Friday’s session marked one of the last times that your bargaining team will be meeting with the University for direct, open negotiations. Though at least one more regular meeting is now expected, the first official mediation session is scheduled for April 8. Our hope is that—with the guidance of a state-appointed mediator—we will be able to resolve the many conflicts that remain between the two parties. However, the mediation phase has triggered a countdown for finalizing a much-needed new agreement. Unless you and your fellow adjuncts can back up  your pro-student, pro-faculty vision with a credible strike threat, state law will allow President Ann Cudd’s administration to refashion your contract in the image of its unpopular agenda, denying you vital improvements to your working conditions and stripping away the hard-won protections and supports that you rely on.

The sessions leading into mediation are critical because they provide opportunities for your bargaining team to refine the terms of the debate, and they also give you and your fellow adjuncts a last chance to glimpse the warped priorities and bad-faith strategies of the team that President Cudd has empowered to determine your working conditions. As those of you who have observed bargaining or kept up with these recaps know, the University’s team is committed to the belief that nothing better is possible for PSU’s adjunct faculty and that nothing you have fought to enshrine in your contract is worth preserving. To that end, as the last session demonstrated, when not ignoring your Union’s proposals, admin relies on weaponized incompetence, concern trolling, and good old-fashioned bureaucratic obfuscation to advance its institutional goals. And that’s not to mention the unethical and outright illegal actions that the administration has committed against you, your fellow adjuncts, and your colleagues in the last year alone.

For these reasons, we cannot let the administration and its lawyers be the ones to impose a contract on you and your fellow adjuncts. While your bargaining team will do everything it can to secure the fair contract that you deserve, that goal is only achievable if you join together with your colleagues in pledging to strike if the University fails to meet your demands for fair pay with preserved benefits funds, job security protections, and academic freedom safeguards.

Academic Freedom

Academic freedom protections remain a critical point of conflict between the parties. Throughout the negotiations, the University has resisted any contractual commitment to defending your rights to intellectual autonomy in the classroom and to free expression in extramural speech off of campus. PSU insists that the non-contractual grievance process through the institution's internal hierarchy would be sufficient for this purpose, an argument that raises serious concerns for adjunct faculty members, who, without tenure or continuous contracts, are especially vulnerable to academic freedom violations.

In response to your Union filing an official request for information, the University’s team reiterated its proposal for Article 6 (Academic Freedom) of your contract, offering it with a presentation that detailed the protocols for the preexisting grievance procedure, a process that was formulated without input from adjunct faculty. While the current grievance procedure does involve a peer hearing in faculty senate, it terminates in a decision by PSU’s president without recourse to arbitration. At a time when many university leaders are compromising the academic freedom of faculty members across the country, we cannot trust that President Ann Cudd or any other administrator will have the courage or desire to protect your rights.

Academic freedom protections remain the sticking point in the admin team’s proposal for Article 16 (Progressive Sanctions), as well. While both parties have come to full agreement on almost every provision of these disciplinary protocols, your Union is demanding a single sentence that would ensure that sanctions not be used to constrain any adjunct faculty member’s rights. In their latest proposal for the article, though, the administration and its lawyers once again refused to accept this language.

Member Rights: From Nondiscrimination to Protection from AI Exploitation

Your team offered another proposal for the critical but eclectic provisions of Article 7 (Member Rights). There are several disputes that remain between PSUFA’s view of these rights and the University’s craven and noncommittal contract language. Thanks to your Union’s successes at the bargaining table, in court, and in collective actions across campus, the admin team has agreed to many of the protected classes that it initially refused to incorporate into the nondiscrimination clauses of this part of the agreement. Once again, though, your team argued for the importance of body size, hairstyle, and citizenship status as crucial categories for adjunct faculty members that ought to be protected. Your Union emphasized that, in the present political moment, it is essential that the University enshrine citizenship status, in particular, as a protected class, making good on its commitment to PSU’s sanctuary campus principles.

Informed by the testimony from our OAI specialist colleagues at a previous session, your bargaining team also advanced even stronger guidelines to defend your digital privacy and to protect you and your work from AI exploitation. These new provisions demand consent from you whenever the University or one of its third-party vendors attempts to use your course materials or any of the content and metadata you have generated through online activity in learning management platforms like Canvas. They protect you and your adjunct colleagues from surveillance or discipline through digital means. And they also stipulate that the University must notify and engage with PSUFA if any changes are made to its policies on artificial intelligence.

Perhaps most critically, the proposed contract language would require PSU to assent to the principle of treating teaching and research as fundamentally “human-centered activities,” constraining the University from adopting AI technologies that might “replace Adjunct faculty, their expertise, or any part of their work.”

The Regional Hiring Policy

Though your Union has fought to protect the jobs of currently employed adjunct faculty members who work from out of state, the administration has asserted its policy prerogative, confining bargaining to the implementation of the regional hiring guidance, not its substantive terms, a process that has been laid out in a memorandum of understanding between both parties. PSUFA has had success, though, in encouraging the University to push out the date for the policy’s execution and extending it a year longer for adjuncts in the middle of their two-year contracts. In its most recent proposal, the admin team agreed that affected adjuncts will not have their appointments terminated before September 15, 2026, and those on two-year contracts cannot face termination under the regional hiring guidance until June 15, 2027.

In addition to the loss of expertise and student support represented by every adjunct appointment that is not renewed, each individual faculty member who is not allowed to continue in their position at PSU will be forced to deal with the material impact of that job loss. Your team, therefore, circulated a survey to affected members in order to understand the kinds of commitments they expect from PSU as they confront what may be the end of their career at the University. One common request was support for finding future employment. Your bargaining team included a provision in the memorandum that would allow adjunct faculty members to reach out to their chairs or supervisors for a summative letter of reference or recommendation that would allow these adjuncts to substantiate their experiences and accomplishments. Though the University was resistant to this commitment, your team will continue to agitate on behalf of adjunct faculty members who, despite being in good standing with the University, have to shoulder the negative impact of this policy.

Job Security Protections

It remains to be seen if the closed session a few weeks ago will have any effect on the University’s campaign to undo the limited job security protections that adjunct faculty have. In previous proposals for Article 8 (Appointments and Assignment Rights), PSU set its sights on eliminating two-year contracts, restricting “assignment rights” commitments to three or fewer courses, and offering no investment in faculty members who will be affected by curricular reforms and program closures. Your bargaining team has continued to reiterate a deal that would hold onto these obligations and strengthen the structures of stability for currently employed adjuncts in exchange for a lengthened initial period for new hires.

Still awaiting a meaningful response to this offer, PSUFA presented a fine-tuned version of its proposal. Your bargaining team has introduced clarified language that would help programs maximize and diversify adjunct courseloads according to the faculty member’s range of expertise. It would also incentivize supervisors to look to currently employed adjuncts before hiring new instructors. Additionally, the revised language would create a mechanism for prioritizing the re-hire of adjuncts who lose their appointments in curricular cuts, connecting faculty members in programs like University Studies to the units that will likely absorb versions of the general education courses once housed in that interdisciplinary department. Though your union has offered these positive reforms in a package of provisions that would also give the University an extended vetting period for new hires, it is unclear if PSU is actually interested in negotiating toward a shared-value goal.

The Power of the Strike Threat

As we head into the mediation process, it is important to remember that employment law in Oregon is built around the threat of workers withdrawing their labor from the public institutions that employ them. All of your bargaining team’s maneuvering at the negotiation table only has force because PSU knows that you and your fellow adjuncts can and will strike if it is necessary. So far, the administration and its lawyers have shown no sign of conceding on the most critical demands that you and your colleagues have voiced. Their actions at the table and beyond have betrayed an appetite for reckless and needlessly harmful decisionmaking that disrupts your working conditions and undermines your ability to deliver the kind of education that your students deserve. You and your fellow adjuncts cannot entrust these people with the power to rewrite your contract. Only your solidarity can stop them. You can prevent President Cudd and her administration from imposing an agreement on you by joining together in the pledge to strike.

Learn more about the bargaining process and the power of withholding your labor by signing up for a PSUFA strike school. See where the negotiations currently stand by consulting the bargaining issues tracker and catching up on the latest bargaining recaps here on the PSUFA website.