Category: eBulletins

Protecting Our Health and Safety:  A Survey

Since March, TAUP has been pressuring the administration to include campus workers in its response to COVID-19 and to communicate clearly and in detail its plans for keeping  everyone in the Temple community safe.

What has been learned thus far from these efforts can be found on our COVID-19 page.  Although some recent mass emails from the administration and some one-on-one conversations have provided some sense of Temple’s plans, there is still far too much that is unknown. Moreover in our Town Halls, meetings with departments and schools/colleges, and in one-on-one communications it has been made clear that our members have many fundamental objections to and questions about the approach being taken by the administration.

TAUP’s Executive Committee and Health and Safety Committee need your input to understand the full range of concerns about health and safety in the Fall semester.  Please fill out this survey by Saturday, 6.27 at noon.  Be sure to login using the email address that you receive TAUP communications on, and contact TAUP If you have any difficulties logging in.

The Health and Safety Committee has also sent a list of questions to the administration in preparation for a meet-and-discuss meeting on Thursday.  Together, the survey and the recommendations from the Health and Safety Committee will provide the basis of a document setting forth principles, conditions and procedures that need to be in place to safely work in the Fall.  The document will be circulated to be voted on next week by all dues-paying members.

In this way, we can all be on the same page, whether we are pushing for changes from within our departments and schools or during meetings with administration.  Our approach and expectations will be clear and we can all work in solidarity in ensuring that our campus workplaces are safe.

Given the administration’s initial resistance to including union members in important planning discussions, we can all expect resistance to additional suggested improvements. On a matter as important as health and safety however, the administration needs to make it clear that the principles, procedures and conditions that the faculty, APs and Librarians expect are being taken very seriously.  TAUP’s elected leadership will bring these concerns to central administration as everyone works to raise these issues within each of the departments, schools or colleges, especially since it is clear that significant policies are being set at a more local level.   Reach out to Jenna Siegel, our Staff Organizer, with your departmental or college based concerns so that we can support you in approaching your leadership and in being heard.

The majority of us have urgent questions and concerns about health and safety, and a key step toward addressing those concerns is through communicating them. Please fill out this survey asap.  The Executive and Health and Safety Committees look forward to being guided by your responses.

Juneteenth and the Need for Actual Change

Today and from this moment forward, Juneteenth will be a paid holiday for TAUP’s staff, and no union business will be done.  But while it is only right that we celebrate this holiday–and it should be made a paid national holiday–this must be part of a broader, deeper, and effective movement for racial justice and the fight against Anti-Blackness.

That movement has to include change throughout Temple University, including within TAUP itself.

On June 6, TAUP issued a statement  urging Temple’s administration to take our students’ demands seriously, including those to stop funding the Philadelphia Police Foundation (PPF) and to stop non-essential work with the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD).  It is unacceptable that the administration did not engage in a dialogue with these students before rejecting their demands. The university needs to be transparent about what money flows from Temple (including our students’ tuition money) to the PPF and the PPD. Temple should not be providing any type of support that increases police militarization in our city and its communities.

After lengthy discussion and soliciting input from experts with differing perspectives, the Executive Committee (EC) has voted to support the students’ demands on the PPF and the PPD.  The EC believes we must listen closely to the Black, Indigenous and POC (BIPOC) throughout the campus and surrounding communities.  It is past time for fundamental reforms in how policing gets done in our country and in Philadelphia, including the neighborhoods where Temple is located but does not yet live in true partnership.

Divesting from the PPF and PPD are direct ways for the university to shift toward the changes that need to occur.  There are many ways that this funding could be redirected to improve safety.  As one member of the EC who has family in the PPD stated “It is about who is being protected and who is being policed.”

This is a small first step.  We must do much more. TAUP is:

  •  Scheduling a meeting with the administration, as per our contract, of a joint committee to “discuss diversity related issues pertaining to all members of the bargaining unit.”

  • Forming an active working group to analyze how the union can center racial justice in our fight for fair working conditions.  All TAUP members are invited to join us in this work.  Contact jsiegelaft@gmail.com

  • In discussion with student leaders who are working for racial justice to see how we can support each others’ efforts.

  • Identifying providers for anti-racism training for our union staff and members, to be scheduled by the end of the summer.

Today, our national union, AFT, has passed a resolution: “Confronting Racism and Supporting Black Lives,”  setting forth 19 commitments to racial justice.  TAUP will align our efforts with these commitments.

It will take all of us to do this work.  TAUP is eager for your ideas and initiatives.  Please contact TAUP if you want to get involved in these efforts.

Temple’s Re-Opening: An Update on Health and Safety

In planning for the return to campus, nothing can be more important than the health and safety of all members of the campus community.

It is the university’s responsibility to ensure that any face-to-face interactions that will need to occur will not risk people’s health and will not cost lives. 

The planning process has not included the voices of many union members.  Workers’ voices are critical to campus safety and should have been included from the start.  TAUP, TUGSA and the other unions should have been understood as key stakeholders in this discussion.

The union has convened a Health and Safety Committee, which includes faculty from a wide range of departments, including biology and public health; they have been poring over the plans provided by the university, guidelines from federal and state officials, and best practices in public health in order to identify the key principles Temple needs to follow, the questions the union needs to ask, and the demands we should consider.

Last week our Town Hall included two lawyers from Willig, Williams, and Davidson, the firm that has advised TAUP for many years. They gave a brief presentation on the ADA and the Families First Coronavirus Relief Act (FFCRA) and responded to members’ questions.

A transcript of their presentation can be found here, and the ensuing questions and responses  are being posted here as we transcribe them.  The lawyers are working on responding to questions that remained when the Town Hall ended, and their responses will be added asap.

You can find key documents, including communications from the administration, guidance and rules from governmental agencies, statements from unions, and excellent work by our members, including a “Contingency Committee Report: Reopening Guidance, Scenarios, and Recommendations,” from the faculty in the College of Public Health.  These materials can be found here. 

The union has had multiple discussions with the administration in which we have raised many questions, concerns, and objections that we have heard from our members.  We are planning for a more formal meet-and-discuss with the administration on these issues next week.  The  union has been promised that more details are coming soon, including a guide specifically for faculty.

Until the administration makes its plans clear, both university-wide and at a departmental level, and gives those affected a chance to respond and have their concerns and suggestions taken seriously, we will not feel safe.

In the coming week, the Union will lay out the key issues and together we will all discuss what steps must be taken to ensure our safety and equitable treatment across all ranks.

But in union-wide Town Halls, in meetings with specific departments and school/colleges, and in 1:1 conversations, members have told us that they are not satisfied with the level of specificity provided on a host of issues around opening in the Fall, and that they have deep concerns about the details that have been provided.  There is a long list of these concerns, including the wisdom of having any face-to-face instruction in the Fall; the accommodation process, especially as it bears on older faculty and contingent faculty; testing; our members’ rights and obligations if someone is violating safety protocols; members with childcare challenges; the lack of a clear channel for feedback about these plans.