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Both AAUP-WSU and the administration wish to change Article 9, Academic Calendar. The parties exchanged their proposals on February 1; see the table immediately below. Current language proposed for deletion is shown in the strikethrough format, and proposed new language is shown in the red underlined format. For comparison, you may wish to view the entire current CBA and this article in particular.
For more about bargaining now under way toward a successor of our current Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), please see our Negotiations page. There, you will find rosters of our Bargaining Council and Negotiating Team, a table showing the status of each article (those in the current CBA and new ones, too), and also reports about each negotiating session.
For reports on negotiations regarding this article, click here (or scroll to the bottom of the table immediately below).
In reference to our proposal for a new section 9.7 on pay for certain holidays, our Negotiating Team gave the administration a paper copy of a university web page entitled “Faculty Benefits” in which one finds the heading “Holidays” followed by “There are 10 paid holidays each year.” We then withdrew our proposal. The administration then asked first about our reaction to its counterproposal given on April 4, and second about whether there was any point in specifying holidays in the CBA, since per section 9.1, the parties jointly determine the entire academic calendar, one feature of which is holidays.
The administration put forth the following in response to our proposal for a new section 9.7. The administration took the position that the language below would entail no change to past practice.
9.3 Holidays shall be observed in accordance with the provisions of Section 124.19 of the O.R.C., and as it may be amended.
The following days are recognized as holidays:9.3.1 Holidays for Bargaining Unit Faculty Members with academic year appointments shall be as follows:
Veterans Day
Martin Luther King Day
Memorial Day9.3.2 Holidays for Members with fiscal year appointments shall also include university holidays that occur outside the thirty three weeks of Fall, Winter, and Spring Quarters:
- Thanksgiving
- Day after Thanksgiving (floating holiday, observance of Columbus Day)
- Christmas
- Christmas Eve, or the day after Christmas (floating holiday, observance of Presidents Day)
- New Years Day
- Independence Day
- Labor Day
9.4 When a holiday falls on a Saturday or a Sunday, it will be rescheduled to either Friday or Monday, and no classes shall be scheduled, unless the holiday is rescheduled to another day, established through the negotiation process in Section 9.5.
9.5 Any rescheduling of holidays to times other than those outlined in this Agreement must be negotiated. It is recognized that the following holidays may have alternative days of observance negotiated:
Presidents Day
Columbus Day9.65 Since many religious observances occur on days not designated as legal holidays, the University and Bargaining Unit Faculty shall be flexible in accommodating the religious observances of faculty, students, and staff.
Bargaining over this article for the first time, the parties first discussed the administration’s proposal for section 9.1. Our Negotiating Team took the position that flexibly scheduled classes occurring during the three eleven-week quarters of the academic year (e.g., a class that runs for less than the full ten-week term) are not a concern; but, for classes that occur outside that range, Bargaining Unit Faculty Members cannot be compelled to teach, and they must be compensated (as is the case for summer classes and December intersession classes). Our team will offer a counterproposal for this section.
The parties noted that compensation for December teaching is covered in the administration’s proposed new Appendix G, December classes, but will be in AAUP-WSU’s Article 23, Compensation. Therefore, they agreed to postpone that issue until economic articles are on the table.
Next came the administration’s proposal for a new section 9.7 Semesters. Our team objected to the opening phase, ”In the event that the University decides to convert to a semester calendar” since the verb ”decides” would undermine the right we now have per section 9.1, to determine jointly (with the administration) the academic calendar. We could however agree if “decides” were replaced by ”wishes”.
Now the discussions about semesters did not occur in a vacuum. In fact, the two teams knew that a report from Ohio Board of Regents Chancellor Eric Fingerhut was to be released on the following Monday, March 31; and, they thought that this report might well mention conversion from quarters to semesters. Therefore the parties elected to postpone further bargaining about the administration’s 9.7 until after they had seen the report. Indeed, the Chancellor’s report, Strategic Plan for Higher Education [in Ohio], 2008-2017, was released on the 31st and does contain a section “Single Academic Calendar.” This section reads in part, “...the [Ohio public] universities currently operating on a quarter system should give strong consideration to making the transition to a semester academic calendar.” See the report itself and scroll down to page 62, or search for the word “calendar”.
Finally, the two negotiating teams turned to the AAUP-WSU proposal for a new section 9.7 on pay for certain holidays. The administration seemed incredulous and took the position that our proposal implied a shift to “daily pay” or “daily work” for Bargaining Unit Faculty. Our team rejected the implication. Essentially no constructive interchange took place about our proposal.
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This page was last modified on April 17, 2008. Corrections, comments, and suggestions are most welcome. Contact the webmaster for this page (Jim Vance) at jvance@math.wright.edu, telephone 937-775-2206.