Bargaining Recap: 3/13/26 & 3/19/26

In the final open sessions of the 2025–2026 negotiations, PSU’s team showed little interest in meeting your demands for a fair contract, and devoted no real effort to preparing for the bargaining process. On March 13th, admin arrived without any proposed articles for your contract, and even when their team presented two counterproposals in the March 19th session, they ignored critical discussions of your wages, benefits, and job security provisions while continuing to stonewall against other positive improvements to your working conditions. These are the disappointing tactics that we can expect from an administration that has, twice now, been held accountable for committing unfair labor practices against you and your fellow adjuncts.

As the recent debates at the bargaining table suggest, there is only so much we can expect from the formal negotiation process, even with the upcoming intervention of an impartial state-appointed mediator in the closed mediation sessions that will begin on April 8. Our success in mediation will still depend on you and your fellow adjuncts joining together in solidarity in the pledge to strike if necessary.

Academic Freedom

In the March sessions, your union continued the fight to enshrine grievable academic freedom protections in your contract. In a proposal for Article 6 (Academic Freedom), your bargaining team attempted to engage with the internal grievance process that admin has insisted is the proper channel for complaints about academic freedom violations, in their view. Initially taking up this institutional mechanism, your team suggested modifications that would ensure its effectiveness in protecting adjunct faculty rights. However, the administration refused this overture, declining any consideration of your bargaining team’s suggested amendments to the internal process. 

As a result, your union reaffirmed the grievance procedure articulated in your contract as the best instrument for protecting your academic freedom. National authorities on the matter consider contractual grievances the most effective tool for defending these rights, and faculty at other institutions in our state, such as University of Oregon, Oregon State University, and Clackamas Community College, currently enjoy such protections. Your bargaining team will not back down from this fight at such a vulnerable moment for academic freedom across the country.

Nondiscrimination and Digital Protections

The only other article of your contract that the University offered a proposal on last month was Article 7 (Member Rights), a collection of important provisions that range from freedom from discrimination to your right to have a say over the impact of digital technology on your working conditions. Once again, the admin team refused any further movement on the nondiscrimination clauses. Though, after conceding to pressure from your Union, PSU has agreed to secure many of the necessary protected classes and activities, critical categories such as citizenship status, hairstyle, and body size remain unacknowledged, and concerning ambiguities persist in the University’s language about protected activities, which might, for instance, leave whistleblowers vulnerable to retaliation. It is disturbing that, in the current political climate, PSU is unwilling to commit to essential contractual safeguards that come at no cost to the University’s budget.

The admin team also once again refused to take up any provisions that would protect you from digital surveillance and AI exploitation. Your union argues that, in the wake of this digital revolution, computer technologies have become inextricably enmeshed in the work of teaching and learning, a reality that makes the University’s use of these platforms and tools a mandatory subject for bargaining. PSU’s refusal to even engage with these contract provisions may be understood as yet another bad-faith action in the negotiations, and your union is considering taking steps to file a complaint, yet again, with the Employment Relations Board if the University does not meaningfully respond to these sections of the article.

The Regional Hiring Policy

The only meaningful movement in the March sessions was the tentative agreement that the parties reached on the memorandum of understanding related to the regional hiring guidance. Though your Union was barred from proposing substantive changes to the policy itself, your team won an important concession on the rule’s impact, with the University allowing out-of-region adjuncts on two-year contracts that end in June 2027 to continue their employment regardless of their location until that date. Your team has also ensured that the terms of the memorandum are subject to grievances if the University violates its provisions.

The Power of Your Solidarity

Though our hope is that the state-appointed mediator might help us break through the deadlocked negotiations, you and your fellow adjuncts are up against a widely unpopular administration that has committed itself to ignoring the needs of students and attacking faculty. As our recent, second Unfair Labor Practice victory has reminded us, the University’s leadership has interfered with your right to union representation, and it has continually exercised bad faith in negotiating your new agreement. We cannot let management’s bargaining team—which is led by an administrator whose testimony was judged to be “evasive and lacking in credibility” by the state’s Employment Relations Board—be the ones to rewrite your contract. Mediation will only succeed once you join together with your colleagues in the pledge to strike, using your solidarity to bust PSU’s bad faith.
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.