Workload discussed but no significant progress at June 25 bargaining session

The Faculty and Administration bargaining teams met for about 3 hours on Friday, June 25. Faculty team members said the session ended cordially, but the teams did not make progress on resolving contract issues.

Faculty Chief Negotiator Greg Klein said, “Most of the June 25 session focused on workload—particularly the formula that is used to determine workload units for program chairs.”

“AAUP and the administration have been talking for quite a while about making adjustments to how program chair units are determined,” Greg said. “The conversations started before the pandemic, in meetings of the Faculty/Administration Communication Team (FACT).”

“We thought the administration was open to some significant changes to the contract language that describes program chair workload,” Greg continued. “But at negotiations on Friday, the administration’s bargaining team seemed unwilling to consider our proposed ways to ‘fix what’s broken’ in the contract language.”

Currently, program chair workload units are based only on counting FTEs (full-time equivalent numbers of students) for fully-admitted students, and leaving out the students who are in “pathway” status (formerly referred to as “pre-tech” status).

Faculty Team Member Abbey Yee said, “The College’s data on students who are fully-admitted or pathway status isn’t always accurate, and this metric doesn’t fully reflect all of the work chairs do to help recruit, enroll, register, advise, and assist students throughout their time at Cincinnati State, while also working to be sure their program curriculum and courses meet high standards.”

“Our team spent a lot of time examining a lot of College data that could be factored into a better measure for program chair work,” Abbey said. “However, the administration team didn’t seem interested in talking about the validity of our proposed new measures. They seem to want to stick with the current method, in spite of its many problems.”

Greg said the Faculty Team will request additional data from the College’s Institutional Research department, and will try to examine other possible ways to measure program chair workload using a method that is reasonable and equitable.

“The Faculty Team has already spent more than 50 hours just in the past week preparing what we believe is a reasonable solution to the problems with calculating chair units,” Greg said. “We’re disappointed that the administration team didn’t seem open to fully considering our proposal, which we believe is fair and equitable.”

Greg noted, “In previous sessions, the administration team expressed strong interest in not wanting to take the whole summer to negotiate a new contract.”

“The Faculty team has been doing as much as we possibly can to make these negotiations efficient—but several key contract provisions, including compensation, haven’t been discussed at all. Also, the administration has yet to reply to faculty proposals related to several other important topics, including other parts of the workload article that have a big impact on many faculty members.”

“The teams agreed to meet again on Thursday, July 15,” Greg said. “The Faculty Team will be prepared for substantive discussion of every part of the contract, and we hope the administration team will be ready for serious and meaningful discussions, too.”