The TAUP contract states: 

“TAUP and Temple shall express their joint commitment to tenure and the need to have a sizeable complement of tenured and tenure track faculty in a high-quality research university.” 

We have pressed the administration to clarify how they understand this commitment by proposing a 1% increase in the number of TT faculty as a percentage of full-time-equivalent faculty per year of the contract.  

The administration’s response to the proposal was that  they are not sure that there is a problem, and they’d never agree to a quota.  We are open to various approaches to address this issue, but it is profoundly troubling that the administration seems unwilling to acknowledge that this is an issue.  

The statistics are clear:  TT faculty at Temple in both absolute and relative numbers have declined significantly over the past 20 years, even as enrollments have been rising steeply.  In 2005, the earliest year for which we have enrollment data, Temple was at 29,583 full-time equivalent students. We are now at 36,423.

 

This, of course, is part of a larger trend in higher education; but simply citing that trend does not capture the disturbing degree to which Temple has embraced contingent hiring.  The chart below is drawn from data compiled by The Chronicle of Higher Education. (See Almanac 2019, “Colleges with the Lowest and Highest Numbers of Full-Time-Equivalent Students per Tenured or Tenure-Track Professor”) 

It shows that compared to the 94 other Public Research 1 Universities:

• • Temple ranks third from last in percentage of TT faculty relative to all full-time faculty
  • Temple ranks tenth from last in the ratio of students to tenure-track faculty
  • Temple is the only school that ranks in the bottom 10 in both categories. 

One mitigating factor here is that we have a large medical faculty that is mostly off the tenure-track.  But even if we restrict the set to TAUP schools and colleges, only 50.8% of our full-time faculty are on the tenure track, which would move us up to only 90th out of 95 Public Research R1s. (Of course, other universities might also improve their standing if we separated out their medical schools.)

The picture does not look much better if we consider Temple in terms of all public colleges and universities.  Out of 679, we rank 645th in terms of TT% of full-time faculty and 476th in terms of TT faculty per student.
These numbers all show that Temple has turned away from tenure-track hiring even more sharply than all but a few of its peer institutions.

The decline in tenure-track hiring at Temple has had many bad effects.  It has increased the service burden on a shrinking pool of tenured faculty. Faculty in departments that have seen sharp declines struggle to offer broader and deeper graduate programs. 

It has also led to an increase in the responsibilities heaped upon NTTs.  Even though they are paid significantly less and teach more, they are being asked to do an increasing amount of service and in many cases to publish as well. Yet because they lack the protections of tenure, many feel obliged to say yes whenever a Chair or Dean asks them to take on more responsibilities–even serving as Chair of their departments. Moreover, in two colleges we know of, they are being required to engage in the tri-partite mission of research, teaching and service as a condition of their employment even though this is explicitly prohibited in the current contract.

TAUP has responded to these concerns. In addition to proposing more tenure-track hiring and more job security for NTTs, we’ve proposed to strengthen the language that prohibits management from forcing NTTs to engage in more than two of the three parts of the tripartite mission (research, teaching, and service) as a condition of their employment.  Nothing in our proposals prevents NTTs from opting to do this work if they so choose, and the union has always opposed the position taken by many administrators that NTTs on non-research tracks shouldn’t be rewarded with merit for the research they do. What we all need to object to is the demand that NTTs engage in teaching, research, and service. 

The administration’s response to our position is a proposal which would change the language of the contract to allow NTTs to be required to engage in all three missions!  

If the administration wants to require faculty to do teaching, research and service and is worried about meeting accreditation standards, they should hire more tenure-track faculty

As we search nationally and internationally for the best tenure-track faculty, we should remember that, to borrow from the famous speech by our founder, Russell Conwell, there are Acres of Diamonds in our own backyard:  contingent faculty who have already proven their excellence in their experiences teaching at Temple, and, in many cases, their excellence in research and service as well.

The administration claims that hiring more more TTs would require a loss of NTT and adjunct jobs.  This is based on the assumption that Temple is already spending what it can and should on instruction.  Temple’s strong financial statements reveal that they can spend more, despite the familiar drumbeat of austerity.And considering our university’s very low standing among the institutions with which it compares itself when it comes to spending on instruction, Temple should be investing more in its faculty.. 

As we have pointed out, Temple is dead last among public Research 1s in the percentage it spends on instruction for every dollar it takes in from tuition and fees; it also lags far behind the peer institutions it picks in the amount it spends on instruction per student, a gap that has nearly doubled in 7 years;  in the most recent available data, it ranked sixth nationally in the sheer amount of dollars it takes in from student tuition and fees minus what it spends on instruction.  The proposals TAUP has put on the table would set Temple on a path toward improving its dismal record.    

 

 

 

This is Serious

The university has proposed:

• removing program directors “and any other faculty who perform same/similar managerial/supervisory duties under other titles” from the bargaining unit
• removing the right to grieve discrimination, and health/safety issues
• lessening the protections tenure-track faculty have from being dismissed for just cause.  They would do this by shifting them from the process that applies to tenured faculty to the less robust one that applies to full-time non-tenure-track faculty.  

They are also clearly aiming to weaken the union and make it much harder for members to be protected and represented. They want to: 

• reduce our numbers by removing program heads as well as our Academic Professionals 
• remove the union’s office from campus
• eliminate the 5 course releases the union can offer faculty who enforce the TAUP contract 
• remove the ability of the union to meet with new hires during their HR orientation
• they insist that TAUP has no role in discussing things such as SFFs saying it is strictly in the wheelhouse of the Faculty Senate. We are trying to insure that they are not the sole means of evaluation used in decisions that affect people’s careers,

All of these moves reflect a desire on the administration’s part to have a union that is weak and that will struggle to represent faculty and uphold the contract.

How you can help – even if you have literally no time

The easiest thing you can do is to make TAUP more visible:

• hang a copy of our fliers on your office doors or in public areas in your school. 
• wear our swag – it really makes a difference when colleagues see their peers supporting the union.
• follow TAUP on FB, Twitter, IG if you’re on social media, and share our posts on your accounts. Tag people and organizations who should be in on the conversation.
• read our emails and stay informed. If you miss one, go to taup.org. Most emails appear as posts on the home page of website, and they are archived under the “eBulletin” link.
• SAVE THE DATE: October 15th, Rally at 1pm, location TBA. That is the day that the current contract expires. If we do not come to an agreement with the administration, we’ll have messages to convey. 

FOR FLIERS, BUTTONS, LANYARDS AND MORE,

COME TO THE TAUP OFFICE IN ROOM 721 RITTER ANNEX

or contact our organizer JENNA SIEGEL

JSIEGELAFT@GMAIL.COM

If you want to help out with one thing that will make a bigger difference:

• FiIl out this form to let us know your interests and how you can help
• One person from each department is needed to circulate a petition to faculty that will be delivered to the Board of Trustees in October. Contact our organizer Jenna Siegel for a clipboard with petitions. She can answer any questions you may have, and offer support, including a brief training if you’d like. 
• Come to open bargaining. It’s an eye opening experience for people who do attend, and it helps in many ways: it shows the administration that faculty support their union. It gives the union table team an opportunity to benefit from your intellect and experiences when we have discussions during breaks.  You can pass notes up to the table if there is an important point that can contribute to the discussion. It helps your colleagues to be more informed, since you’ve been there and heard things first hand. We want transparency in the process and a direct pipeline for communication with members. 
• Offer your scholarly, administrative and creative skills to our campaign. Help with simple office tasks like entering people’s info from petitions to our database, making buttons and distributing materials to people on campus. Even an hour or two makes a difference.. Work with us on fliers, agitprop, portable pop-ups, or anything else you can imagine. If you have a practice that can engage with this work, we’re up for some fun. 
• Attend a short training to become familiar with our collective bargaining agreement. Contact Jenna if you’re interested in learning more JSIEGELAFT@GMAIL.COM.

On Monday, the administration responded to our non-economic proposals and our replies to theirs.  Their responses made clear that they are not yet ready to address substantively the reasonable demands we have made, demands informed by countless conversations with you and by the bargaining surveys you filled out.

 Here are some of the most important points: 

• Job security for NTTs and Adjuncts: The administration refused to offer NTTs and adjuncts more job security because they claim they need complete flexibility in hiring.  They proposed language for evaluating these faculty members, who make up 75% of our union, and there was some progress on that front, but there were no contractually-defined benefits that would come with evaluation.  No 3-year-plus contracts for NTTs or priority hiring or multiple semester contracts for adjuncts, even with the considerable flexibility we built into our proposals.  

• Tenure-Track Hiring: The administration rejected our proposal for a 1% per year increase in the net proportion of tenure-track faculty, claiming that hiring is solely a management right, and that they were not going to agree to a quota.  We pressed them to tell us how, if they didn’t like our approach, they plan to fulfill their commitment already in the contract to a “sizable complement” of tenured and tenure-track faculty.  If we can’t quantify and come to an agreement as to what “sizable” means, what does their commitment in the contract signify? The language was put in the contract to address the concern over the dwindling percentage of tenured/tenure track faculty.  Our students understand that the sharp decline in tenure-track hiring is a problem.  Why doesn’t the administration? 

• Hiring and Retaining a Diverse Faculty:  The administration doesn’t believe that TAUP has the right to bargain for more diversity in hiring since, again, hiring is a management prerogative.  But affirmative action is in our contract for a reason. We know that there are members of the administration who have been devoting themselves to this important issue.  But clearly more resources need to be devoted to this effort, and the administration should be willing to share the good work it has done, is doing, and plans to do in order to address the significant challenge of recruiting and retaining a diverse faculty at Temple.  

• The Administration’s Proposal to Make Discrimination Ungrievable: The administration claims that our members, our leaders and the labor lawyers who advise us, are not equipped to discern when someone has a viable discrimination case. This is their justification for removing the language in the contract which gives members the right to grieve when they experience discrimination at work.  Instead, they believe that trust needs to be invested in the wholly-administrative processes guided by their in-house experts.  This is a false dichotomy. It is possible to pursue a grievance that insists on holding the administration to account while also directing our members, as we do, to other processes open to them both inside and outside the university, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. We are not comfortable with giving up our members’ hard-won right to a process entirely owned by the administration on such important matters.  

• Clarification of Job Responsibilities for NTTs: In response to our proposal to clarify that full-time non-tenure-track faculty members cannot be required to undertake all three of the missions of research, teaching, and service, they proposed language that would allow for it.  So as they refuse to commit to hiring more tenure-track faculty, they are interested in increasing the responsibilities of NTTs to resemble those of tenure-track faculty while not providing them with any additional job security.  We believe this does not serve the interest of our NTTs, our students or the research mission of the university.
  
  If the administration needs faculty who are required to do teaching, research, and service, the answer is simple.  Hire more tenure-track faculty members. Temple has the money; it need not replace other faculty to hire new tenure-line faculty.  The problem is that the university is not spending a sufficient portion of the tuition and fees it receives on instruction. This has been made clear through recent analyses by The Century Foundation and The American Council for Trustees and Alumni and the Chronicle of Higher Education. The demands on tenured faculty in running their schools and departments are too high. NTTs are being asked to do the work of tenured faculty. This is a condition that can be changed if Temple were to invest sufficiently in instruction. 

• Student Feedback Forms:  We have proposed that Student Feedback Forms not be used as the primary tool for personnel decisions (hiring, reappointment, tenure, promotion, merit) given the copious research that questions the validity and bias of student evaluations and the growing number of professional organizations doubting their utility.  The administration believes any problems with SFFs can be addressed through the Faculty Senate’s SFF Committee, which is being renamed to reflect its broader mission to help in evaluating teaching. We are grateful for the valuable work of our colleagues and the administrators on this committee and we look forward to the implementation of their recommendations.  Those recommendations will improve upon the instrument that is used in evaluating teaching. It will continue to play a significant role on personnel processes governed by our contract, and so how it is used needs to be addressed in our contract.   

• Anti-union proposals:  The administration is sustaining their direct attacks on our union. They are trying to diminish our numbers by reducing the number of employees with union protections, removing program directors and academic professionals from our bargaining unit. They want to take away the union office space, which has been on campus for 43 years. They are refusing to continue the practice of assisting the union in meeting with new faculty, librarians and academic professionals in the orientations that they receive from HR. 

We regret that the administration has taken these positions. Rather than negotiating to improve the conditions that we work in at Temple, they are focusing on  separating our members from access to their union. It runs counter to the rhetoric from our President and Provost, in which they state, “We believe the university and TAUP have been able to achieve this goal time and again for many years, and that this positive relationship should continue” (8/16/19). We do not accept the justifications offered for these proposals. 

There were small signs of progress on issues such as the evaluation of adjuncts and NTTs,  representation of NTTs on committees, and there have been some useful conversations on other issues.  We continue to move forward, carefully considering the administration’s objections, concerns, questions, and the language of the proposals they have provided as we move forward in pursuit of compromise.  

But as the summary above indicates,  the administration is not hearing the demands we are putting forth and the values that inform them.  It’s time to raise our voices. We know that Temple can do better. The administration has the resources.  Our proposals are just and reasonable. It’s time for TAUP members to do what you can, and get more involved.

The union is not an organization that is separate from the people it represents. It is only powerful and persuasive through the solidarity shown by members who act. 

 

Become a member of the union today to stand with your colleagues as we fight for better working conditions. 

Join us at open bargaining: 9/13 from 11:30am-4:00pm and on other dates; RSVP here.

SAVE THE DATE: OCTOBER 15TH, 1PM RALLY ON THE LAST DAY OF THE CONTRACT IF NO AGREEMENT HAS BEEN REACHED