Bargaining Update
The OU-AAUP bargaining team would like to address the misinformation the employer presented in their bargaining diary dated August 15. The post contains a number of distortions which marks an escalation in tone that threatens the success of the ongoing negotiations.
First, it is patently untrue that our team broke off negotiations on August 15th. After waiting several hours for the employer to submit a proposal through the mediator, our team promptly replied with a counter proposal. Shortly after, the mediator informed our team that the employer would not be making any further proposals. We requested to meet with Oakland’s team and the mediator to discuss our proposal and were flatly refused. Their refusals effectively ended the day’s proceedings. We still await their counter proposal.
Similarly, the employer’s claim that they withdrew their proposal for a forced distribution of merit scores is disingenuous. The proposals that contained the forced distribution scheme were part of packages that were rejected by both teams in the course of negotiations. To clarify, proposal packages are accepted and rejected as a whole and so the forced distribution proposal remains very much a part of the employer’s table position.
Similarly, what the employer describes as a modification of their proposal for full-time faculty workloads still maintains their position that faculty should teach uniform course loads across the institution. Here, at least, we agree with the employer’s characterization of the day’s events: the OU-AAUP has rejected this proposal and will continue to reject it. In a recent article in the Oakland Post, chief financial officer Steve Mackey described Oakland’s proposal on workload as an effort to “drive down the cost of instruction.” Again, we agree, though we would add that their entire contract proposal is driven by their ongoing project to drive down the cost of instruction by increasing faculty workloads all the while reducing their compensation.
Finally, their thinly veiled threats to raise tuition in response to the OU-AAUP’s contract proposals are a cynical attempt to divide students and faculty. These scare tactics do not account for their own audited financial statements which show that Oakland regularly generates revenues in excess of their expenses. These “reserve funds,” which have been steadily growing while faculty salaries have been just as steadily declining, are maintained in their inflated state to allow the university to withstand a hypothetical catastrophe that prohibits them from generating any revenue but requires continuing to pay all expenses.
The OU-AAUP bargaining team regrets that the legitimate issues that continue to separate the two teams should be so badly distorted. We remain committed to working with the employer and have secured an additional meeting to be held on August 21st in spite of their insistence that we not meet again until the 28th. We believe that it is vital, in spite of the difficult differences that remain between us, that we continue to meet and talk to come to an equitable contract that fairly rewards faculty for their efforts on behalf of OU students and the entire community.
