Excerpt from the Dayton Daily News
Wright State University’s administration has made a contract offer to the school’s faculty union that would extend a deal through 2023.
During a negotiating session Friday afternoon, the administration offered the union a contract that would maintain previous contract language when it comes to layoffs and workload and would limit possible furlough days to one per semester, WSU spokesman Seth Bauguess said. The offer would maintain summer teaching rotations for professors, though they would receive less money for them.
If the union accepts the offer, it would also guarantee up to a 2.5 percent pay raise for union faculty each year of the final two years of the contract. The offer is contingent on members of the Wright State chapter of the American Association of University Professors joining the school’s uniform health care plan.
Both sides have said that health care remains at the center of the ongoing labor dispute.
Union faculty have been on strike for 11 days. They have been picketing at entrances to campus along Colonel Glenn Highway.
But, AAUP-WSU leaders have long said that agreeing to the administration’s terms for health care would eliminate their right to bargaining for health benefits.
The terms of employment imposed by the Wright State board of trustees on Jan. 4 state that health care can be changed at the university’s discretion. The administration must give 60-days notice to the faculty union before health benefits are altered, according to the terms.
