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AAUP-WSU has proposed the article in the left half of the table below for inclusion in the first collective bargaining agreement (CBA) for non-tenure-eligible (NTE) faculty. Our negotiating team handed it to the administration at the initial negotiating session on March 11, 2013. Reports about the status of this article will be found below the article itself.
The administration's first counter-proposal, given to our negotiating team on March 18, 2013, is in the right half of the table below. The administration stated that items highlighted in yellow could be regarded as minor changes, and that other changes (deletions in red strikethrough, additions in teal underline) were not necessarily minor.
See our CBA Negotiations page for a roster of the AAUP-WSU negotiating team, brief reports about each Monday's negotiation session, and an article-by-article summary table with links to detailed information about each individual article that either the administration or AAUP-WSU proposes to include in the CBA.
The administration presented a counter-proposal to the initial AAUP-WSU proposal of March 11. See the right half of the table above. The administration stated that items highlighted in yellow could be regarded as minor changes, and that other changes (deletions in red strikethrough, additions in teal underline) were not necessarily minor.
It suggested adding "full-time" to the first sentence in section 2.3, as follows:
... faculty employed full-time by Wright State University ...
Now Ohio Revised Code 4117 -- the section of state law that authorizes and protects collective bargaining of public employees -- explicitly excludes "Part-time faculty members of an institution of higher education" (see ORC 4117.01 (c) (14))from the public employees it covers; therefore, our team replied that this change would probably be OK, but that we would confer with our labor attorney to see if this change -- which alters SERB's official description of the new Bargaining Unit -- would cause a problem.
The administration also proposed, in effect, that the parties use the term Bargaining Unit Faculty (without preceding adjective or acronym) in this agreement to refer to the NTE Bargaining Unit, and to use the terms "NTE Bargaining Unit Faculty" or "TET Bargaining Unit Faculty" only as necessary. Our team agreed to this proposal.
Finally, the administration proposed to add, at the very end of section 2.6, the additional phrase "and recognize that in all matters of negotiation with the University, the Bargaining Unit will join with the TET Bargaining Unit as a single entity." The administration explained that it did not wish, for example, to have to negotiate twice with AAUP-WSU about the calendar [see Article 9 (Academic Calendar)], once due to the CBA for NTE faculty and once due to the CBA for TET faculty. As AAUP-WSU leadership has stated on several occasions, we want the two Bargaining Units to be merged into one. However, our team stated that we believe that the parties (WSU administration and AAUP-WSU) must use SERB to implement the merger and cannot themselves (with CBA language or otherwise) declare a merger. Thus the parties discussed technical changes (e.g., in Article 9) that would address the administration concerns about having to negotiate twice.
Our negotiating team stated that the description of the bargaining unit specified in section 2.3 is intended to duplicate that found in the official certification of the new bargaining unit issued by SERB (Ohio's State Employment Relations Board). The parties noted that the placeholder date "xx October 2012" at the end of 2.3 should in fact be 1 November, 2012.
The parties discussed the inclusion of "Visiting faculty" in the bargaining unit. What would happen if a faculty member employed at another university took a sabbatical leave at Wright State? The parties agreed that the title "Visiting [adjective] Professor" might well be conferred upon such a person even if the individual were not actually employed by WSU, in which case the individual would not be a member of the NTE Bargaining Unit. After a caucus, our team suggested that if the status (that is, inclusion in the NTE Bargaining Unit) of any Visiting faculty member ever became an issue, the parties could sign a Memorandum of Understanding to address the matter.
The parties discussed the choice of acronyms (NTE, TET) specified in section 2.4, and they agreed to revisit if need be the particulars of language that will appear in this CBA to describe persons in the new NTE Bargaining Unit vs. those in the existing TET Bargaining Unit. On this score, we expect the administration to propose an alternative draft of this article. Importantly, technical issues of this kind are not matters of controversy between the parties, but instead occasions when they work collaboratively to reach an agreement with provisions that are clear and, when possible, efficiently stated as well.
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This page was last modified on Tuesday, April 23, 2013. Corrections, comments, and suggestions are most welcome. Contact the webmaster for this page (Jim Vance) at jimvance.wsu@gmail.com, telephone 937-775-2206. To contact the chapter, please see our Staff, Officers, and Committees page.