Bargaining on July 6 & 7 focused on examining data about faculty compensation at CS & other schools

The Faculty and Administration bargaining teams met on July 6 for about 90 minutes and on July 7 for about an hour.

During the July 7 session, the teams reached a tentative agreement on small changes to Article 11 (Electronic Course Development), primarily to revise or remove out-of-date contract language.

Most of the time in the bargaining sessions on July 6 and 7 focused on discussion of data (compiled from various sources) that compares Cincinnati State faculty compensation to faculty compensation at other urban community colleges in Ohio (Columbus State, Clark State, Cuyahoga, Lakeland, Lorain, Owens, Stark State, and Sinclair).

The comparative data the teams have been reviewing includes the average faculty salary at each institution, overload compensation rates, and the history of raises awarded to faculty over the past 5 years.

Faculty Team Co-leader Greg Klein said, “Faculty work at Cincinnati State isn’t exactly the same as the work of faculty at all of the other community colleges we use as points of comparison. The goal of this ‘deep dive’ into comparative data is to try to reach a shared understanding of how faculty compensation is reported in the sources both sides are using for reference, and resolve whether the data provides reliable ‘apples-to-apples’ comparisons.”

Faculty Team Co-leader Julie McLaughlin added, “We’re looking forward to wrapping up this examination of data and spending time at our bargaining sessions next week discussing the proposals that still are not resolved.”

The next bargaining sessions are scheduled for Tuesday, July 11, and Friday, July 14.

The Faculty Team met for several hours before and after the bargaining sessions to continue preparations, fortified by the generous food contributions from faculty colleagues.

Chapter President Abbey Yee thanked faculty for their efforts to contact legislators about Senate Bill 83. Although the Ohio Senate incorporated the provisions of SB83 into the state budget bill, the version of the budget that was approved by the legislature and signed by Gov. DeWine on July 4 did not include any of the SB83 language.

“The results of the budget bill negotiations in the legislature show that faculty activism made a difference,” Abbey said.