Bargaining Session Report
Before reporting on the most recent bargaining session, we wish to thank the 300+ faculty who attended today’s Bargaining Rally. For our next meeting the Association will get its own Zoom with larger capacity. Please save August 25th at Noon for a potential meeting.
The latest meeting with the Oakland team took place on Tuesday, August 10th. We began by putting a counter to Oakland’s most recent economic proposal on the table. The counter proposal we put on the table includes the pay the faculty have earned and the resources they need which are described in the previous posts, but includes a significant concession by shifting a portion of raises to merit pay. In our initial economic package, all raises were across the board because faculty have worked hard and have earned salaries that at least keep up with the cost of living. All of our members have made sacrifices and have kept our academic programs operating through this time of crisis. However, in previous exchanges, Oakland indicated that having merit pay was a high priority for them. To move the negotiations forward and help secure the raises our faculty deserve, we proposed a compromise: In our latest counter there are across the board raises every year but also opportunities for faculty to apply for optional merit raises above the cost of living. Our revised merit system also allows the efforts of more than one year to be the basis of a merit application because many of our greatest achievements as faculty take more than one year to develop.
After a discussion on our counter proposal, which included discussion of our merit plan, Oakland asked us what more we would give financially from our position. We reaffirmed the positions outlined in our counter proposal and communicated that we would await their response. Oakland also brought up the language package proposal that they first put on the table on July 12th and which has previously been countered multiple times by both sides. They pressed to conclude the issues in it. They verbally suggested areas of compromise, though they were unwilling to put them in writing. We reminded them of compromises that we have already put on the table but that have been rebuffed by Oakland. Despite their professed desire to make progress, Oakland abruptly exited the meeting an hour early.
The two sides are scheduled to meet again Thursday, August 12th.