Last Friday, we learned that your union has won yet another Unfair Labor Practice complaint against PSU. The state’s Employment Relations Board (ERB) has ordered the university to cease and desist from legal violations and a "failure to bargain in good faith” (colloquially known as bad-faith bargaining), actions that have obstructed you and your fellow adjuncts’ ability to organize collectively as a union and to effectively fight for a much-needed new contract. The ruling came just days after PSU announced its intent to lay off faculty and shutter programs, signaling this administration’s willingness to sacrifice student and faculty well-being in pursuit of its austerity agenda. Even before last year's unfair labor practice victory, when the state board declared that the administration had unlawfully withheld critical adjunct benefits funds, your union had already filed a complaint about the university’s failure to provide prompt and reliable information in line with its statutory and contractual obligations.
The latest ERB ruling found that the university flouted its responsibilities to you and your fellow adjuncts:
PSU neglected its duty to provide basic information about members, such as detailed lists of newly hired adjuncts, in a timely and accurate fashion.
PSU failed to promptly and meaningfully respond to your bargaining team’s requests for information on critical topics related to your job security protections, impeding the team’s ability to negotiate your new contract.
The decision makes clear that the university has an obligation to rectify its information sharing practices, describing a revealing pattern of bad-faith conduct by the team of administrators that your union has been contending with for over a year at the bargaining table. In the words of the Employment Relations Board, this administration has demonstrated a “cavalier approach” to some of its basic obligations to you and your fellow adjuncts. PSU has delegated the power to negotiate your contract to leaders like the Vice Provost of Faculty Success, Chris Monsere, whose testimony before the board was deemed “evasive and lacking in credibility.” As we head into mediation next month, this ruling provides us with a potent reminder that we are up against an administration that cannot be trusted to prioritize your interests or the interests of your students.
While PSU messages a grim narrative of necessary budget cuts, the university’s top leadership has allocated time and resources to interfere with your union, thwarting your bargaining team’s ability to improve contract provisions like your job security protections, a major priority for you and your colleagues that would empower adjunct faculty as a more stable source of support for students. Instead of investing in you, the administration would rather spend public money on legal fees, shirking PSU’s legal, contractual, and ethical responsibilities to its workers, and to responsible stewardship of public money.
This unfair labor practice ruling is a strike back against the administration’s reckless anti-union efforts, another milestone in a larger struggle for worker rights here at PSU and at public colleges and universities across Oregon. The news of ERB’s decision arrived just days after our colleagues at PCC, many of whom are adjuncts serving at both institutions, began their ongoing strike action. And, in the time since then, PSU’s own undergraduate workers have announced the success of their unionization campaign, which received 97.6% support, transforming Portland State into a wall-to-wall union institution.
Our ruling also shows that, despite the many obstacles that PSU has put in front of you, you and your fellow adjuncts will continue to persevere, organizing with one another in the face of an antagonistic management, and building an unprecedented strike-readiness campaign that speaks to the intensity and power of your solidarity. When you join your colleagues in pledging to strike, you ensure that your contract will not fall prey to the administration’s credibility-defying evasions, its cavalier noncompliance, or its bad-faith manipulations. Once again, it is clear that when we fight back together, we win together.