We met with the UO on Thursday to receive their counter-proposals on our non-economic articles. While the UO wasn't exactly leaping to accept our language, the session went pretty well. At this point, the team is relieved that it looks like we can get good agreements on all the non-economic articles.
Here's the run down on the big ticket items:
Article 9 - We proposed that departments have "Specific, objective, and quantifiable" requirements for maintaining satisfactory academic progress, instead of the "general" requirements that the contract now requires.
The UO accepted the word "specific," but balked at "objective" and "quantifiable."
Our main difference seems to be over what these words mean. We have offered grade point average or passing exams by a certain time as perfectly objective measures of progress. The UO fears that someone might interpret grades or failure to pass exams as "subjective" because there is judgment involved. Moreover, the UO seems to want to reserve to the departments the right to have subjective criteria, but they couldn't think of any that would be acceptable to them, as they had already agreed that no decisions about academic progress should be "arbitrary."
In a different section of Article 9, we proposed that all departments would have to have a policy regarding the maximum number of students who could be assigned to teaching GTFs.
The UO rejected our proposal.
Their main objection seemed to stem from the idea that GTF time is already governed by the hours limits of Article 21. They seemed to believe that any GTF who was assigned too many students could report this to the department and have their teaching/grading burden reduced. We're not exactly sure what they were driving at, because we pretty strongly rejected the notion that it was easy for GTFs to approach their departments with hours complaints. Moreover, we pointed out to the UO that departments might be, one day, theoretically tempted to assign a very high number of students to a GTF with the assumption that the GTF would over-work their hours in an attempt to actually do a good job (I know, would never happen right?) and this language would help avoid such a situation.
The UO then fell back on the argument that departments needed flexibility to go over the limit (that they set) should an emergency or unforeseeable circumstance should arise. Given that the department sets the limit, they could set it higher than they really need to deal with such a situation, or the UO could propose "emergency circumstances" language. We feel like we can make progress on this idea.
Article 10: We had proposed language that would make the UO assign GTF help to GTFs who work as instructors of record the same way that GTF help is assigned to other faculty.
The UO rejected the idea on the grounds that full professors have so many difference factors that determine what they teach and how much support they get that they are just not comparable to GTFs.
The bargaining team will take this into consideration and take another look at the language.
Article 17: We proposed that grad students who apply for GTF positions, but don't get them, would be able to request as statement as to the reasons why they were not hired and their rank in the applicant pool (departments are required to rank all applicants based on their written criteria and give out GTF appointments based on these rankings).
The UO rejected the idea. They offered two reasons: One, this just isn't done at the UO. Second, it might be possible that telling a GTF their ranking in the applicant pool might, theoretically, reveal someone else's ranking and therefore violate the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) of 1974.
The FERPA argument is interesting and complicated. We didn't pursue it much at the bargaining table during the session, if only because arguments about FERPA can take everyone down a long, twisty road that is not terribly productive. Plus, this argument seemed to come from UO attorney Doug Park and we were not convinced that the rest of his team necessarily agreed with him, so the conversation about FERPA could have been long, twisty, unproductive, and meaningless.
We offered what I thought was a strong rebuttal in that grads who apply for GTF positions and don't get them often have no idea if they are anywhere close to possibly getting one next term, next year, or not at all. Because GTFs are the UO's main source of funding for grad students, we feel it is particularly important that they have as much information as possible to decide their future. Applicants to graduate school might not want to come here if they know they have little hope of receiving funding.
That's basically it. We had some small quibbles over minor issues, but these were the substantive disagreements. And not that bad of disagreements at that.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
Health Care Deal Reached!!!
On Thursday, the GTFF and the UO signed a deal settling the summer health care bargaining that got carried over into this year.
The deal is this:
The UO will continue to pay for GTF health insurance at the same rate that they did last year. This is a slight over payment because there was a slight decrease in the cost of health care this year. All excess funds paid by the UO will go toward future payments.
The annual cap will stay at $250,000 for the time being. There is a strong possibility that the health care reform bill currently being hammered out in Congress will almost automatically eliminate annual caps on essential medical benefits. If it does not, the GTFF has reserved the right to bring up the subject of the annual cap, including the possibility of making it retroactive, in the current round of negotiations.
The University will increase their payment for the administration of the health care from $75,000 to $85,000. That's still not all the Trust needs, but the bargaining team felt this increase was adequate.
That's the deal. It probably doesn't look like much, but as you can tell from the posts here, here, here, and here, it was a bit of a wild ride.
Anticipating a couple of question, let me offer these pre-emptive answers.
Q: Wait, aren't we still bargaining with the UO over wages and whatnots?
A: We began bargaining over just the health care portion of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) last June. As we discovered that the GTFF and the UO were not at all on the same page over the matter of Appendix I and whether or not the UO owed the GTFF an additional $250K to cover the cost of increasing the annual cap on benefits, we agreed to go to arbitration to settle the matter. Scheduling arbitration takes forever and was set to begin on January 21.
In the meantime, we began bargaining over the rest of the CBA in October and that bargaining will carry forward.
Q: Why drop arbitration and make this deal?
A: The bargaining team strongly suspects that Congress will render any arbitration ruling invalid or unnecessary. We felt that it made little sense to risk losing $4,000 on something that would be rendered null either way shortly before or after we received a ruling. Plus, we had strong reason to believe that an arbitrator would likely rule that the two parties never had a "meeting of the minds" and order us back to the bargaining table. Given this possible outcome, it made even less sense to risk money when a bargaining session was currently ongoing.
Q: Does the bargaining team support this deal?
A: Yes. It is not everything we would have like to have gotten and we're not walking away thinking we kicked ass or anything, but given the complete misunderstand of Appendix I, the ongoing budget crisis, the uncertainty about what it is Congress is up to, and the fact we can always bring these issues up at the (other) bargaining table, we feel like this is a good deal and encourage you all to vote yes.
Please vote as soon as you get your ballot. The GTFF has an hefty quorum requirement and we need all the votes we can get. Mail you ballot back or drop it off at the GTFF office, but vote, vote, vote.
Feel free to ask questions. I will post (reasonable) questions in the comments and try to provide answers.
The deal is this:
The UO will continue to pay for GTF health insurance at the same rate that they did last year. This is a slight over payment because there was a slight decrease in the cost of health care this year. All excess funds paid by the UO will go toward future payments.
The annual cap will stay at $250,000 for the time being. There is a strong possibility that the health care reform bill currently being hammered out in Congress will almost automatically eliminate annual caps on essential medical benefits. If it does not, the GTFF has reserved the right to bring up the subject of the annual cap, including the possibility of making it retroactive, in the current round of negotiations.
The University will increase their payment for the administration of the health care from $75,000 to $85,000. That's still not all the Trust needs, but the bargaining team felt this increase was adequate.
That's the deal. It probably doesn't look like much, but as you can tell from the posts here, here, here, and here, it was a bit of a wild ride.
Anticipating a couple of question, let me offer these pre-emptive answers.
Q: Wait, aren't we still bargaining with the UO over wages and whatnots?
A: We began bargaining over just the health care portion of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) last June. As we discovered that the GTFF and the UO were not at all on the same page over the matter of Appendix I and whether or not the UO owed the GTFF an additional $250K to cover the cost of increasing the annual cap on benefits, we agreed to go to arbitration to settle the matter. Scheduling arbitration takes forever and was set to begin on January 21.
In the meantime, we began bargaining over the rest of the CBA in October and that bargaining will carry forward.
Q: Why drop arbitration and make this deal?
A: The bargaining team strongly suspects that Congress will render any arbitration ruling invalid or unnecessary. We felt that it made little sense to risk losing $4,000 on something that would be rendered null either way shortly before or after we received a ruling. Plus, we had strong reason to believe that an arbitrator would likely rule that the two parties never had a "meeting of the minds" and order us back to the bargaining table. Given this possible outcome, it made even less sense to risk money when a bargaining session was currently ongoing.
Q: Does the bargaining team support this deal?
A: Yes. It is not everything we would have like to have gotten and we're not walking away thinking we kicked ass or anything, but given the complete misunderstand of Appendix I, the ongoing budget crisis, the uncertainty about what it is Congress is up to, and the fact we can always bring these issues up at the (other) bargaining table, we feel like this is a good deal and encourage you all to vote yes.
Please vote as soon as you get your ballot. The GTFF has an hefty quorum requirement and we need all the votes we can get. Mail you ballot back or drop it off at the GTFF office, but vote, vote, vote.
Feel free to ask questions. I will post (reasonable) questions in the comments and try to provide answers.
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