5/29-30/25 Another massive update from this week's sessions! First, thank you to everyone who came out for our general membership meeting, asked questions, and then showed up for bargaining sessions. Your engagement is our power! 

In bargaining, we had five TAs: Benefits (with no changes to terms), Totality of Agreement, Academic Freedom, No Strike No Lockout, and Severability (pending). That leaves 16 articles left to finish, so we're making great progress. The full list of exchanged articles can be found in the spreadsheet below. 

In Sabbatical, we have an agreement in principle to provide non-tenure track faculty (career professional track) with sabbatical leave on the same timeline as tenured faculty. In Notices of Appointment, we are close to finalizing language outlining a rolling contract process for non-tenure track faculty. 

OT countered on Professional Development with increases to the existing contract pool but did not include our proposal of individual professional development accounts (IPDAs). They still seem open to discussing this further. 

OT also countered on Video Surveillance, striking much of our proposed language. OT's view is that this does not belong in the CBA and is covered by the existing camera policy and Oregon statutes, however we may still reach an agreement that will constitute an "understanding of the parties."

The big news is OT's counter on Compensation. We remain far apart on the numbers, but there is agreement on both sides that three buckets should be addressed: equity, market, and across-the-board increases. We have offered to work collaboratively to develop the equity and market components where the basis for these increases differed. Their proposal is a five-year proposal that includes merit in years 4 and 5 and they have, for now, not addressed other elements of summer and overload pay that we had suggested. We remain far apart on promotion increases, both in amount and in process (flat rates versus percentages). They did, however, respond to our proposal to support Program Directors with additional details that will keep this moving forward. 

Look for more activity next week during our last bargaining session before we move into summer! If you have questions, reach out to your stewards or members of the bargaining team. Make sure to check your email regularly as we move into summer and watch the events page for bargaining sessions. 

5/15/25 We presented Compensation! Our proposal builds on the model proposed by OT to address faculty retention and recruitment (see the MOU for MIT faculty). Our team used this model and access to CUPA-HR data to identify individual faculty who are inverted or compressed for an equity adjustment and all faculty at a department level for a market adjustment to a target 25th percentile of our comparators, a list of around 200 primarily four-year public institutions in the CUPA database with programs similar to Oregon Tech. The proposed adjustments are outlined in an appendix to the article. We also proposed a 4% across the board increase for each year of a proposed three-year contract and promotion increases of 10% of an individual's salary or the average of all bargaining unit member salaries, whichever is greater. 

We recognized at the table that losses of faculty represent sunk costs to the university that can easily offset the cost of our proposal. The OT team asked some clarifying questions indicating they recognize the significance of compensation to bargaining unit members, and they have reached out for more information to properly model our proposed adjustments. 

OT presented a counter to Academic Freedom that accepted our suggestion to require a meeting with an instructor prior to an administrative grade change, but they rejected our suggestion that an appeals process be included in the event of an instructor disagreement. This is an option for a student and we are requesting a parallel process for faculty. They indicated that the student appeals process was not crafted to support a faculty appeal and we may need to investigate solutions via Faculty Senate. Otherwise, there is agreement on all other language in this article. 

5/1-2/25 This was another busy and productive bargaining session with both teams addressing seven articles. We have a TA on Association Dues, our fifth. 

On Thursday, we presented our Workload proposal, maintaining the overall 45 workload unit total, but proposing reduced instructional workload (42 to 40) for NTT faculty to allow for greater participation in service (actually recognizing that many participate significantly in service even without this recognition) and to recognize that most courses carry 4 IWLU so a total divisible by 4 is logical. We also introduced a workload reallocation model to support faculty charged with conducting research and enshrining the common practice of reduced workload in a faculty member's first year to prepare courses. We proposed expanding this to confer workload units to faculty who are preparing new courses at any point during their career, recognizing the difference between preparing a new course and delivering it after its already established. We incorporated the workload guidelines that have up to this point existed outside of the CBA and were included by reference. We are also impact bargaining the changes to the workload guidelines that were developed last year and lead to a grievance over the summer. Improving the process of bargaining changes to workload is a critical piece of this proposal. There are many other small but important changes to this article that all should read and consider. To that end, we have included an article with changes indicated and a clean version of the article that's easier to read. The lead negotiator for OT suggested that this proposal might push bargaining past June (a hopeful goal for both sides). We'll see what they come back with. So far, we have made our way toward common ground, as you'll see with the other articles discussed this session. 

OT countered on a number of articles: Notices of Appointment, Outside Activities, Working Conditions, No-Strike No-Lockout, and Academic Freedom, and rejected our Promotion and Tenure proposal outright. 

We're very happy that OT is offering language supporting a 2-year rolling contract for NTT faculty in Notices of Appointment! While some of the details still need to be negotiated, this is a major step toward protections for NTT faculty that will stabilize our faculty body and allow for a fair opportunity to address performance shortcomings if they are identified. 

OT proposed a notification model, rather than the existing approval model, for Outside Activities that gives faculty opportunities to engage in work outside the university so long as they notify the university in advance. Should that work negatively impact a member's primary job responsibilities at the university, disciplinary procedures, as outlined in that article, would be followed. As with other articles, we are moving toward common ground and considering the language carefully. While OT indicated that the spirit of this article would allow for weekend work or "side gigs" the language of the article is more stringent, something we will evaluate and discuss again. 

OT's counter on Working Conditions considered our proposal to detail safe working spaces by adjusting existing language to include those spaces. The idea is sound, but more editing is necessary to finalize this article. We are addressing minor edits on No Strike No Lockout and are close on that article. 

We had good discussion about OT's counter on Academic Freedom, getting closer on key language: "As subject matter experts, bargaining unit members are allowed the academic freedom to introduce topics that are relevant to their course learning objectives." There was significant discussion about grade change procedures and we countered with a proposal to ensure that faculty have an appeal process consistent with that granted to students when grades are changed at the administrative level. 

Our proposed Promotion and Tenure article from last session was rejected outright, with OT citing concerns about incorporating university policy created outside of the CBA and including permissive subjects. While we had attempted to be clear about the management rights they retained, the article as written appears to be a step too far. We plan to clarify mandatory and permissive subjects and offer a revised article for their consideration. 

And, finally, we had general agreement around the broader idea of striking the term "non-tenure track" faculty from the CBA to support similar moves in Faculty Senate policies. Describing these faculty as "career faculty," as is done at the University of Oregon, would define them by what they are rather than what they are not. 

4/17-18/25 Your negotiation teams had a very busy couple of days, with about 15 proposals exchanged between the two. This included a few articles that had one counter come in on Thursday, with a counter back on Friday. So both teams are working hard and want to see a deal done quickly and collaboratively. We would love to see that same collaborative spirit as we move on to Workload and Compensation articles over the next couple of meeting dates, as we are confident everyone wants a deal to get done. 

For this week, we were able to TA Non-Discrimination and the MOU for MIT faculty with Dues likely. And in the vein of collaboration, both sides agreed that the process that led to the MOU worked well to identify inversion, compression, and the needs of that department to help recruitment and retention. The parties therefore intend to discuss similar data-driven strategies for other departments as we move on to the full Compensation article. 

Here are some quick highlights from a few of the articles exchanged:

- The discussion two meetings ago around extended contracts for NTT members seemed to favor a rolling contract model over a multi-year fixed term model, and the union has crafted language around how that would work in our Notice of Appointment proposal.

- Oregon Tech returned a counter on Sabbaticals without NTT members being eligible, but stressed that they were not saying no to the idea, but wanted to better understand potential economic ramifications.

- Important discussions were had on Academic Freedom, revolving around how to protect students who are discriminated against in the classroom while also protecting faculty from students complaining as a crutch when they don't do well in a class. 

- OT-AAUP proposed a new article on Evaluation, Promotion, and Tenure, making clear that the criteria for these in Senate policies is a management right, but as they all include aspects related to mandatory subjects of bargaining, the union should be involved when changes to those mandatory aspects are discussed.

Please look through the spreadsheet below for any individual articles you might be most interested in. And please provide any feedback if you have an experience over the last 4 years from the current CBA that might help inform/explain why we are suggesting specific changes. The team appreciates all the support. 

4/4/25 It was another productive bargaining session this week. The best news is we got two more articles TA'd; Personnel Files and Distribution of Agreement. Oregon Tech was able to accept the requests OT-AAUP had made about personnel files, with the exception of being able to review these documents at the primary work location due to questions around security and privacy of electronic documentation. However, OT did confirm HR is definitely willing to coordinate with individual members to ensure that they can get access. And for Distribution of Agreement, the union added back some language acknowledging that the public version of the CBA would consider accessibility, which OT agreed to. So we can add these two articles to the blue list below.

OT also presented counters on multiple other articles at this meeting, including Disciplinary Procedures, Leaves, Association Dues, No Strike/No Lockout, and Severability. As these articles are pretty substantial, we recommend reading through the specifics by clicking on the article versions below. Encouragingly, much of the language that each side is suggesting is being accepted by the other, and this will hopefully create clarity in a lot of these procedures with our successor Agreement. Several of these articles are very close to being accepted.

This week, OT-AAUP presented our counter-proposal to the MOU for MIT, where we included adjustments for compression and inversion, along with the adjustments based on CUPA data. We also presented Professional Development, where we introduced the idea of replacing the pool of funds with individual professional development accounts. These are used at several other institutions as well, and we believe IPDAs would allow for better planning by faculty for their required professional development, as they would know how much money they have access to and could reserve it for more expensive opportunities down the road. We also presented Grievances and Arbitration, where our goal was once again to clarify language based on how these processes have worked in practice. 

3/14/25 Exciting week in negotiations! While we didn't reach any TAs this week, we did have a very productive two days of discussions around several important issues facing our bargaining unit. OT opened by presenting their counter on Notices of Appointment, where they struck all language around multi-year terms of appointment for NTT members. We had therefore asked some department chairs with multiple NTT faculty to join the meeting and talk about the benefits of multi-year contracts to recruitment and retention, which led to a really good discussion about different ways that this might be accomplished. Thank you to these chairs for participating in the process, as OT seemed to acknowledge several of these points. We hope to see these discussions continue to move forward when we next present this article. OT also presented their counter on Association Dues. The two sides seem to be really close on this, as most of the union's proposed changes were accepted, with a few edits made by OT. The two issues outstanding are the mechanism of proof for new members and then who is responsible for errors in dues, and so we were able to turn around and present a counter to try and address these two remaining points. 

On Thursday the union also presented 5 articles. We started with Academic Freedom, where we want to ensure that the bargaining unit member has ownership of their classroom. We also presented a No Strike/No Lockout proposal with a few minor changes designed to add protections for members during a legal strike. We presented our Leaves proposal, which adds language around the new Paid Leave Oregon program and also tries to rectify issues around inclement weather. We presented our counter to Personnel Files, which is also very close, with the main outstanding point left seeming to be keeping the FOP in the academic file. And then we presented a new article around Video Surveillance, which is designed to give us a voice in the camera policy and to make sure that privacy issues are maintained.

Finally, on Friday, OT presented their counter on Non-Discrimination, and they rejected the unions proposals on Management Rights and Totality of Agreement, defaulting to their last proposal and the current language, respectively. But most importantly, OT requested an MOU to make adjustments to salaries of our colleagues in the MIT department, in recognition of the challenges with recruiting and retaining these faculty, given their market value in industry. We know this is also true for the salaries of many of our other members, and so we see this as a good start to seeing adjustments like this for our entire bargaining unit.

2/27/25 We have our first tentative agreement on Notices and Communications. We also presented Association Rights, Outside Activities, Disciplinary Procedures, and Severability. OT presented an initial proposal on Leaves and counters to our Labor Management Committee and Distribution of Agreement proposals. Their Leaves proposal cleans up some language around laws in effect at the time of leave, but OT proposed to "work in some savings" by reducing caps on vacation time accrued for a small number of 12-month faculty. We requested data on who would be impacted by this; the number seems to be around 20 12-month faculty. Their Distribution of Agreement counter struck our proposed language around meeting accessibility guidelines for the contract pdf because they claim this is already the law. OT accepted most of our proposals in the Labor Management Committee article, but struck instructional workload credit we had proposed for members of LMC committees and indicated they would revisit this in future economic discussions. There was good conversation around instructional and non-instructional duties with goals of avoiding detailed and onerous non-instructional workload accounting. 

2/13/25 We exchanged a total of eight articles. OT presented Personnel Files, Grievances, and Notices and Communication, while OT-AAUP presented counters to Management Rights, Association Dues, Notices of Appointment, and Sabbatical Leave, as well as an initial proposal for Totality of Agreement. Since we now have first proposals for multiple articles from both parties, we are getting a sense of differences, which we are now tracking in the Article Proposal Summaries section below. The conversations at the table were valuable this week with many of the OT team members offering input and expressing appreciation for aspects of our proposals that clarify and reinforce existing practices. 

1/30-31/25 This first bargaining meeting after establishing ground rules saw multiple articles exchanged. OT presented Management Rights, Association Rights, Association Dues, and Notices of Appointment. Our team presented Non-Discrimination, Labor Management Committee, and Distribution of Agreement. 

Most of the changes to the articles OT proposed were to "simplify" language or processes, but in many cases there were good reasons for the relative complexity, for instance having annual notices of appointment for non-tenure track faculty renewed in January for faculty who have served at least two years and April for faculty who have served less than two years. Non-renewal of a contract means searching for a new position, which is easier if one knows early. But newer faculty need time to show adequate performance, hence the later date. We hope our arguments at the table are accepted by OT for the balance they strike between faculty and management considerations. 

We had good discussion about non-discrimination and will push for the protections for faculty with chronic and acute health conditions. OT and the union both agreed on the value of the Labor Management Committee in keeping lines of communication open and avoiding litigation over contract violations whenever possible. Our proposed language called for regular monthly meetings. We also proposed a more accessible and functional contract document in the Distribution of Agreement article. 

1/15/25 We finalized ground rules! They allow for observation of meetings through virtual attendance for up to 20 people and unlimited attendance in person at the Klamath Falls and Portland Metro locations, so please plan to join us for bargaining every other week for the foreseeable future to see for yourself what happens at the table. The OT lead negotiator expressed concern about observers somehow limiting what negotiators are willing to say at the table, so this is a win for transparency and for us. We included provisions that will streamline meetings (agenda and article delivery at least 3 days before meetings) and ensure clarity (a color coding system for edits). 

The session ended with OT proposing a 5-year term of contract and an update to the Sabbatical Leave article that clarifies that sabbatical leave is for tenured/tenure-track faculty only. 

Interestingly, once the timeline was set in ground rules their team was far less interested in hearing proposals from us than they had been going into the first two meetings (article exchange being the traditional marker of a "first meeting"). So the timeline is set, with 1/15/25 marking the start of the 150-day minimum bargaining period. 

12/13/24 Our first meeting to discuss ground rules started with a welcome from Interim Provost Hasham El-Rewini, who encouraged collaboration and quick work. Thank you to all who attended in person and virtually! We had a gallery  of 20 or more, which showed clear interest and strong support. A round of introductions of the members of each bargaining team preceded the presentation of a counterproposal of ground rules from OIT by Brian Caulfield. While the university wants to keep bargaining meeting attendance closed so confidential information could potentially be discussed, we will continue to advocate for the open meetings that are allowed by PECBA. The university has proposed that all articles be presented initially by March 31, they are so far not interested in our suggestions to require counterproposals within one month or a minimum number of sessions. We also want to establish in ground rules that an agenda and any proposals for discussion be transmitted at least 72 hours in advance of barganing meetings. Thus far, the university has argued that this will present challenges and prefers to exchange proposals at the meeting itself, which we have argued is much less effective and wastes precious meeting time. We will meet again to discuss ground rules on January 15, 2025 at 1pm. 

12/11/24 Our first meeting to discuss ground rules is this Friday 12/13/24. The public is invited to attend in person in the Sunset Room on the Klamath Falls campus, in Room 225 on the Portland-Metro campus and  remotely via Microsoft Teams. 

12/4/24 We have scheduled a first bargaining meeting for Friday 12/13/24 and have received a portion of the information requested in our first information request to the university. 

11/20/24 We have exchanged ground rules proposals and are planning a first meeting of the bargaining teams for finals week. We plan to preserve the right granted by Oregon's public meetings laws for visitors and observers to attend bargaining meetings. 

11/8/24 Oregon Tech has notified the union that they intend to open all articles in the CBA, including Appendix A: Grievance Forms. They have selected their bargaining team:

• Brian Caufield, J.D.  - Chief Negotiator

• Beverly McCreary, Ph.D. - Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Relations

• Abdy Afjeh, Ph.D. - Vice Provost for Research and Academic Affairs

• Michelle Preston, Ph.D. - Associate Dean, College of HAS

• Sandi Hanan - Associate Vice President for Human Resources

• Alicia Dillon, CPA - Associate Vice President of Finance and Controller

10/30/24 We have submitted to OIT our article reopening letter with the articles listed below for reopening as well as a very comprehensive information request. Oregon Tech has acknowledged receipt and will provide its own list and bargaining team members by November 12. Ground rules will be negotiated.