, striving to make sure that these resources remain accessible for adjuncts as they enrich their skills and knowledge through research, conference attendance, certifications, and other career-related projects. Refusing to materially invest in equity, PSU has rejected your team’s proposed Minority Serving Institution fund, which would have given financial support to the visible and invisible work that adjunct faculty members do to collaborate with colleagues and support students from underrepresented backgrounds.

Adjunct Financial Assistance Fund (AFAF)—the “Economic Hardship” Fund

Nowhere is the University’s disinvestment from equity more blatant than in its campaign against the AFAF hardship funds stipulated in Article 15 (Adjunct Financial Assistance Fund) of your contract. After PSU’s callous and illegal withholding of these emergency monies last summer, Admin has quietly continued its assault on the AFAF benefit. In the first of the January sessions, the administration and its lawyers attempted to present their economics package without even acknowledging the existence of this essential fund. It was only after your team directly asked for their Article 15 counterproposal that Admin admitted that they were still committed to eliminating it. PSUFA has refused to let the University pocket veto this critical resource. Your team once again made the case for the hardship fund as a sacred trust for adjuncts, a safety net that provides a measure of security to faculty lives and that, by extension, results in greater success and equity for PSU’s students. Your Union will not back down from the fight to preserve this fund.

Job Security

After months of waiting for a response to your Union’s proposals on Article 8 (Appointments and Assignment Rights)—the article of your contract that provides mechanisms for adjunct job security—the University finally responded to these provisions with a plan that still poses a significant threat to the limited protections that you and your fellow adjuncts enjoy. Admin’s previous plan was a draconian system that would have locked most adjunct faculty members into probationary status with no stability. Though pushback from your Union forced the University to capitulate on some of its more egregious revisions, PSU’s latest version of the article would still eviscerate the limited safeguards that exist in current contract language. Admin wants to trim down contract lengths and divide you and your colleagues into a hierarchical scheme that sounds a lot like airline classes—with “first tier” and “priority” assignment status granted to some, while probational adjuncts are consigned to the institutional equivalent of coach. Instead of taking up meaningful reforms that would strengthen your access to stable, consistent employment, PSU is seeking to end two-year contracts and to limit its assignment rights commitments to no more than three courses per year for you and your fellow adjuncts.

Academic Freedom

Just as PSU has shown an indifference toward the realities of adjunct faculty working conditions, the administration and its lawyers seem woefully out of touch with the nation-wide campaign against universities that threatens the integrity of higher education across the country. Your Union emphatically made the case for the necessity of enforceable academic freedom protections in your contract to preemptively secure you and your work from these assaults. At a time when faculty at other institutions have faced repercussions for actions ranging from teaching students about critical race theory and trans identity to assigning passages from Plato, your bargaining team has formulated protections against such threats that would not only empower you and your fellow adjuncts but that would also secure the University against the undue influence of those who seek to dismantle academic freedom as a principle. Highlighting these national cases, as well as PSU’s own capitulation to bad-faith pressure, your Union has stood firm, insisting that the University provide an actionable mechanism for reinforcing its commitment to academic freedom as the necessary precondition for knowledge production and dissemination on this campus. Though Admin has remained resistant, your Union has invited PSU’s team to assent to contractual language in Article 6 (Academic Freedom), Article 8 (Appointments and Assignment Rights), or Article 16 (Progressive Sanctions), offering a variety of methods for the University to make good on its commitments to the core freedom essential to the mission of higher education.

Regional Hiring Policy

In addition to other issues that remain unresolved in the negotiations surrounding your contract, your Union has also been bargaining over a memorandum of understanding that will shape the impact that the University's new regional hiring policy will have on adjuncts. In previous sessions, your PSUFA team has fought for a fundamental reconsideration of the policy that would protect the jobs of all currently employed adjuncts who reside out of state. Despite your Union’s efforts, Admin has managed to cling to laws that insulate its policy-making prerogatives, confining the negotiations to the hiring guidance’s implementation instead of its substance. Within this narrowed aperture for action, your Union is insisting on a timeline and procedures that are respectful of those adjunct faculty members who will be affected and that will preserve the integrity of existing contracts, ensuring that PSU’s machinations do not open a loophole that could have negative consequences for all adjuncts.

Strike Readiness
Your PSUFA bargaining team continues to fight hard against an administration that seems determined to dismantle the already limited structures of support and security that exist for adjuncts. However, we are exhausting our ability to advance adjunct interests through formal negotiation alone. Now is the time to show PSU that you and your fellow adjuncts will not accept President Ann Cudd’s reckless and bad-faith campaign against us. Join your colleagues in pledging to strike if your demands for fair pay, preserved benefits funds, improved job security, and academic freedom safeguards are not met.