Bargaining Session Report
Our latest bargaining meeting with the Oakland team was Friday, June 25, 2021. We discussed previous proposals by Oakland and presented two revisions of ours.
Pressing on our proposals
- DSS Accommodations. In a previous session (June 3) we proposed that Oakland provide a testing center and staff to proctor exams for all students who qualify for testing accommodations approved by Oakland that cannot be provided in the examination place. In the latest session we presented further arguments for this proposal.
- Workload. In previous sessions we and Oakland have both presented proposals about the process for review or revision of workload policies. We advocated for ours, which seeks to make a clear process and a timeline for Oakland’s response when an academic unit wishes to revise its workload policy. We also discussed Oakland’s proposal, which deals with the process when Oakland requests a review of workload policy. We emphasized the importance of the faculty’s role in shaping workload policies in the context of shared governance and in light of the multiple elements of faculty workload. Their proposal adds an additional layer of administrative review and empowers the provost to increase full-time faculty teaching loads.
- Arbitration Initiation. The two sides are far apart on this issue. We presented a revised proposal with a list of arbitrators that represents a diverse pool and a compromise between those favored by Oakland and those favored by the Association. Oakland responded with a different list of arbitrators. We also pressed for a process that leads to prompt selection of arbitrators.
We asked the Oakland team questions related to their proposal on Appendix A: Research and Full-Time Adjunct Faculty.
We previously proposed to replace the dated use of “he/she” throughout the agreement with the gender neutral pronoun “they.” Oakland suggested a different means to remove gendered language from the Agreement which we will be reviewing.
The two teams are set to meet again on Thursday, July 1.