Fall Orientation 2020 Recap

On Friday, September 25, 2020, PSUFA held our first virtual orientation in conjunction with PSU. It went really well! We shared a ton of resources for both new and returning adjuncts. Although much of this information is available on our website, we still wanted to share everything discussed for those who couldn’t make it. We have a short recap here. Thanks to everyone who came, and to our PSU guests for sharing resources.

PSUFA Introduction

PSU Is a Union University 

There are multiple unions that make up PSU. One way to think about unions is that they are “tiny democracies.” PSUFA has elected council positions. We advocate for our members. We administer benefits (more on that later).  We negotiate for better pay and benefits. We work to improve your position at PSU (and as adjuncts, our conditions can always be improved). There are roughly 1,300 to 1,400 adjuncts who teach at PSU. We are by far the largest group of people who teach at PSU and are essential to how the university runs and functions. The other two teaching unions are AAUP and GEU. To become a member sign up here: https://awa.knack.aft.org/online-membership#psufa-member/


Union membership meetings

These are like our town halls. They take place every term. This is where you can share your input as a union member. We want to know what you want us to work on, or bargain for, or put our time toward. We make decisions based on what our members want us to do. 

Bargaining

We’re bargaining for fair pay, more security and better working conditions right now. It’s a very long process! You can join us at the bargaining table by being an observer. Click here for more information. 

Annual Reports

Check out all of our annual reports—including the latest from the 2019-20 year—online here. 

PSU Resources

Office of Information Technology (presented by Kirk Kelly, Vice President of Information Technology, kkelly@pdx.edu)

OIT offers full office of tech service through their website. They are open from 8 a.m. until midnight every day. They can help you via telephone, chat, or email. We have many student and union OIT employees! The help desk can also help you work with the technology that is in your home. If you’re struggling with your technology at home, please reach out. 

Some links: 

• PSU Help Center Portal

• OIT Support

• OIT guide to working remotely National list of free and low-cost internet

Computer Labs and Printers (presented by Kirk Kelly)

There are several computer labs open on campus. Check here to see their availability.

You can also print at these labs. You have 500 printing credits per term. That said, each department also has its own resources when it comes to computer access and printing, so check with your departments as well to see what is available.

Library Checkout (presented by Kirk Kelly)

You can check out a lot, including equipment like laptops and wifi hotspots, from the library. These are available for students, but also for adjunct faculty. Please note the audio-visual section. This is just for faculty, including adjunct faculty! 

Disability Resource Center (presented by Ariana Jacob, PSUFA co-chair, psufa.ariana@gmail.com)

Some of your students may have disability accommodations, and the DRC will help make those accommodations. They are also a resource if you need support. Sometimes it can feel difficult, but they are there to help you and your students. 

Testing Center (presented by Ariana Jacob)

If you provide a test but a student can’t make it during your class time, the testing center can proctor a test for your student. 

CARE Team (presented by Ariana Jacob)

If you notice any student is having significant life challenges, e.g. outbreaks in class, or they are not doing well, the CARE team can reach out to the student and see what they need. As professors, we are mandatory reporters, so if a student tells us something—like if there is violence around them—you can recommend they go to CARE team, who doesn’t have to report in same way we do. 

Benefits

PSUFA benefits (presented by Jacob Richman, PSUFA operations chair, psufa.jacob@psufa.org )

There are three PSUFA benefits, all of which are offered once a term. You can read in depth about them at 
https://psufa.org/benefits.

• The Adjunct Faculty Assistance Fund provides financial support for part-time faculty and researchers at PSU who are experiencing financial hardship.

• The Faculty Education Fund offsets the cost of tuition for part-time faculty who wish to take career-related PSU courses.

• The Professional Development Fund provides grants to part-time faculty members to cover the cost of professional development opportunities including travel, conferences, workshops, research, and more.

PSU HR Resources (Presented by Nathan Klinkhammer, PSU HR, askhrc@pdx.edu, nklink2@pdx.edu)

• Sick Leave: Adjuncts accrue sick leave at 1 hour per 30 hours work. You can see how that accrues online in your Banweb account. Contact HR for more information for when and how you can use it. We also have new emergency paid sick leave. A new page on that! We tried to front and center COVID-19 information. 

• Retirement: Adjuncts begin to qualify for some retirement benefits after passing a state mandated 600 hours worked in one calendar year. You will be notified and asked to make a choice between a traditional PERS pension plan, or the ORP optional retirement plan, which is done through TIAA and Fidelity. It’s a one-time irrevocable decision. There’s not a wrong choice, but there is probably a choice that works better for you. We encourage you to do research and be active about your decision. 

• Employee Assistance Program: Free program that can provide personal and financial counselling, discounts on products, and many other useful services. EAP Cascades Center does a great job of accumulating information. There’s a lot here. Worth taking time to look through to see various benefits. Pick “PEB” from dropdown (PSU isn’t on there). Definitely an overlooked benefit!

Helpful Links: 

• Adjunct Resource Page

• Emergency Paid Sick Leave (new)

Student Health and Counseling Center (SHAC)All employees, including adjuncts, can now get COVID testing there by appointment

Office of Academic Innovation

Presented by Janelle Voegele and Raiza Dottin)

OAI is what other universities sometimes call a teaching and learning center. We have digital learning resources, online learning, face-to-face learning, assessment, service learning, multimedia resources, all of that. Your home for teaching at PSU. Our office is in SMU, but we’re fully remote right now. 

Faculty Help Desk

You can get help via phone, chat, email, or live forum. Can help with D2L issues, but also with general teaching issues. We also have virtual teaching consultations. Course and program assessment work. Helping you think about good processes for feedback. 

OAI+ 

This is a new site to help with remote teaching. Guides that are meant to be DIY guides, usable strategies 

Professional growth: 

• Certification of Innovation in College Teaching. Originally devised for graduate students, but is also great for adjuncts. 

• Academic Innovation MiniFund Program. 

• Faculty Academic Writing Program: 

• Faculty Book Club

Workshops

We have lots of workshops! Check out our calendar to see what’s coming up.

Adjunct Professional Evaluation

After teaching five four-credit classes or 20 credits, adjuncts are eligible for a 2-year contract. OAI can help with this process in terms of course observation, writing a teaching statement, and more.

Membership

Our union is only as strong as our members. Our union is you! And the best way to do that is to actively sign up to be a dues-paying member. Please sign up now: https://awa.knack.aft.org/online-membership#psufa-member/


Q&A

Tell me more about the two-year contract thing. 

After teaching 20 credits or for three year, whichever comes first, you will get an offer to possibly get a two-year contract after a professional evaluation. Jaime Wood at OAI is a great resource. The two-year contract does not guarantee a specific number, but it guarantees the amount of teaching you were doing prior to process. (Although “guarantee” is a strong word.) It’s something that is actually pretty unique for adjuncts, and something PSUFA specifically gained during bargaining. 

Is it possible to purchase healthcare via PSU as an adjunct? 

At the moment, no. We are working on a healthcare task force for a number of years to solve this issue, but there is nothing to share yet. 

We can recommend using the free Oregon healthcare.gov navigator to help find the best deals on private insurance that meets your needs. (For instance there is an educator’s deduction that you can use on your OHP application to help you qualify if you are close to the income cut off.)

Select “Market Place” and add your address for a list of navigators near you.

Once I become a dues-paying member, do I need to annually renew my membership?  No, once you sign up, your membership is ongoing. 

Can you tell me more about retirement? 

PERS works on a calendar year, and in order to qualify for the PERS option (OPSRP), adjunct instructors and professors need to reach 600 hours. This roughly equates to 17 credit hours of teaching. Those teaching hours could be at multiple public institutions: For example, if you teach 12 credits at PSU and 8 credits at PCC in a calendar year, you’d be eligible for PERS. The non-PERS option, ORP, has no hours-based ongoing eligibility requirement.

There are two options for retirement: OPSRP and ORP. OPSRP is the traditional PERS option, which means that you are paid out in a pension fund as well as through your IAP account. ORP is not a pension fund. Instead, it is equal to the value of your employer account upon retirement. In other words, it is a pool of money that you accrue during your working career. Click here to read and learn more. Email Eli Ronick at PSUFA if you have more questions (psufa.eli@gmail.com).

Bargaining Update, September 18

A long week of fires and more political mayhem seemed to affect folks in various ways, but after a quick greeting we all pledged to attempt to do our best work under the conditions we find ourselves in. We were not anticipating, of course, the death of Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the end of our day together (more on that below).

PSUFA and PSU came to the virtual table on Friday, September 18. The meeting began with discussion of contract language and the biases (inherent and implicit) that adjuncts face in their profession. PSUFA has worked diligently to include language in the contract that speaks to this reality. The intention in doing so is to pave a path forward for adjuncts to be more respected and better included at PSU. Several members of our PSUFA bargaining team were given a platform to speak about the challenges they’ve faced on this front and their difficulties reflect those of their adjunct peers. These included being invited and/or asked to attend workshops or do work without pay, the stigma regarding being an adjunct and the struggle to find full-time work, and, finally, not feeling that we have a voice in our departments’ decision-making process despite teaching the most classes at PSU. One could venture to guess that our bargaining team may have felt a bit of catharsis.

In general, PSUFA anticipated PSU to be further along in meeting our data requests, in meeting our requests for further clarification on previously drafted language, and in being prepared to specifically address our economic proposals during economic discussions. While we were disappointed, our PSUFA team leadership quickly moved to reset the agenda for the day!

PSUFA is continuing to press PSU for clear, transparent processes and documentation of new adjunct hires at PSU. As it stands, we hope to secure PSU’s commitment to regularly reporting new adjunct hires within 10 days of employment. This helps not only our effort to receive a clear roster of members and potential members, but also demonstrates PSU’s capacity for managing adjunct employee relations. This may give us confidence that potential onboarding and training of new hires might occur in a far more substantial way than is currently practiced, and is also presently being bargained over. We know, it is quite surreal to be bargaining for our own training!

PSUFA then continued to negotiate a potential Preamble to the Collective Bargaining Agreement. As previous bargaining updates narrated, we encouraged this collaborative work as one method for creating a strong statement of purpose and rationale for addressing the “adjunct crisis” in higher education as part and parcel of our collective work. We presented a longer Preamble draft to PSU in prior meetings and they responded with a commitment to this document and various edits and clarifications. We noted appreciation of their work and relatively productive edits on our now shared draft. We still disagree on the use of “bias” in the statement; PSUFA thinks “bias” is an appropriate way to predicate some of our experiences at PSU, which was met with concern by PSU because of the overall implications of that term. PSUFA strongly indicated as a full team how this is, in fact, what it feels like. We will continue to work on this document in smaller group meetings prior to the next bargaining session. 

We hoped to gain agreement and consensus on the more clear and transparent language of Progressive Sanctions and discipline at PSU. Unfortunately, after one month of consideration, PSU is still not ready (or willing) to agree on this. We do anticipate, however, a breakthrough prior to the next bargaining session. 

We also negotiated “assignment rights”: how these should function (as opposed to how it presently is variously managed by Departments);  how appointment order should work according to our more accurate assessments of the prior Collective Bargaining Agreement; and how this should be tracked. We are moving slowly through these issues and agree we are at least making good technical progress. At present, there is less disagreement on the “why” but instead PSU remains flummoxed by the “how.” 

PSUFA endeavors to continue to both educate and explain. In addition, as part of our rights, we are close to securing an agreement on a new role for adjunct faculty members to be invited to departmental or program faculty meetings. There has been disagreement on the actual role this member would perform at the meeting, but we strongly believe this marks the beginning of a sea change in “who counts as faculty?” at PSU. Specifically, PSU is opposed to adjuncts freely attending faculty meetings as unpaid observers; they instead want to shepherd a process where an adjunct faculty is selected by the department chair or supervisor and attends as a paid representative (as per our last bargaining agreement’s hard-won provision providing remuneration for extra-instructional work).

We knew the major economic discussion was on the agenda and we were prepared and ready for the difficult, meaningful discussion about wages, professional development funds, benefits, and other vital economic issues. For several months, it has been PSUFA’s priority to discuss this issue, specifically wage equity. PSU has consistently voiced how they are in a difficult economic situation, both because of COVID-19 and, generally, because of declining enrollment. 

PSUFA spent ample clarifying that despite forecasts of economic disaster, enrollment at PSU is only down 1%. Over the last five years, PSU’s overall revenue and expense budget has consistently been at odds with each other. Our colleagues at PSU AAUP, the union for the tenure-track and fixed-term faculty, prepared a chart recently included below that shows PSU has been consistently increasing in revenue, despite pleas from PSU that there has been an economic crisis. See the graph below for the totally generated revenue at PSU over the last five years (the 2019-2020 final budget has not yet been completed):

Furthermore the PSU end-of-year budgets going back to 2014-15 show a surplus for the last five years. These details can be seen below:

Source

Taking into account that adjuncts account for only about 2% of the total PSU budget, PSUFA pushed to substantially increase the already-low wages we receive. PSUFA sought PSU’s opinion on the current economic situation at PSU while planning to advocate for substantial pay increases. The process we are enjoined in, however, encourages a slower and more deliberative parsing of “shared interests” and “non-positional” bargaining. Although we have committed to this process, we still recognize the slow pace may not be helping our cause. In that light, our leadership candidly and forcefully explained how difficult it was to understand PSU’s ongoing hesitancy to “lay the options on the table.” PSU, again after detailing another “frightening” look at the financial crisis, deferred back to the idea that they need more time to “understand the process” for bargaining economic issues as we move forward.

This was frustrating for our team but, frankly, we also anticipated it and were ready with economic options and sound costing models, criticism of the incorrect enrollment rates PSU relied upon for their financial estimates (as noted above), and we questioned the endless mural of dire financial straits presented by PSU. At this point, our Facilitator encouraged us to craft a process and refined topic list for our next intensive bargaining session in October (where we now anticipate economic issues as our primary focus) and where bread and butter will set the table (we will bring the cool water and salt!)

As we worked to set the agenda for the next session, word of RBG’s death coursed through our meeting. PSUFA leadership honored this moment but also encouraged us to finish our good work for the day, which we did. Thank you for your continued support as we continue our Bargaining into Fall Term.

 In solidarity. 

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Our next bargaining session is Friday, October 9 (NOT October 2, as previously reported). Come and observe and support your fellow adjuncts as we bargain for better pay, improved working conditions, and more transparency from PSU! 

Read all of our 2020 bargaining coverage here.

Bargaining Update, September 4

On Friday, September 4, PSU and PSUFA returned to bargaining after a two-week hiatus. Progress was made, though not as much as we had hoped for. The bargaining team was able to clearly and effectively delineate important issues to PSU that will help us in the long term, which we’ll get into below. Specifically, PSUFA spoke of how adjuncts have historically been treated at PSU and outlined what we will continue to push for in terms of better treatment for adjuncts at our institution. It became clear over the four-hour bargaining session that PSU will need to pay more than lip service to adjuncts if we are to come to an agreement.

Bargaining began with PSUFA’s continued push for PSU to find a mechanism to share info on new hires. It is stipulated in the in the recently passed House Bill 2016 that employers must provide this info within 10 days of their hire. We have made considerable progress with PSU on this issue in prior bargaining sessions, and it is a particularly key one for new adjuncts. The fact that PSU has not yet shared full details on new Fall 2020 hires with us puts these adjuncts in a disadvantageous situation as they begin their work. It is not uncommon for new adjunct hires to receive little to no training on many aspects of teaching at PSU such as working with DRC, OAI, as well as learning of the benefits available to them through our union. PSUFA reiterated that this is just one step in the bigger goal of integrating adjunct faculty in a meaningful way into the PSU academic community.

We then spent nearly the entirety of the remaining bargaining session on Article 7 in our contract. Central to the discussion was the fact that we as adjuncts are often barred from department-level meetings. Of course, inclusion and meaningful participation in department meetings helps any faculty member better perform their work. Many adjuncts have expressed communication difficulties with their departments, and PSUFA believes that allowing attendance and including the perspective of adjuncts at department-level meetings would help to improve this. In prior bargaining sessions, PSU was amenable to including language that would allow adjunct faculty to attend meetings and contribute in some capacity, even if in a limited role. In this session, however, they expressed a litany of concerns, many of which PSUFA characterized as unfounded. The concerns ranged from interfering with the Senate Faculty Bylaws (there is no language there that bars adjuncts from attending meetings), to compensation (we aren’t asking that adjuncts be compensated for attendance), to concern from department chairs and faculty about having adjuncts present (our participation would help both departments to be more transparent and adjuncts to be better informed and thus, better perform our work). Several PSUFA bargaining team members acknowledged each of these points, and then dismantled them.

All in all, there was frustration today with the lack of progress made and legitimate concerns that the bargaining process is being intentionally slowed. We also voiced to PSU the need to discuss economics—specifically, pay. Our next bargaining session is Friday, September 18. Come and observe and support your fellow adjuncts as we bargain for better pay, improved working conditions, and more transparency from PSU! 

Read all of our 2020 bargaining coverage here.

Bargaining Intensive Recap, Day 5

Read our previous Bargaining Intensive Recaps here: Day 1, Day 2, Days 3 & 4

Friday, August 21, was the fifth and final day of our bargaining intensive, and it had strong ups and downs. We’ll start with the ups: We came to agreement on an improved grievance process in Article 10 and came close to agreement on another Article, as well as provided an update on the ongoing health care task force about possible paths to accessing support for health insurance and/or health care. The second half of the day brought what looks to be the first in a series of many sobering conversations about economics. Our team members, applying bargaining strategies discussed during multiple PSU Admin requested caucuses, brought the heat as always.

Article 10: Grievances and Article 16: Progressive Sanctions

During the morning, teams were able to come to tentative agreement on the grievance process as outlined in Article 10. (The designation of “tentative agreement” means the Article is ready for membership approval and ratification at the end of the bargaining process.) We also came very close to a tentative agreement on Article 16; however, given PSU’s concerns about the application and legality of certain terms—terms they had previously suggested—we accepted that we were not ready to conclude that negotiation. The document will return to the internal group and we await PSU to agree to their own previously presented terms. 

Both Articles include expansions of the Grievances and Progressive Sanction process language (read: we now have agreed upon a step-by-step process). These improvements make it easier to protect the rights of our members during any potential complaint, grievance, or sanction. We needed clear, followable steps for both; we needed a process to not only know how but who was handling this at PSU. We feel confident that with the resolution of these two Articles, we will have secured a collegial and supportive structure to handle all sanction or grievance processes, as well as solidified our right to Union representation at every step along the way, ensuring our members receive the protections they deserve. 

Health Care Task Force Report

This joint task force is exploring strategies to ensure access to affordable health care for part-time faculty at PSU. One strategy is legislative: PSUFA has enlisted PSU to help lobby the state for an adjunct health care bill that would provide state-supported insurance for many of our adjuncts. Recent federal government attacks on health care access made it more difficult for employers to offer options while preserving our members’ right to buy subsidized insurance through healthcare.gov. The task force is working with a consultant and exploring more affordable and legally sound options. We look forward to sharing a full report with members after it is presented at the next bargaining session.

Article 7: Member Rights

There are sticking points in this Article, which teams continue to negotiate: adjunct faculty representation in departmental governance, including faculty meetings; acquisition of two-year appointments for long-term adjuncts without the need for a formal evaluation; and improvements to the professional evaluation process. 

On Friday, we heard a report from our team members on a breakthrough meeting with PSU’s Faculty Senate and AAUP (the full-time faculty union) about the issue of adjunct inclusion in governance and university-wide committee work. Key points: There is nothing in the Faculty Senate constitution that bars adjuncts from attending department meetings, and the Senate is already looking for ways to revise the narrow, distorting definition of “faculty” that includes only full-time employees working .50 FTE and above. A potential change in adjunct faculty representation at the University will be slow, but we see this as the first signs of a potentially transformative shift in recognition and inclusion. 

As a result of this meeting and our negotiations, we are looking for ways to increase adjunct inclusion in their own department faculty meetings. And at the request of Faculty Senate leadership, we plan to appoint adjuncts to serve as paid members of the Senate committee tasked with redefining the definition of faculty and investigating ways to recognize our significant contributions to the essential functioning of our institution.  

Economics

In the afternoon, the PSU team shared their costing model spreadsheet with us, which is a tool intended for the bargaining teams to test the cost of different financial options and see how the various economic components of our plans—such as raises, cost of living increases, and benefits funds—interact with each other. Our astute members noted several errors and discrepancies in both the spreadsheet and the justifications of certain costing details. After the presentation, critique, and discussion of the model, PSU immediately called for an additional caucus. 

Once the PSU group rejoined us, we asked the University to share their economic vision for our union and how they envision moving us toward pay equity. It was concerning that their response was just to tell us they have no money. 

Our team leadership pressed PSU again to state where they stood on some pretty basic financial questions: 1) Do they agree with PSUFA’s calculation of $1,178 per credit as the rate that would bring us to pay parity with our full-time non-tenure-track-instructor colleagues? and 2) How does PSU envision remedying the pay inequity between adjuncts and full-time faculty? 

PSU refused to provide any answers. They repeatedly stated they don’t have any money to offer at this time, citing drops in fall enrollment and general uncertainty about our future financial situation for their inability to negotiate. This was met with alarm and confusion by the PSUFA team members, who were unsure as to why the University would have gone through the trouble of creating and presenting a costing model if there is to be no monetary increases to consider or calculate at all. This made the earlier discussions about equity being a shared interest for PSU and PSUFA feel performative and futile. PSU did note they desired more time to think through “creative” solutions beyond money. We look forward to learning what this might even mean. 

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We aren’t giving up hope, and we too believe there are creative solutions to this underwhelming budget situation, some of which we offered during bargaining. Given the crisis and the pandemic, this is not an easy moment to be in negotiations, but we are committed to getting the best deal we can for our members! We are not giving in to intransigence, and we are not acquiescing to strategic inefficiency. 

We won’t be back at the table to address these things until September 4, but in the meantime our team will be working internally and in subgroups with the administration to make progress on a number of issues, most importantly job security and assignment rights. 

Some of the ways we plan to approach that is strengthening PSU’s accountability to honor assignment rights/credit load minimums, prioritizing adjuncts for full-time hires, ensuring timely notification for reappointment year to year, and creating fair and transparent mechanisms for tracking seniority for adjuncts instructors.

We welcome your feedback and testimony and have been very grateful for our member observers, AAUP observers, and supporters throughout this week! Thank you for reading this update. 

Read all of our 2020 bargaining coverage here.

Bargaining Intensive Recap, Days 3 and 4

Our third and fourth days at the bargaining table with PSU management saw the opening of discussions around the economic issues that pertain to our contract. We worked collectively to identify all the financial topics and our interests in them, as well as to frame guiding questions about each one. We outlined a slew of issues for discussion from minimum salary rates and length of service recognition to researcher funding and pay for committee service. Members of the PSUFA bargaining team thoughtfully explained what’s at stake for our members with each economic issue, clearly and candidly testifying to the vulnerabilities of the lived adjunct experience and the interests we have in a more equitable and stable future. Though framing guiding questions around our economic interests occupied more time than we imagined, it did aid our effort in organizing our economic interests for PSU clearly and broadly. 

PSU noted the economic aspects of other topics being brought to the table such as improved orientation and onboarding procedures and the Professional Development, Faculty Education, and Financial Assistance benefits. They also identified how PSU’s overarching economic interests are inclusive of negotiated outcomes that result in a fair and equitable contract, while stating their perceived realities of PSU’s current economic situation and concern for fiscal responsibility. 

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Read our Bargaining Intensive Day 1 Recap here.

Read our Bargaining Intensive Day 2 Recap here.

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Much of the work of the last two bargaining days potentially lays the foundation for upcoming conversations on our pressing economic interests. Behind this groundwork is the reality that there are places where we (of course) have conflicting interests and perhaps even different understandings of what constitutes shared goals, such as equity in higher education. Still, our team is committed to conversations around these issues and toward making PSU a more supportive place for our faculty members who collectively take on the majority of instructional work.

One of the ways our team is seeking to address this goal is to create a preamble to our Collective Bargaining Agreement that builds on the existing work we’ve done with the PSU Board of Trustees and Office of Academic Affairs, who have both been supportive of the goal to improve the status of adjunct faculty at PSU. (Read our 2020 Letters to the Board of Trustees here.)

Our vision is that this statement would outline a shared commitment between our Union and PSU to continue to improve the working conditions for adjunct faculty and researchers at our University. Two members of our bargaining team presented our proposed draft of that preamble at the table, drawing powerful connections between their own experiences as part-time professors at PSU, the history of the University, and the larger national formation of adjunct labor. We all recognize that something that has been seen as nonessential (adjunct labor) has become integral to the functioning of the University, and the institution needs to change accordingly.

We are including our draft of the preamble below for you to read. Its presentation at the table started an open conversation about the role of adjuncts in University culture, which was punctuated by statements of appreciation from the PSU team for the work PSUFA had put into this. We have plans to continue these talks and work on a collective draft in the coming days.

We have loved seeing observers from our union as well as allies from AAUP joining us at the table these past few days. Several times during the session, our observers are invited into the room and recognized. We love to see your faces and have your support! You can still join us Friday, our last day of the bargaining intensive. SIGN UP HERE TO BE A BARGAINING OBSERVER.

Read all of our 2020 bargaining coverage here.

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Preamble Draft

PSU and PSUFA recognize the landscape of labor in higher education, at PSU and across the country, has drastically changed in recent years. Responding to the radical declines in funding at the state and federal level, universities have countered by increasing the proportion of part-time faculty to sustain their mission but, at times, at the expense of their values. For example, adjunct faculty at PSU are responsible for teaching the largest share of student credit hours—more than tenure track or non-tenure track professors. As a result, adjuncts are essential to the operation of PSU. This preamble honors the importance of part-time faculty at our university and is an assurance that they will work with dignity. 

Public universities are vital to a democratic society. As an academic community, we strive to promote democratic ideals, engage in vital conversations about equity and inclusion, oppose systems of oppression, and foster a platform for marginalized community members to center their own voices and experiences. We are an intellectual body committed to identifying exploitation and inequity and working to confront our biases.

PSU and PSUFA agree to combat bias against adjunct faculty and will work toward greater inclusion and recognition of the critical work that part-time faculty perform across all departments, programs, and institutes at our University, the role they play in student success and retention, and the broad expertise they possess. Long-term academic employment and service to the University should serve as a path to further professional rank and faculty advancement for those who seek such advancement. In recognition of our adjunct faculty commitment and service to the University, PSU and PSUFA recognize all faculty should receive the same respect and collegiality as full-time and tenured colleagues. PSU and PSUFA strive to bring adjunct faculty to a state of equity with other faculty. We agree to work in partnership to improve the status of adjunct faculty at our institution because we understand well-supported majority faculty also means greater student success  and retention and a more just, more diverse, and more equitable campus community. Institutions from all sectors of society look to Universities for leadership and examples of vibrant, richly diverse, and democratic institutional ethics and behavior. We rise to this challenge—in this effort we seek to fulfill the promise of knowledge serving our city.

Bargaining Intensive Recap, Day 2

Read about Day 1 of the August 2020 Bargaining Intensive here.

We started today’s session doing some work on Article 3 (Union Privilege and Limitations) in the Data Subgroup, and on Article 7 (Member Rights) in the Assignment Rights Subgroup.

In the Data Subgroup, we are moving toward agreement on having annual Fall Adjunct Orientations, and proposed creating a joint task force to develop onboarding materials for adjuncts. 

In the Assignment Rights Subgroup, we are making a lot of progress on creating a more transparent and streamlined Professional Evaluation process, ensuring that it’s a supportive experience without negative consequences for adjuncts. There are some key sticking points around figuring out how to not disadvantage long-term adjuncts who do not participate in the Professional Evaluation process.

In the afternoon, PSU presented a general overview of the University’s current economic conditions, which include details such as the fact that enrollment was up by 11% for this summer term but fall enrollment is fluctuating between 10 and 6% down compared to last year. Tomorrow afternoon PSUFA and PSU will each present our interests for the main economic issues, which are described in Article 12 (Salaries and Payroll Administration) including raises, retirement benefits, sick leave, and funding for adjunct researchers to write grants for continuing projects. Our main interest is pay parity with full-time non–tenure track faculty. 

Don’t forget—we want our members to be a part of this negotiation process!

We love having a group of observers with us and look forward to seeing more of you over Zoom. Please join us as an observer this week! There are multiple sessions still to come, and you can sign up for an hour slot here:  
SIGN UP HERE TO BE A BARGAINING OBSERVER.

Read all of our 2020 bargaining coverage here.

Bargaining Intensive Recap, Day 1

The first day of our five-day bargaining intensive went pretty well! (What’s a bargaining intensive? Click here.) It almost felt like a celebration of the work we did this summer in remote subcommittees. We presented what we’ve accomplished during the last eight weeks, including shared agreements and clarifying terms. We’ve almost come to full agreement on two full articles—10 and 16. That said, we anticipate more difficult conversations to start next week, when we begin to tackle economics and job security.  

Here are some details. (Don’t forget—you can always access our most recent collective bargaining agreement here if you’d like to nerd out on the specifics.):

Progress on Article 10, Grievances 

We worked together with management to further clarify and develop Grievance procedures,  establishing clear and demonstrable processes; developing a restorative underpinning to the entire Grievance process; and clarifying an early informal conversational process to proceed any formal Grievance.

Progress on Article 16, Progressive Sanctions

In this article, we worked to change language to provide a path for adjuncts to improve rather than just be disciplined. We would like to standardize these processes across departments, so that if adjuncts have difficulties (as determined by their supervisor), there are very clear steps to follow to reach resolution. We’ve also crafted a new informal restorative process that can occur prior to formal sanctions. The idea is to prioritize clear communication and adjunct support rather than outline a punitive process. 

We feel good about our progress on these two articles. Another article we worked on today was Article 3, which deals with Union Privileges and Limitations. 

Progress on Article 3: Union Privileges and Limitations

A lot of our work in this article centers around a new state bill, HB 2016, which was put forth and passed with the health and well-being of Oregon’s unions in mind after the 2018 anti-union Janus Supreme Court decision. The university must now follow this law and clarify their role in providing PSUFA access to resources and information.

Article 3 clarifies how we access information crucial to our union’s functioning—such as who our current members are at any particular point and how our dues are being collected and reported. PSU has yet to determine how they will meet the legal requirements of Oregon House Bill 2016, but they’ve acknowledged their need to find a way to accommodate the law.

In addition, onboarding, or a lack thereof, for adjuncts is a perennial complaint among our members, and something administration has continually failed us on. In the discussion of Article 3, administration committed to providing onboarding, orientation, and training for our new members, and standardizing the process across departments, which would be …. amazing.

Lastly, we want our members to be a part of this negotiation process! We had a wonderful group of observers with us for our first day and look forward to seeing more of you over Zoom. Please join us as an observer! Multiple sessions are going on next week, you can sign up for an hour slot here:  SIGN UP HERE TO BE A BARGAINING OBSERVER.

Read all of our 2020 bargaining coverage here.

The Bargaining Intensive Starts This Friday

PSUFA is excited to resume bargaining this Friday, August 14. That day will kick off the first of five days of our bargaining intensive. We want you to get involved! Read on about what the bargaining intensive is and how you can get involved.

What is the bargaining intensive? 

Usually, bargaining is a weekslong process where union representatives and university representatives sit across from one another and rhetorically hash out the nature of our collective bargaining agreement. In April, we started bargaining like this over Zoom every Friday. Unfortunately, because of university furloughs, this kind of bargaining was put on hold in June. 

We didn't stop our work entirely, though. Instead, we split into subcommittees and used the time to hash out issues remotely. You can read about what we worked on here. 

Now, we are coming together for what we're calling a bargaining intensive, where we will spend five full days bargaining, from Friday August 14 to Friday August 21st (skipping Thursday, August 20). Most days will go from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. 

What will you be talking about? 

The issues we plan on discussing are some of the issues we haven't yet been able to address yet, particularly salaries, assignment rights, benefits (including retirement and sick leave), researcher rights, and the processes around grievances. 

How can I get involved? 

We're thrilled you asked! Like previous bargaining sessions, you will be able to sit in (remotely) as a bargaining observer. In fact, we'd love for all of our members to spend at least one hour as a bargaining observer. Not only do you get to see bargaining in action, you'll also be able to give our bargaining committee feedback on how they're doing. 

You can sign up for specific times—starting this Friday!—using this Google form:

 SIGN UP HERE TO BE A BARGAINING OBSERVER

Plus! We’ll have a Slack channel (an app for connecting and chatting) where you’ll be able to talk with other bargaining observers during the session. You can ask questions, discuss what’s happening, and more. We can’t overstate how crucial bargaining observers are—it shows PSU that our union goes way beyond the people at the bargaining table, and that we’re fighting for the 1,400 adjuncts and researchers who help make PSU what it is today. By joining as an observer, you’re joining the fight for better working and learning conditions! Sign up today! 

To sum everything up: the bargaining team is about to go into an intense week, and would love for you to join!

Read all of our 2020 bargaining coverage here.

July Bargaining Update

Well, it’s been over a month since our last update, when normal bargaining negotiations were put on hold due to the workshare program and administrators being on furlough. But just because the process for negotiations has been changed doesn’t mean we haven’t made any progress. 

Over the past weeks, teams have been working in remote joint subgroups on different issues to come to agreements around proposals that address different articles of the PSUFA contract. We are making progress in this new format—one upside is that we are able to work on multiple issues at a time. A downside is that we aren’t able to have all the decision-makers at the table, and due to the unstable situation and the wealth of unknowns about the future, the University is reluctant to talk about economic issues at this point.

We’ll reconvene again in mid-August for a weeklong bargaining intensive. In the meantime, we wanted to give you an update on what we’re currently working on. Here’s a breakdown from four subcommittees about how things are going.

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Data (Including Salary and Benefits)

We’ve learned a lot now that data requests (about revenue, costs, and other issues) made last November are finally being addressed. The table below contains some of the information that we’ll use to bargain for pay parity.

We’re also working collaboratively to understand the process of information flow regarding new hires across departments and how an electronic system might streamline this process so that PSUFA can connect with new adjuncts sooner. We’re working hard to ensure that the University complies with a new Oregon law (House Bill 2016, which we wrote about earlier) that states that our union will be given new employee information within 10 days of faculty being hired.

All that said, admin still cannot confirm exactly how many adjuncts teach in a single year. Knowing how many adjuncts teach at PSU is essential information; more than just knowing how many adjuncts there are, we need to know how to reach them so PSUFA can hear their experiences working at PSU and make sure their rights are being observed. We've looked at the records that PSU keeps to track assignment rights of adjuncts to make sure they have a system that works.

Assignment Rights & Evaluation

We are working collaboratively to improve the Professional Evaluation Process and ensure it is not used unfairly or for discipline. We’re also working on making transparent public records for assignment rights, so that faculty members know where they stand in terms of their employment as well as preparing proposals to create more clarity around hiring and seniority. Lastly, the administration and our team are committed to creating joint trainings to educate staff and administrators about our rights. 

Healthcare

The Healthcare Task Force is researching multiple approaches to tackling the issue of helping adjuncts access affordable healthcare. We have found a consultant with experience in insuring contingent academic workers to help us research possible group plans for adjuncts as an insurance pool. They are also helping us research other types of benefits/coverage, such as dental, vision, etc., which would be supportive but not interfere with members’ access to support through healthcare.gov or Medicaid.

We are also working with representatives of PSU, AFT-Oregon, and the State Senate to organize renewed efforts around creating and passing legislative solutions to provide affordable health care to adjuncts.

Grievances

Our goal is to clarify and streamline grievance procedures; we want to foster an environment where grievance procedures are accessible and not intimidating. We also want to make sure that there are clear processes for professional evaluations and professional feedback that are distinct from discipline. We are working on creating a new process around performance improvement as a mechanism for support and transparency in the progressive sanction/discipline process.

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Thanks for following along during this period. We’ll have more updates soon and ways to once again get our unit involved as observers. 

In solidarity,

PSUFA Bargaining Team

Read all of our 2020 bargaining coverage here.

Testimony to the PSU Board of Trustees

On June 18, 2020, PSUFA’s Chair of Bargaining, Ariana Jacob, testified during the public comments of the PSU Board of Trustees meeting asking for a more equitable campus for students and staff. We are sharing it here.

Dear President Percy and Members of the Board of Trustees,

I am adjunct faculty in the School of Art + Design and the Co-Chair for PSUFA, our adjunct union.

I am speaking to you today filled with hope for this moment of transformation, which has opened up in the midst of all the layers of crisis we are experiencing together. 

It is clear that now is a moment that we MUST, CAN, and WILL make significant changes to PSU so we can become a more equitable institution. Economic and racial equity are not lofty goals, they are essential to the survival of PSU.

We can no longer afford to be an institution where some of our administrators and faculty are paid more in one month than our adjuncts can be paid in one year. For the survival of our school I ask that you cut all PSU salaries to no more than $160K/year, which will mean they are still in the top 5 percent of income earners in the United States.

Rather than raising tuition this fall, lower it. We cannot keep charging our students more money for fewer services; they will stop coming. It isn’t right to raise tuition when our campus will almost certainly be closed. We are capable of creating a budget that doesn’t require tuition hikes, and now is the right time to reprioritize our economics towards economic and racial equity.

We must become accountable to our claims of valuing equity. To do that we can begin listening to Portland’s Black leadership and community at large, who are calling for PSU to disarm. The proven consequences of armed security is the loss of, in particular, Black people’s lives, specifically Jason Washington’s life. We can no longer ignore the fact that armed security is incompatible with our equity mission. 

Please, let us not be hypocrites when we say PSU cares about our diverse students, faculty and community members. It is clear that if we are accountable to our Black, Brown, and Indigenous community we will disarm PSU.

As many of you know PSU was originally founded as Vanport College, a college for the working class multiracial people who came to Portland to build better lives for themselves around the second world war. The Vanport neighborhood was the origin of Portland’s vibrant black community. When Vanport City was destroyed by floods in 1948, Vanport College moved to our current campus site and became Portland State University. 

The white neighbors from Vanport were able to pick up their lives and integrate into the rest of Portland, but due to housing and employment discrimination based on race the Black neighbors were kept segregated and economically disenfranchised, marking one of the major moments in our civic history when Portland failed to care for the lives of our Black community members.

Portland State University as Vanport College was founded to be in service to our multiracial working class community. We have a special accountability to the legacy of working class, Black, and immigrant descendants of Vanport and their peers. The legacy of Vanport is both painful and beautiful. PSU belongs to that history. Let’s live up to our responsibility by transforming our institution into a powerful civic force for racial and economic justice. Anything less is dishonoring our own history.

Thank you for your work, and your time considering this.

Ariana Jacob
Adjunct Faculty School of Art + Design
Co-Chair of PSUFA

We are proud of Ariana and echo her words. If you would like to read a sampling of other testimonies from the meeting, many calling to disarm our campus security officers, you can read them here.

Bargaining Update 4: Welp, Bargaining Is on Hold for Now

As you all are aware, COVID-19 has and continues to impact the ever-evolving world we live in. Despite the pandemic, the PSUFA and PSU bargaining teams were able to come together in the past few weeks to negotiate over Zoom. PSUFA made progress in putting forth various proposals to improve our working conditions, including those pertaining to Oregon House Bill 2016. This Friday, June 12 was to be the next bargaining session but it has been cancelled. While PSUFA’s bargaining team has transitioned smoothly into the online bargaining platform, details beyond our control emerged this week that will put bargaining on hold for the moment. In the paragraph below I’ll outline why, as well as elaborate on when and how PSUFA is advocating for bargaining to resume. 

Recently, PSU furloughed many employees on campus. The workers hit hardest by these cuts were those belonging to the SEIU union. These workers include technology specialists and many office workers, among others. Most of the PSU bargaining team also took furloughs and cut their hours from 40/week to 32/week. On this reasoning, they have suspended bargaining both with PSUFA and AAUP, the union for tenure-track and fixed-term faculty. PSU has pointed to August as the time to resume bargaining. We believe, though, that mixed PSU/PSUFA subcommittees can continue to hash out contract details in June and July and we will push for this action in the coming week. While it is our preference to continue negotiations over the summer, we are fully prepared and capable of resuming bargaining in August as well. 

In the next week, updates will be forthcoming on our progress in this matter. Stay tuned. 

In solidarity,

PSUFA Bargaining Team.

Read all of our 2020 bargaining coverage here.

Joint Statement on George Floyd and PSU Campus Police

Members of PSU-AAUP, PSU Faculty Association (PSUFA), and the Graduate Employees Union (GEU) were outraged at the recent murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, the murder of Breonna Taylor by Louisville Police, and the murder of Ahmaud Aubery by white men in Georgia. These atrocities occurred in the context of decades of police brutality against members of the Black community and other Communities of Color and queer communities. With this in mind, we want to remind members of the PSU community, President Stephen Percy, and members of the PSU Board of Trustees that the Executive Councils of PSU-AAUP, PSUFA, and GEU continue to call for PSU to disarm the campus police. Considering all that is happening in Portland and across the country in response to the uprisings of individuals and groups protesting the criminal justice system, the fact that more communities of color are dying from COVID19 and also experiencing negative virus-related economic impacts, continuing to maintain the legitimacy of armed police should stop now. 

We call on the Board of Trustees to have an emergency meeting to reassess their prior decisions which do not serve the best interests of our community, a community with diverse voices who have legitimate fears of the consequences of armed campus police. If the President's statement of support for Minneapolis sent out on Friday is to have any truth to it, disarmament must happen now. As Philip V. McHarris and Thenjiwe McHarris wrote in The New York Times on May 30: we should redirect our funding of arming campus police towards other services that would better benefit our students and community. Alex S. Vitale came to PSU this past year to speak to the same topic of redirecting resources to “develop non-police solutions to the problems ... people face.”

PSU police have only been armed since 2015, when the Board of Trustees made this decision over and above the objections of nearly all campus constituencies—students, faculty/staff, and campus unions. Over 70% of the student body rejected this idea and entire departments took stands against it as well. In the short time after campus police were issued firearms, they killed Jason Washington, a good Samaritan whose perverse death in June of 2018 was the result of the arming of campus police.  As our cities burn in response to these kinds of tragedies, PSU should lead the way in rethinking the role of police forces, starting by disarming our own campus police.

As a reminder: here is the PSU-AAUP November statement against the arming of campus police and our particular concerns for how this impacts members of our community who are persons of color, whether they be students, staff, or faculty. 

PSU-AAUP

PSUFA

GEU

Bargaining Update 3: House Bill 2016 and PSU

On Friday, May 15, 2020, discussion over Oregon’s House Bill 2016 took up nearly the entirety of PSUFA’s bargaining with PSU.

First, some context: There is great variation from state to state in terms of union membership. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor, Hawaii and New York have the highest union membership (23.5 percent and 21.0 percent of their workers are represented by a union, respectively), while South Carolina represents the lowest (2.7 percent). In Oregon, 14 percent of workers are represented by a union. 

Like many state governments with a large percentage of workers represented by unions, the Oregon State Legislature recently drafted pro-union legislation to counter the Supreme Court’s 2016 Janus decision. House Bill 2016, a law that went into effect on January 1, 2020, was put and forth passed with the health and well-being of Oregon’s unions in mind. HB 2016 gave many rights to unions in Oregon that will help us continue to build strength in the coming years. Notably, in terms of how this affects adjuncts at PSU, the law would require the institution (in this case, PSU) to provide timely notice of new hires to the union (i.e., adjunct faculty). This harkens back to a contentious issue that we have been fighting for years in how new adjuncts are treated at PSU. 

Over the last decade, orientation programs for new hires and returning adjuncts at PSU have been nonexistent on a campus-wide level. Certain departments have chosen to undertake their own orientations but others have not. While PSUFA undertook the first orientation in many years in 2019, we were hindered in doing so because we had not been provided with a complete list of new hires. As our bargaining team outlined today, providing updated information on new adjunct hires not only supports these workers and helps them to more smoothly transition into their work at PSU but also helps improve the overall preparedness of teaching faculty and, thus, the quality of education at PSU.

Unfortunately, it is not uncommon that new adjunct hires don’t know where their office is located on the first day of work or, if they are able to locate it, find that they do not have access to basics such as computers, printers, and private office space to speak with students. When new and returning adjuncts are not provided with these basic necessities, everyone and everything suffers the consequences—adjuncts, students, the quality of education provided, and the academic integrity of the institution. Adjuncts deserve better. With this recently-put-into-effect law, we have constitutional backing from the State of Oregon to improve said conditions. 

The PSUFA bargaining team communicated to PSU the importance and immediacy of these issues to current and future adjuncts. PSU was amenable to some of the changes and responded often that they would need to speak with PSU Human Resources personnel before taking next steps. There has also been a Technology Committee formed between PSUFA and PSU to work on many of the specifics in terms of data sharing collection and distribution, and several of the issues that PSUFA addressed with PSU’s implementation of HB 2016 will be discussed in this committee. PSUFA and PSU will check in on this matter’s progress during the next bargaining session on Friday, May 29. 

As always, the PSUFA Bargaining Team is working tirelessly on our behalf to improve our work conditions. Stay tuned for an update after bargaining on Friday, May 29 from 1 to 5 PM or better yet, join us in support as an observer.

 —Eli Ronick

PSUFA 3571, Chair of Membership

 Read all of our 2020 bargaining coverage here.

Bargaining Update 2: Ground Rules, Transparency, and Information Sharing

As many of us stay indoors and use technology to communicate through work, the PSUFA Bargaining Team does so as well. Last week, bargaining continued with PSU administration through Zoom as we moved on from setting ground rules to formally advocating for changes and improvements. These include, among others, issues of clarification and transparency in information sharing that fundamentally affect the way we interact with our membership and a more clear and well-defined definition of who is in our bargaining unit. Finally, we outlined the necessity of an improved formal orientation for all new adjunct hires.

The need for an orientation is an issue at the heart of improving our working conditions. Many adjuncts have communicated to PSUFA throughout the years their frustration at not being provided with basic training for their work upon hire. This is not the first time that PSUFA has brought up this critical issue and we will continue to push for this basic right that we deserve. Adjunct instructors, professors, and researchers who are well-informed about how to effectively use campus resources are able to better support their students and their work. With this objective in mind, we established task forces with PSU administration to research what are the needs of adjuncts in terms of orientation, how much or how little information has been communicated to each of us before our hire dates, and how adjunct orientations are implemented at other comparable universities.

After each bargaining session, I will convey all the relevant information I am able so that we are all better informed about where bargaining stands. This a long process but know that the PSUFA Bargaining Team is working tirelessly on our behalf to improve our work conditions. Stay tuned for an update after bargaining this Friday.

—Eli Ronick, Chair of Membership

Read all of our 2020 bargaining coverage here.

Bargaining Update 1: Calling All Observers

Bargaining in 2020 has begun! Unfortunately, we don’t have too much to share yet. We spent our first two meetings laying ground rules and figuring out what an all-virtual bargaining session will look like. This means we’re still hashing out the details of how and when observers will join us.

What we do know is the important role observers have in the bargaining process. Being a digital observer will be different from the feeling of being physically present with us at the bargaining table, but we’re choosing to see the silver lining: A Zoom bargaining experience will hopefully create an accessible way for more members to join us throughout the process. 

We can’t overstate the value of having observers at bargaining. At every session, the bargaining team is there representing roughly 1,400 PSU adjuncts. Observers show management that we are bargaining on behalf of this broad group of faculty and researchers, and that we are all in this together. Then there’s the transparency. Over the years, members have continuously told us how being a bargaining observer opened their eyes to the uphill battle we and other PSU workers face when asking for the bare minimum of rights, pay, and protections. Lastly, it means the world to the bargaining team to not be alone. Bargaining is exhausting—mentally and physically—but being surrounded by our coworkers reminds us what we’re fighting for. 

Until we have more information about observing, we’re excited to share some custom PSUFA Zoom and D2L avatars and screen backgrounds to share with our members. (Check out this example from Brown University to see some in action!) 

It’s beginning to look like observers will not be able to use video, so we’re encouraging observers to change your Zoom avatar to the small “Adjunct at work” square. So even though we won’t be able to see your face, your presence will be felt in our wall of adjunct avatars and the number of participants at the meeting. We encourage you to use the D2L banner and Zoom background in your other work and meetings!

Ready to get started? Visit this Google Drive folder to access the instructions and images.

Our next bargaining session is Friday May 8th. We’ll be discussing union rights and how the new Oregon law HB 2016, among other things. We’ll see you back on the bargaining blog with updates!

Read all of our 2020 bargaining coverage here.