Bargaining Mediation Recap: 4/15/2026
The second mediation session showed your bargaining team that, while there are pathways to achieving a fair contract for you and your fellow adjuncts, serious conflicts remain on the most pressing issues. With an unprecedented portion of our membership pledged to strike, your solidarity has already neutralized the threat of some of management’s egregious actions at the bargaining table. PSU’s leadership, though, has demonstrated no commitment to improving your working conditions and, given the opportunity, still seems willing to sacrifice your well-being and the integrity of your students’ education.
Continuing to build collective power to pressure the administration to back down is the MOST important thing you can do RIGHT NOW to get a fair contract and save PSU from President Ann Cudd’s destructive austerity agenda. You can pledge to strike and join your colleagues and our campus allies at the upcoming We Are Worth More picket and march, Wednesday, April 22nd, 12:40–1:30 pm. Though in-person attendance will provide the most powerful show of strength, you can also participate in the virtual picket campaign. (Watch your emails for details!).
As your team continues to press for fair wages and the other critical provisions of your bargaining platform, we need the force of your solidarity to combat the toxic positions that, at this point, the administration and its lawyers still seem committed to:
They are refusing to offer you and your fellow adjuncts assurance that your benefits funds, especially the hardship fund, will remain safe.
They are trying to weaken your job security protections, backing away from some of their more draconian proposals but making no effort to increase the stability of adjunct employment at PSU.
They are offering no enforceable safeguards against violations of your academic freedom.
They are declining to protect you and your work from AI exploitation, refusing contract language that would acknowledge teaching and research as “human-centered activities” and claiming that a restriction on using AI to “replace Adjunct faculty, their expertise, or any part of their work” would infringe upon the administration’s “right to plan, govern, and control the University.”
While your bargaining team has worked to find points of compromise and shared interest, you and your fellow adjuncts know that we cannot accept a contract that capitulates to the poisonous logic of management’s most harmful priorities. Another mediation session has been scheduled for Friday, but your union is prepared to declare “impasse” if the administration still refuses to address your basic needs, a move that will advance us to the next step in the legal process toward a possible strike.
Learn more about the bargaining process and the power of withholding your labor by signing up for a PSUFA Strike School on May 6th or 16th. See where the negotiations currently stand by consulting the bargaining issues tracker or catching up on the latest bargaining recaps here on the PSUFA website.