Faculty Team is “disappointed” after recent discussion of compensation

The Faculty and Administration bargaining teams met on Thursday, July 23, for about 2 1/2 hours, and on Friday, July 24, for about 3 hours. The Faculty Team members spent about 7 hours across the two days planning and preparing for bargaining.

On both Thursday and Friday, the teams spent significant amounts of time talking about workload and compensation.

Faculty Team Co-leader Pam Ecker said, “We were disappointed with the administration’s response to our most recent compensation proposal. Although the administration team considered some of the ideas we proposed, by the end of Friday’s session it felt to us like the teams were further apart on this issue than we’d hoped to be.”

The teams reached a tentative agreement on contract language about various evaluation processes, including faculty annual performance reviews and possible post-tenure review required by criteria in Senate Bill 1, as well as evaluation of some academic administrators.

“We have another bargaining session starting on Monday morning,” Pam said. “We hope it will be possible to get closer to a reasonable settlement on compensation, as well as wrapping up the other topics that still aren’t resolved.”

The AAUP officers encourage faculty members to attend the Board of Trustees meeting on Tuesday, July 28, starting at 3:45 p.m. in the Conference Center.

Faculty members with questions about negotiations should contact AAUP Chapter President Abbey Yee.