Tag: negotiations

e-Bulletin 4/22 – 4/26/19

First Bargaining Session Update 

Last Thursday, TAUP’s Table Team was joined by 21 members of our bargaining unit as we met with representatives from the Administration at Temple University Center City (TUCC).  As detailed in our update on Friday, TAUP put forth proposals on compensation, benefits, and job stability that aim to improve the working conditions of ALL our constituents, with more proposals to come.  The energy in the room was great thanks to the presence of our members, and the Table Team profited from their insights during caucus breaks.   TAUP’s approach to Open Bargaining was featured in this article in philly.com this weekend.  To find out more about early settlement, see our e-bulletin on this topic.

Next Chances to Attend Bargaining: 

May 3rd (9 a.m.-noon) and May 6th (1-5 p.m.) at TUCC

Come to our next sessions to support the Table Team and see what it’s like to negotiate with the administration.   If you’d like to attend, please fill out this form, and someone from TAUP will get back to you with further information.  Please note that we mistakenly identified May 8th as a confirmed negotiating session in our previous E-bulletin.  It is possible we will meet then, but this has not been confirmed.  We apologize for any confusion.

 

May 1st Rally at the Bell Tower (12:00-1:00 p.m.)– Our Temple! 

Show your  support for equity, job security, and respect; and increase our power at the table by attending the rally at the Bell Tower on May 1st.  There, a range of speakers will talk about these negotiations and will lay forth a vision of a Temple that puts our students and our faculty, librarians, and academic professionals at the center of the University.

There is no better or more urgent time to join TAUP! 

We have been working hard on writing proposals, on gathering our members for Open Bargaining and on honing our message.  But the single most important power we have at the negotiating table is membership.  Unions draw their power from their numbers, and the most important way to show your support, if you haven’t done so already, is to join TAUP as a dues-paying member.

TAUP Elections:  Please Vote!

If you are a dues-paying member, you should have received a ballot on April 14th to elect officers, constituency council members (if you are a faculty member), and delegates.  The deadline for voting is April 30th at 5:00 p.m., with the results being announced at the rally on May 1st.   If you haven’t received a ballot, please contact the TAUP office.

 

Unemployment Compensation Workshops

Many TAUP members can collect Unemployment Compensation over the summer to cover basic costs during the break, or even for the upcoming year.

You may be eligible if:

  • You have been told that you will not be working in the fall, due to no fault of your own (ex: you didn’t quit, were not fired, etc.)
  • If you will be working fewer hours / teaching fewer courses in the fall than this term
  • If you’ve been told that you’ll be teaching in the fall, but there is a good chance that the course you’ve been offered will not run.

TAUP offers 90 minute workshops to help our members:

  • Understand Unemployment Compensation and how it works
  • Assess their eligibility
  • Understand key terms, concepts and questions that are used in the process
  • Fill out UC applications as accurately as possible

If you would like to attend a workshop, please fill out this form with your availability.

If you have any questions, contact Jennie Shanker at jshanker1@gmail.com

From the Table: April 18th, 2019 Negotiation Session

On Thursday, TAUP sat down with the University’s administration for the first day of open negotiations for a new contract. In addition to the table team, over 20 people from TAUP’s Collective Bargaining Unit showed up to observe the discussion, a great success for our first time using Open Bargaining, in which all members of the CBU are invited to attend.  Our next confirmed sessions are  May 3rd, 9:00 a.m.-noon and May 6, 1-5 p.m. at Temple University Center City. Let TAUP know if you’d like to attend.

Early Settlement

We are pleased by the cooperative spirit that the administration has shown in our complex discussions setting forth the process for these negotiations.  As we described in previous bulletins, we have agreed to pursue an early settlement on wages, benefits, and job stability/security, with parallel processes on other important issues, including rules defining who in the library is in the Union; grievances; resources for adjuncts to meet 1:1 with students and for other needs; workload concerns; and diversity.

We put a wide range of proposals on the table yesterday, all informed by our union’s central value–that our members should be treated as the professionals as they are and fully and equitably rewarded for their accomplishments. These are the proposals we put out this week; more are forthcoming.

Proposal: Compensation

  • Significant Across-the-Board raises

  • Increases in merit

  • New salary minima, that should increase every year of the contract

  • Increases in overload pay

  • Increases in summer pay

  • A research fund for FT faculty who conduct independent studies

  • Pay for adjuncts conducting independent studies

  • Pay for required adjunct service

Temple Can Afford these Increases  

Since signing the full-time contract in 2014 and an adjunct agreement in 2017, the University has been doing very well financially, with large increases in unrestricted net assets, a very large net positive in revenues over expenses, and a decrease in debt load.  Even with challenges on the horizon, we believe that Temple will continue to do well, thanks in significant part to the excellent work done by our faculty, librarians, and academic professionals. However, the percentage of Temple’s budget devoted to instruction has remained flat.  Many of our members struggle to pay their bills, to afford health care, and to balance their work lives with their lives outside of work. This must change.

Proposal: Increased Tenure-Track Hiring; Adjunct and Full-Time Non-Tenure Track Job Stability

  • A mandated increase in tenure-track hiring.

  • Priority in hiring and long-term contracts for adjuncts with significant length of service and who receive satisfactory evaluations

We believe that the lack of job stability for all of our faculty must be addressed. There is a side-letter in the contract that already commits Temple to tenure-track hiring, and although Temple has continued to hire some tenure-track professors, the statistics for at least two decades are clear–in total numbers and as a percentage of the faculty as a whole, tenure-track faculty numbers have declined at an alarming rate.  The percentage of tenure-track faculty within the bargaining unit as a whole be increased by a total of 1% for every year of the contract.

Those who are not eligible for the protections of tenure–approximately 75% of our bargaining unit–deserve more job stability.  Building on the good work done by the labor-management committees emerging out of the adjunct contract, we have proposed an avenue for adjunct faculty to gain priority in hiring and longer-term appointments.  This increased stability is tied to an evaluation processes that goes beyond SFFs, and ensures that our members have been given the guidance they need to excel in their department.

At our next session on May 3rd, we will be putting forth a job security proposal for full-time non-tenure track faculty.

Proposal: Maternity and Parental Leave; Sick Leave

  • 12 weeks of paid maternity leave, replacing the inadequate benefit for librarians and increasing the 8 weeks full-time members get, eliminating the classification of pregnancy as a sickness.

  • A modification that clarifies the benefit that gives full-time faculty who are new parents a semester free from teaching, to be used within 12 months of the child’s arrival.

  • Librarians’ sick leave no longer subject to a University rule not appropriate to professionals.

Proposal: Parity in NTT Pensions

The idea of parity extends beyond minimum pay.  One of our biggest gains in the 2014 contract was that the pension match for NTTs was brought close to parity with tenure-track faculty.  It is time to close that gap for these colleagues, and we have made a proposal to do just that.

Proposal: Merit Pay:  More Transparency and Equity for Research NTTs

TAUP often gets complaints from members who believe that the merit system is opaque and unfair, and there are never enough merit units to adequately reward the amazing work our members do.  In addition to proposing a bump in merit, we have proposed that departments specify the range of units members can expect for specific accomplishments. Some departments already do this, many do not, which leads to an unsettling unpredictability for our members.

We have also been informed that NTTs whose salaries come entirely from grants are not guaranteed the merit they are due; at best, they can build this into the salary requested in their grant applications. We have proposed a solution to this.

Proposal: Childcare and Tuition Benefits at Other Schools

We reminded the administration that the joint Faculty Senate-TAUP Committees conveyed proposals on these two important issues last May and that the contract requires a formal administrative response that is long overdue.

How You Can Help: Rally on May and Upcoming Negotiation Sessions

Support TAUP in its fight to realize a vision of Temple where our members are properly rewarded and our teaching, research, and service are better-supported.

Join us for a rally at the Bell Tower on May 1st from 12-1

If you would like to support the Table Team by attending the May 3rd, 9-noon and/or May 6th, 1-5.p.m. bargaining sessions, RSVP to let TAUP know.

TAUP’s Table Team

Member

Constituency

School

TAUP role

Steve Newman

Tenured/Tenure Track

CLA

President

Jennie Shanker

Adjunct

Tyler

Vice President

Norma Corrales-Martin

Non-Tenure Track

CLA

Treasurer

Fred Rowland

Librarian

Exec. Committee

Chair Library Constituency Council

Don Wargo

Non-Tenure Track

CLA

Exec. Committee

Member-at-Large NTT Constituency Council

Paul LaFollette

Tenured/Tenure Track

CST

TAUP Member

Zoe Cohen

Adjunct

Tyler

Exec. Committee

Chair Adjunct Constituency Council

ALTERNATES

Jeff Solow

Tenured/Tenure Track

Boyer

Exec. Committee

Member-at-Large TT Constituency Council

Sam Allingham

Adjunct

CLA

Member-at-Large, Adjunct Constituency Council

Debbi Casey

Non-Tenure Track

Fox

TAUP Member

Nia Jackson

Academic Professional

CLA

TAUP Member

 

Keep up to date with TAUP by following our social media:

Twitter: @TAUP

Facebook: @TAUPAFT

Instagram: @taup4531

 

Negotiations Begin TOMORROW, April 18! Join Us.

Now that procedural issues have been resolved (see below), negotiations between TAUP and the administration will begin tomorrow from 2:00-5:00 p.m. at TUCC.

We are engaging in Open Bargaining for the first time in our union’s history. All members of the Bargaining Unit, regardless of TAUP membership, are invited to witness the negotiations and to engage with the table team during breaks.  Open Bargaining promotes transparency and accountability and it gives each of our members a chance to show their solidarity for the work that TAUP is doing to improve salaries, benefits and working conditions for faculty, librarians and academic professionals.  Your presence gives the table team increased power at the table as they work toward achieving common goals and individual priorities.  Your participation is needed to ensure robust attendance at bargaining sessions.

 

If you are interested in attending Thursday’s session, please contact the TAUP Office, taupaft@gmail.com. Once the room we’ll be bargaining in is confirmed,  we can let you know where to meet. Attendees should plan to arrive at 1:30 p.m. to learn about Open Bargaining and how it works, as well as the role you can play as an observer.  If you would like to attend tomorrow but cannot make it by 1:30, let us know when you plan to arrive. We’ll fill you in on the rules which govern the process.

 

Laying the groundwork for an early settlement

Early in the term, the administration asked TAUP to consider an early settlement–that is, reaching an agreement well before our contract expires on October 15. We decided, for many reasons, that this could be in the best interest of our members, and that it was worth pursuing.

 

Since then, the two sides have been working to come to agreement on the issues we will be negotiating, including how they will be discussed.  We are happy to have found our way to a mutual agreement with the administration, so we can begin our work at the table.

 

The administration initially proposed that we limit bargaining topics to wages and benefits. TAUP proposed that job stability, child care, and tuition benefits at other schools be included, and the administration agreed.

 

We have also reached agreement on parallel processes for other issues important to our members.  This does not mean that we have settled these issues but rather that we will now begin meeting to find contract language to solve them:

  • defining who in the library should be in the bargaining unit and how librarians can be promoted to the highest level;

  • adding a fact-finding step to the grievance process;

  • finding a way for adjuncts to meet 1:1 with students and to have access to photocopying and other resources;

  • addressing  concerns around workload;

  • addressing concerns related to diversity.

 

On the first three issues (librarians, grievances, resources for adjuncts), teams from the administration and TAUP will work together until September 1st to see what they can come to agreement on and add to our contract.  If the teams are unable to agree, then the relevant article of the contract will be re-opened for formal bargaining.  TAUP will benefit from having members with expertise in these three areas involved in the discussions. Please contact the TAUP office tapuaft@gmail.com if you are interested in being considered for one of these teams.

 

On workload, the parties have agreed to form a Labor-Management Committee that would meet at the end of the Spring semester to identify, clarify , and, if appropriate, propose solutions to concerns over workload. TAUP reserves the right to file grievances on workload as per the contract.

 

To address diversity, the parties have agreed to activate the administration-TAUP committee provided for in the current contract within 6 months of ratifying the new contract. Again, we know that members of our bargaining unit have expertise that will be critical to these discussions. Please contact our office tapuaft@gmail.com if you would be willing to join our team to push for greater progress in the University’s diversity efforts.

 

The deadline for reaching early settlement is June 30th with extensions if agreed to by both parties.  If the parties do not agree to a settlement by that date, then the entire contract will be up for negotiation.  The parties may decide to retain the agreements they had reached during the early settlement process but are not obliged to, and additional issues will be brought to the table.

 

Early settlement means that negotiations will be unusually intense, so it’s particularly important that our members pay attention to communications from TAUP, communicate with us,  and participate in Open Bargaining, our May 1 noon rally, and other events. We look forward to seeing you, hearing from you, and benefiting from your expertise and presence in bargaining.