AAUP Bargaining Recap for April 12

The negotiating teams for the administration and the PSU-AAUP met on April 12. Below is a summary of the topics and proposals discussed:

• Salary (AAUP) – The administration’s last offer was a 1% raise this year, followed by 1.5% raises in the next two years. They also offered to set aside .5% of the total bargaining unit salary for merit pay for select faculty in all of those years if we had a positive margin. Their offer on overload pay was $1100 per credit hour. In our counter-proposal, we allowed the merit pay, and further reduced our position on salary raises to 4%. While we have reduced our salary position for the first year, our proposal will, over the life of the three-year contract, bring PSU salaries very nearly in line with those of our comparators for the first time in decades. However, we stand by our position on overload pay. The amount we are asking is far below those of our sister institutions in Durham and Keene. At the overload rate in the administration’s last proposal, a full-time faculty member who agrees to take on an extra section for their program, for instance, is paid about $13 an hour for that work. We’re hoping the administration will agree that our faculty–and our students–deserve better.
• Benefits (AAUP) – In our counter-proposal to the ANT, we agreed to accept their rates for insurance in the most expensive (lowest deductible) plan IF they accept our salary proposal. We also asked that the details of temporary work assignments for faculty who receive 12-week family or parental leaves be communicated to the AAUP. This will ensure transparency and consistency in those assignments. Our position on vacation accrual for 12-month faculty remains unchanged: we don’t think year-around faculty with less than 5 years deserve less vacation than others.
• Retrenchment (AAUP) – In our latest counter, we continue to maintain that “insufficient enrollment” and “inability to hire or retain qualified faculty” are the only reasons to curtail a program. It’s unfair to students and faculty alike to curtail a program that is well-enrolled and adequately staffed. We also added a line that states that transitioning from departments to clusters is not, in itself, an occasion to retrench faculty. Our position is that the faculty are working hard to realize this vision of integrated clusters. We believe the integrated clusters cannot achieve full functionality if the University begins to make such decisions while the clusters are still getting on their feet. Finally, we inserted language that states–in the event retrenchment becomes necessary–that the AAUP must be consulted when determining which criteria will be used to decide which faculty should be retrenched.

Our next bargaining session is scheduled for April 19.

Proposals that have been resolved and those that are still on the table: