The AAUP and administration’s negotiating teams (ANT) met on September 7. We were excited to come to tentative agreement on five proposals:
- Appointments & Rank
- Academic Freedom
- Faculty Rights
- Personnel Files
- Safety & Health
Many of these proposals required hours of discussion and numerous counter-proposals over the course of the last several months so these agreements represent significant progress toward achieving a contract.
The session was mainly devoted to discussion of two important proposals:
- Grievance — The ANT submitted a counter-proposal on Grievance for this session. We discussed that proposal at length. The AAUP Negotiating Team will present a counter-proposal later this Fall.
- Workload — As we’ve mentioned in previous recaps, the faculty ranked Workload as their most pressing concern when we surveyed them last Fall and we are getting very close to agreement on this article. The AAUP submitted a counter-proposal for this session that encompassed several changes we had already discussed with the ANT in previous sessions. While there are a few other details that require further discussion, we spent much of our time discussing how to allot credit for teaching experiences such as performance studies, science labs, student-teaching observations, etc. Our goal is to achieve more consistency and transparency in the way this work is credited, while acknowledging the complex needs of individual disciplines. We agreed, in principle, on a way to move forward on this issue and the AAUP Negotiating Team will present another draft of this proposal later this Fall.
Our next bargaining session is scheduled for September 21.
