There is a great deal we do not know about how things will unfold in the upcoming terms, chiefly is the severity of the pandemic in our region, the US, and worldwide. This will affect enrollments, the state appropriation, and many other factors central to Temple’s operations. Depending on how these unknowns come into focus, revealing the depth of the crisis, the administration may ask us again for concessions. While the union remains open to discussions, we will continue to insist that the key concerns of TAUP members are considered in any conversation about concessions: financial transparency, educational quality, and job security.
Despite all of this uncertainty, there are things we do know:
Decision makers must listen to our members.
Our members must be heard as decisions are made that affect their lives and livelihoods. Last Wednesday, President Englert informed the Temple community that various teams have been working on a range of issues that must be addressed by the Fall. We are all grateful to those doing this critical work, but we seek clarity about these teams, including:
- How were team members selected? By whom? And are members of the TAUP bargaining unit included on committees that are making decisions that will affect us all?
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What are the concerns of committees that are overseen centrally by the university, and what concerns are college committees overseeing?
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What are the individual charges and timelines for each of these committees?
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How can individuals who are not on a committee contact team members to share concerns, data, objections, or ideas?
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When will recommendations formulated by these committees be shared, and what provision will there be for comments and questions before policies are finalized and enacted?
The decisions made at this time will profoundly affect our working conditions and the quality of care that we can offer students. While the views of our members are sometimes solicited and respected, too often at Temple our experiences and insights are not genuinely taken into account. There is too much at stake to ignore our voices at this moment.
TAUP will insist on the rights afforded by our contract and the principles we articulated in a document we sent to the administration in mid-March on including our members in decisions that affect them.
We are encouraged by faculty in departments and colleges and schools who are organizing to ask questions about key decisions and to offer views to ensure that Temple can survive, and even thrive, in the midst of this crisis with its values intact. TAUP is here to help members in these efforts. Please contact our Staff Organizer, Jenna Siegel, with any questions or requests.
Health and safety must be protected.
To ensure that the union is fully informed of the issues facing members and to amplify our collective voice, we are assembling a Health and Safety Task Force. If you’re interested, please RSVP here.
We are scheduling a “meet and discuss” with the administration on health and safety issues. The administration has stated that it will follow all relevant guidelines from the CDC and other authorities, but many of the requests we put forth in our March 17th Information Demand concerning our contract’s Health and Safety article have gone unmet.
Among our concerns, members need to know:
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Plans for online, hybrid, and face-to-face instruction;
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Steps being taken to clean classrooms, the library, offices, and other public spaces;
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Provisions made to conform to social distancing guidelines;
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Provisions for Personal Protective Equipment and testing;
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What members of the campus community should do if they are at high risk for COVID-19 and wish to work remotely.
Again, we urge the administration to draw on the unique insights that our members have from teaching and advising students, working in studios and labs, and working at the library.
Educational quality, a fair workload, and job security must be assured.
Saving money by shedding TAUP members’ jobs or increasing their workload may seem unavoidable to the administration. But Temple’s central administration has the power and resources to avoid this. The cost of layoffs and workload increases is high, perhaps catastrophically so when we measure the effect on teaching, research, and service, and on the lives of our students and our colleagues.
We welcome President Englert’s centralized decision that there will be no furloughs at this time. But it calls into question one of the reasons the administration offers for not being able to guarantee job security in response to our proposals–that hiring is too decentralized. If the administration can declare no furloughs for all workers university-wide, we should be able to have a discussion about job security for the teachers and professionals students rely on for their education. Just as TAUP negotiates our contract with Temple as a whole, not individual colleges and schools, there are principles that transcend de-centralization.
We are concerned especially for our members on limited term contracts. The budget has been cited as the reason for not renewing multiple NTT faculty contracts and for granting many only one-year contracts rather than the multi-year or 3+ year appointments that would normally be given according to the TAUP contract. We also know many adjuncts have been told that there is great uncertainty about class assignments in upcoming terms.
Job non-renewals unrelated to members’ job performance are deeply concerning and may even constitute a de facto retrenchment that evades the steps required in the contract. Violations of the workload article of the contract will not go unchallenged. We must all be vigilant and vigorous in defending the rights we have through our contract.
If you suspect that any changes in your working conditions violate the contract, email taupaft@gmail.com asap.
The administration must commit to financial transparency.
When the administration requested TAUP members forgo next year’s salary increases, we raised questions about Temple’s finances. Thus far, few answers have been provided. Our position is that rather than cutting salaries, benefits, or jobs, or increasing workload, the administration should be spending a percentage of its reserves. The reasons given for not doing so have not been persuasive.
Among Temple’s claims is that the reserves are not large and primarily belong to individual colleges and schools. Regardless of how the funds are structured, when people are being pressured to take on more work, and colleagues are losing their jobs, financial transparency is needed.
One of the ironies of Responsibility Centered Management (RCM) is that despite efforts by some members of the administration, our members report that Temple’s finances have become more of a black box since RCM’s installation. This is exactly the opposite of what that system was supposed to provide. RCM’s promise of financial transparency would be a step toward building more productive discussions between TAUP and the administration.
But we can’t wait for them to come around, so we are assembling our own Financial Transparency Task Force to look into Temple’s books. RSVP here if you have some expertise to offer and would like to participate.
The intellectual property of our members must be affirmed.
With the wholesale move to online instruction, many faculty members have asked: Who owns the materials I have authored for my classes and posted to Canvas? TAUP holds that copyright should remain with the instructor. It is deeply troubling that the administration has been unwilling to affirm this. This is a key matter that will be discussed when we meet.