Session #11: A Win for a United Faculty + Community Teach-In
A united faculty results in a big win! We came to an agreement today that allows BUEs to participate in the new Wagner Center initiatives – the Hillary Rodham Clinton Center Faculty Research Initiative and the Albright Faculty Affiliates Program. We are grateful to our tenure-line colleagues who brought public attention to this issue and urged the College to choose inclusion. Our ability to reach this agreement within one session testifies to the power of our unit and the support of our allies. See the Memorandum of Understanding here.
Today was our 11th bargaining session (or roughly 40 hours so far), and we continue to see an imbalance in the pace of bargaining. Looking at our proposal tracker, you can see the College is sitting on a total of eighteen (18) proposals for the last three sessions. Today, they countered on “Workspace & Materials” and “Privileges,” both of which included extremely minimal changes. We countered again on Titles, Workload, Course Assignments, and Employment Records and emphasized how integral these issues are to the quality of our teaching and our ability to serve our students and meet the College’s mission of inclusive excellence.
Data included in this graph represent the number of proposals that have been presented during bargaining and are still being negotiated. The blue and red lines show how many proposals the College and Union (respectively) are holding onto.
There are several kinds of bargaining strategies an employer can take. One is impasse oriented bargaining, where an employer tries to move quickly through bargaining in order to impose demands on a Union. The College showed signs of impasse-oriented bargaining when we first began, for instance, by proposing we provide all proposals before the third bargaining session (see ground rule 7). Now, the College’s tone has shifted—they have indicated that bargaining can take a year or more, have moved slowly on counterproposals, and have proposed changes to our working conditions without justification (see our past update on the College’s workload proposal). This type of behavior in bargaining is often called attrition oriented bargaining—it involves moving slowly and hoping employees will become bored, frustrated, and discouraged. But when we raise our voices together, we see immediate results–the retraction of offensive language in Titles, their acknowledgment today that MLK Day is a holiday, and our inclusion in Wagner Initiatives. With our incredibly engaged unit–members who show up for bargaining, bravely sign our PDH letter, and keep our community informed—we have the power to make positive changes for ourselves and our community.
We will continue to use our collective voice to get the contract we deserve! Show your support by joining our all-community Teach-In on Thursday, October 24 4:30-6 PM. RSVP appreciated, but not required.