Dear Members,
The AASUA and Board negotiating teams met on six separate occasions during the month of January, and we have regular sessions scheduled through the end of March. Although we have identified a number of areas of disagreement, meetings thus far have been respectful and non-adversarial. As, the team is prepared to continue bargaining until we reach either an agreement or an impasse, regardless of how long that might take.
With “housekeeping” issues largely taken care of in the December meetings, we were able to turn our attention in January to more substantive articles and issues. The process we are following in bargaining is to exchange two or three articles at a time, and to work through those in a back-and-forth flow of proposals and counter-proposals until we either reach language in the article we can both agree to, or reach a point where we feel no further agreement is possible at the time. Either way, once we reach one of those points on an article, we will set it aside and move on to a different article, where we again begin the process of proposal and counter-proposal.
It must be noted that although we may reach “agreement” on some language throughout the process, the parties have agreed to the principle that nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to.
Here are some of the key areas we have focused on to date:
Equity
One of your bargaining team’s key goals for this round of bargaining was to win the inclusion of new equity language that would go beyond positive statements and affirmations, and actually assign tangible responsibilities and commitments for which the employer must be accountable, including regular reporting of progress on equity, diversity, and inclusion across the University. New language provides for the embracing and recognition of a diversity of scholarly approaches and outputs, including of indigenous knowledges and methodologies, and ensures equitable opportunity and non-bias in appointments, evaluative decisions, and career progression.
Discipline and Grievance
On the discipline article we have made some progress in clarifying language and procedures to ensure that there is no possible confusion or misinterpretation when it comes to detailing who is responsible for what and in what order, and we are very close to agreement. On the grievance article we have now reached agreement, successfully streamlining timelines and steps in the process, striking a good balance between quick resolution of issues and ensuring that our LROs and members have the time necessary to properly prepare for meetings and hearings.
Evaluation
Although we have made some progress on articles dealing with evaluation, we still have a way to go before we reach agreement on anything concrete. After several back-and-forth iterations, we are happy to report that we have made some progress on the question of how USRIs are used. We are also pleased that the employer is willing to consider our proposal for opting out of full annual evaluation committee (FEC, LEC, ATSEC) processes, although we are still engaged in the proposal – counter-proposal process on that front. Particularly contentious on this topic is a fundamental disagreement between our team and the Board’s team on questions of merit, including the definition of “an increment”, whether incrementation of less than 1.0 can be appealed, and whether the lowest increment possible under the new agreement will be 0.5 or 0.25. Our proposals on increasing the numbers of steps in the salary grids will be specifically bargained later when all aspects of the compensation and benefit proposals are formally and simultaneously introduced at the table. On all of these fronts your negotiating team will continue to defend against the Board team’s efforts to suppress salaries by redefining and limiting merit incrementation to our members.
Association Recognition
We have also made some gains in the Association Recognition article. We were successful in securing better reporting from administration about our members that may be on paid or unpaid leave at any point in time, and we have secured language that ensures that members receiving release time to serve on AASUA Executive or on the negotiations team have that service considered in their evaluation processes. One of the things we were looking for in this article was for the University to provide free or reduced-cost space for the AASUA offices, as numerous institutions across the country do to their faculty unions. While the University rejected our request, we did agree on language that should space be available at the University, AASUA would have the ability to negotiate the terms of a lease for that space with the University.
As always, please do not hesitate to contact me should you have any questions or concerns about any of the above. I also take the opportunity to remind you that our complete opening proposal, as well as that of the Board of Governors, is posted on the AASUA website.
Sincerely,
Ricardo (on behalf of Executive and the Negotiations Team)