Tag: discrimination

Progress: Discrimination, AP Merit, Retrenchment, Office Space 

On Tuesday, October 22nd and Thursday, October 24th, the union and the administration met and made progress on several issues:

  • Language was crafted that both sides could agree to on the contract language covering discrimination grievances, and a tentative agreement has been signed on the issue, preserving our members’ rights.
  • Both sides have also been able to work out issues in regard to the AP merit process, and a TA has been signed.
  • Retrenchment:  A tentative agreement has been signed to acknowledge the specific place of full-time non-tenure track faculty should the university declare a financial emergency and seek to layoff faculty.
  • The Adjunct Office Space Committee, which convened as a labor-management committee following the ratification of the first adjunct contract, will continue with a focus on office space issues for all CBU members.A tentative agreement has been signed.

 

Additional Progress: Adjunct Proposals

The Adjunct Appointment, Evaluation and Job Security proposal moved forward significantly on Thursday. After multiple shifts in language from the union, on Thursday, the administration modified a number of its positions, putting us very close to an agreement that will advance the professional standing of adjuncts. It will increase support for their teaching from within their departments, and offer a path to increase job stability through the ability to request an evaluation for the purposes of promotions, raises and/or multi-semester appointments. There are a few final details to work through before both sides can come to agreement, but many of the largest obstacles have been overcome.

 

Major Issues Remain:  Healthcare, Wages, Family-Friendly Policies, NTT Job Stability, Compensation.

The administration has made it clear that their key priority is increasing healthcare costs.  They have proposed significant increases to the percentage of premiums all full time members would pay, with families bearing a considerable burden, with increases in premiums of over $1000 a year.  While the administration has proposed a new tier for those with only one dependent that would cut premiums for some members, the new deductibles they have proposed would eat significantly into these savings–in network, $250 for individuals and $500 for plus-one and families, double that out of network.  They have also proposed doubling the co-pay for specialists to $40.

 

TAUP will be pushing back against these punishing proposals while pushing for more family-friendly policies: 

  • Support for childcare
  • Tuition benefits at other schools
  • Parental leave for librarians and Academic Professionals
  • Healthcare benefits that support families rather than punishing them

To help TAUP fight the administration’s anti-family proposal. Email Jenna at jsiegelaft@gmail.com.

 

Compensation

TAUP has made significant moves in our compensation proposals, the administration’s proposals on wages remain below projected inflation, and they have not yet moved on other key proposals, among them  NTT job security, NTT pension parity, course releases for exceptional service, and others.  

 

NTT Job Stability

The administration is still not willing to take the most important step in helping to insure that NTTs who have taught for 3 years will have a degree of job stability.  Our proposal, which would trigger 3 year or longer renewals or explanations for non-renewal, will cost the university nothing. It follows what is already the general practice at many schools and colleges at Temple.  The university should take the final step in giving NTTs some contractual guarantees for their commitment and hard work.

 

Next Steps

Join us in  fighting for these proposals and the values they represent at the table.  

Have you attended open bargaining? Come  on Nov. 6th or Nov. 12th to show your support for these issues. RSVP 

 

Have you signed the petition urging the Board to agree to a Fair Contract?

If you want to know who is circulating the petition in your school/department, or if you’d like to circulate a petition to you colleagues, contact Jenna at jsiegelaft@gmail.com    

 

We know the administration can afford our proposals.  It’s time for them to say “yes.” 

 

Negotiations Update, October 21, 2019

On Friday, TAUP and the administration presented a comprehensive plans that included mutual moves to drop some proposals in exchange for others.  It was a critical moment in negotiations for both sides.  No one wants to drop proposals that they believe in, but both sides know going into negotiations that there are things to be gained at this time at the table, and others that need to be fought through other means, or over time.  

Though neither side has agreed to the comprehensive proposal that the other has set on the table, we are now going back and forth with potential trades. There are difficult decisions to be made that require an assessment of where there is the greatest likelihood of making progress.  

Agreement was reached on the following issues:

  • Discipline and Dismissal of Tenure Track Faculty:  The administration proposed to weaken the process for discipline/dismissal of tenure-track but not yet tenured professors , TAUP rejected this and counter-proposed expanding protections for NTT faculty.  On Friday, both sides dropped their proposals and reverted to the status quo in the contract.
  • NTT Job Responsibilities:  NTTs are being required to engage in the tri-partite mission of research, teaching, and service in two colleges, and TAUP proposed language clarifying that the contract excludes this.  The administration had proposed changing the contract to allow for this expansion of NTT duties. We ultimately settled on mutually withdrawing proposals along with a process for to settle this concern over the practices at the two colleges outside of negotiations. 
  • Hardship withdrawal from retirement account:  The administration agreed to our proposal, committing to setting up a procedure for hardship withdrawals within 6 months of ratification.

Several active proposals were also revised in an effort to seek common ground, including:

  • Justice for families:   We revised a series of proposals that would bring the administration closer to its claim that Temple is family friendly.  Thus far, the administration has refused these proposals and has made matters worse by proposing a health-care clawback that would hurt all of our members but would disproportionately punish families, adding over $1000 to their yearly premiums as well as a $500 deductible for in-network services and a $1000 deductible out-of-network.
  • Childcare:  A sideletter in a prior contract made provision for TAUP and the Faculty Senate to submit a proposal on childcare benefits. We did so in May of 2018, but received no reply from the administration until they rejected it in full last week. In response to this, TAUP removed its proposal for an on-site childcare center, which the administration had made clear it would not agree to, and focused instead on a subsidy for childcare and for Temple to contract with an outside provider for backup care in cases where one’s childcare or eldercare falls through. 
  • Tuition Benefits at Other Schools:  Another sideletter in a prior contract made provision for TAUP and the Faculty Senate to submit a proposal on tuition benefits at other schools. In response to the administration’s rejection of the entire proposal, TAUP narrowed it to Temple’s joining the Tuition Exchange, a scholarship program that nearly 700 schools participate in.  
  • Paternity leave for Librarians and Academic Professionals (APs):  We initially proposed 12 weeks paid leave for all mothers and fathers in our bargaining unit.  Since the administration has rejected this, we have narrowed its scope. Our Librarians and APs do not have anything close to the benefits our full-time faculty have around maternity and paternity.  Where full-time faculty get 8 weeks paid leave for maternity plus an extra 4 weeks paid if medically necessary, librarians and APs must rely on sick leave that accrues at 10 days a year. If a new mother has been at Temple for 3 years and has had to use half of that sick leave in that time, they would get only 3 weeks to recover from childbirth, leaving nothing for sickness for a parent or baby after pregnancy. APs and librarians also have no provision like the work-life balance that allows new mothers or fathers among the full-time faculty to apply for a semester off of teaching to care for a newborn or a newly-adopted or new foster child.  We have made a proposal to remedy this inequity. 

The administration also showed movement on some additional areas:

    •  Discrimination:  The administration showed willingness to drop its demand that discrimination no longer be grievable, but the offer had strings attached that we cannot accept. We do believe that we can ultimately come to an agreement on this crucial issue.  ‘
    • Job Security:  Though administration made a helpful counter on adjunct job security, unfortunately, on both adjunct and NTT job security, they still refuse to accept the core of our proposals–the elements that would actually increase the job security of 75% of our bargaining unit.  We will continue to push on these most important issues.  
    • Salary and wages:  Both sides are moving on compensation proposals.  After the union made a shift in adjunct wages, the administration made its first offer on minima for full-time and adjunct members.  In addition, they moved a bit in response to our proposals on across-the-board and merit raises for full-time members, but they have also begun to threaten that the raises would start from ratification rather than dating back to July 1, 2019, when we would have normally had an across-the-board raise.  We reject this position. 

Health insurance:  The administration has not moved at all on its proposal for very large increases in premiums, deductibles and co-pays for specialists.   The salary offers from the university do not even cover cost of living increases, and additional healthcare costs make it clear that so far, our members are being offered a pay cut. We cannot accept increases of this sort.

Things are moving and  both sides have made progress toward an agreement.  But we still have a significant disagreements to resolve before we have a contract that our negotiating team and Executive Committee could bring to members for discussion and ratification.  We will continue to work hard to move things in a positive direction.  

You can help by getting more involved.  The power of a union is in its membership, it’s in YOU.  Attend open bargaining, sign our petition (email jsiegelaft@gmail.com), talk to your colleagues about the importance of supporting this work, and keep your eye out for other actions to show our collective power.  

After Charlottesville: All You Fascists Bound to Lose

However common violent bigotry has been in the history of our nation—and it has been heartbreakingly common—this past Friday’s and Saturday’s events in Charlottesville will stay with us for a long time. We must not forget the repugnant image of racists marching by the light of tiki torches and then in daylight and polluting the air with their hateful slogans, initiating violence against those standing against their hate. We must not forget the carnage caused by a white supremacist as he slammed his car into innocent counter-protesters, injuring 19 and killing Heather Heyer, whose loss we mourn and whose name we must honor and remember.

Nor can we forget the outrage of President Trump’s unwillingness to immediately and unequivocally condemn the racism, anti-Semitism, and other poisons put forth by those who gathered for “Unite the Right.”

Our national union, the American Federation of Teachers, has sent out an eloquent response, which includes this:

We call on the president, the Justice Department and the FBI to conduct real, transparent investigations into terrorism from white supremacists. We call on elected officials and law enforcement from all 50 states to use all of the resources at their disposal to keep our communities safe. People in America need to know that laws will be enforced to protect them. White Americans get to presume the laws will protect them; people of color, Jews Muslim, and queer Americans deserve that peace of mind as well.

So what can we in TAUP do directly to address the hateful ideologies that pre-date last weekend but which Charlottesville has brought into high relief? We are eager to hear your suggestions (please email TAUP’s president, Steve Newman). But here are some preliminary thoughts, informed by a conversation yesterday with some leaders in AFT’s Higher Ed Division.

First, we must be aware that an organized hate-fest could come to Temple; colleges and universities have been and will continue to be targets of these groups. We should not cede an inch of space at our university to hatred or to allow any member of our community–faculty, librarians, academic professionals, students, staff, and neighbors–to be subject to violence. There are many ways we might resist, but if we plan to confront these groups directly, we will need to be disciplined. Nonviolence in the face of provocation requires training. We are working with AFT to figure out how to provide such training and will keep you posted. If you have expertise in this field and want to be involved, please contact us.

We must also not remain reactive. We need to choose dates and places of our own to articulate our vision of an inclusive, just, and diverse university and society. TAUP will join in support of events that strengthen the values of those who productively voice their opposition to hate, and encourage groups to inform us of actions.

And we cannot think only in terms of dramatic confrontations. We must also recommit to the daily labor necessary to counter hatred with love and justice. We must do whatever we can to assure our community that racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, misogyny, homophobia, ableism, and other forms of hatred have no place at Temple. When we encounter it, we must raise our voices against it, strongly and firmly. AFT Higher Ed will also be putting out new materials on how to this most effectively that we will share.

If you are the target of such hatred, please report it to the relevant authorities at Temple. Also, please contact TAUP. Non-discrimination and the health and safety of the members of our union are guaranteed by our contract, and we will do whatever we can to ensure that those terms are met.

Finally, there are concrete things we in TAUP—and that, of course, includes you–can do through our Union to combat all forms of discrimination on campus, including those less overt than what we saw and heard in Charlottesville. A Fighting Institutional Racism Caucus has had some preliminary meetings and we are planning a Women’s and LGBTQ Caucus. Together, we aim to work with groups associated with the Faculty Senate and the administration to ensure that Temple is a truly equitable place to work and study. If you are interested in these efforts, please contact Steve Newman.

Together, we must work to rid our world of the scourges of racism, misogyny, anti-Semitism, homophobia, Islamophobia, ableism, and other forms of hate. That way, we can also do our part in affirming the promise made many decades ago by that great Union man, Woody Guthrie: “All you fascists bound to lose!”

Steve Newman, President

Jennie Shanker, Vice President

Norma Corrales-Martin, Treasurer