Every college instructor has had the experience...you've researched your material, worked out the format of the class, and spent hours preparing the best way to present it. Yet you still find yourself standing across the room from a group of people who seem reluctant to engage in a productive discussion. Part of our job as professors is to have a toolkit ready for managing situations like this. So, on Tuesday, when admin met our proposals with silence, one of our team suggested they try the classroom technique of telling us one good thing and one bad thing. It was meant as a joke (sort of), but your blogger is going to take that advice to frame Thursday’s report. Because Thursday was…..frustrating.
The 6th floor of the Market Building saw some much needed sunshine on Wednesday. We continued talking about the issues that matter most to members. The morning was all about benefits, and the afternoon returned to the issue of pay parity. Both sides of the table introduced proposals, Girl Scout cookies, and only a few eye-rolls.
Here is a brief-ish summary of the highlights...
[Note: In an effort to keep our members informed as PSUFA enters collective bargaining negotiations, we will be publishing daily updates with observations about each session. On Tuesday, PSUFA presented 3 proposals related to pay parity, health care coverage, and compensation for late and cancelled course assignments. We proposed raising the minimum per credit pay so that it's equal to what a full-time non-tenure-track faculty receives for the same work. This included a pay increase aligned with faculty rank, (as our current adjunct ranks don't correlate to anything monetary) and a structure for cost of living increases. Regarding health insurance, our proposal was that adjunct faculty have access to an employer subsidized plan (similar to what is offered at PCC). And finally, PSUFA proposed increasing pay and timeframes for late contracts and course cancellations, making sure adjunct faculty get compensation if their contracts come less than 5 weeks before the start of the term and that they are compensated for prep time if a class is cancelled at the last minute.]
The nadir of a long, frustrating first day of negotiating came when a Portland State Dean thoughtfully explained to the PSUFA Bargaineers the institution for which we all work exists on a “hand to mouth” basis.
PSU's perpetual status as the ugly stepsister of those other schools aside, this is a phrase no one making six figures should ever utter in the company of adjuncts. Particularly moments after learning that a quarter of PSUFA members report living in households making less than $25,000 a year, and having heard the testimonies of a half dozen adjuncts about the difficulties they face gaining adequate health care, clarifying, to borrow the words of one PSUFA member, "The whole school food chain.” The bargaining team leaders politely but firmly stepped them back from this remark.
In an effort to keep our members informed as PSUFA enters collective bargaining negotiations, we will be publishing daily updates with observations about each session. The following offers some general reflections on Friday's pre-bargaining meeting to set the agenda and review the terms of the negotiation process.
During a team building excursion to the stormy northern Oregon coast in January the PSUFA Bargaining Team adopted the name Bargaineers after a particularly strenuous afternoon spent rowing dories through the surf beyond the Grave of the Unknown Sailor. But that constitutes a different story, one which I do not have time to entirely fabricate at the moment, so I will turn the focus of this Bargaineer Blog toward PSUFA’s week of economic reopener negotiations with Portland State University (hereafter known as Admin). On your behalf, fellow adjuncts, we have embarked upon our periodic campaign to get more adequate compensation for your labor.
