NTT Job Security
The Tentative Agreement:
- sets default contracts of 3+ years for full-time non-tenure track faculty with 6 or more years service, excepting those who are predominantly or entirely funded by research grants.
- requires a letter from the Dean documenting the reasons for any contract of less than 3 years or shorter than the prior contract for NTTs who have served 6 years or longer
The union contract already requires that after an NTT’s 3rd year, new appointments should be multi-year (if not, a letter of explanation must be provided). This new language begins to offer additional job security for those who have proven their value to Temple over a longer term.
Course Releases for Union Work and other Anti-Union Proposals
The other Tentative Agreement signed on Friday addresses the issue of course releases for union work.
The contract allots TAUP 15 credit-hours per semester of release time to assign to members who do work essential to the Union. The administration initially proposed eliminating this and other union rights from the contract entirely, including a proposal to kick us out of our on-campus office and another to deny us any role in new faculty orientations.
TAUP has rejected all of these proposals. In the tentative agreement we did acknowledge the administration’s concern that with our new decentralized budget system, RCM, the burden of paying for the course releases should not fall too heavily on any one college/school. The resulting agreement states that, starting in academic year 21-22, no college or school will be asked to absorb more than 6 hours of release time a semester. TAUP does have the option of requesting 3 more hours out of the 15 total by compensating the college/school at an adjunct rate.
The administration’s other anti-union proposals–which we do not accept–remain on the table. These proposals need to be dropped so they do not stand in the way of a settlement.
Crucial Issues Left on the Table
Even with this welcome progress, there are many crucial issues to resolve:
- Wages: The administration’s last proposal remains under inflation
- Healthcare: The administration’s last proposal includes significant increases in healthcare premiums and co-pays for specialists, and the introduction of deductibles. All told, these proposal drives down their effective wage proposal to a raise of almost exactly 1% a year for full-time members.
- Maternity leave for librarians: As we have explained in prior updates, the current system afford librarians only the sick leave they have accrued at the rate of 10 days a year, and only up to 6 or 8 weeks depending on the type of delivery. We have made a proposal to remedy this.
- NTT Pensions: NTTs receive a 1.5% smaller match from the university for their pensions than tenure-track faculty. We do not see the justification for this and have proposed closing that gap.
- Tuition benefits at other schools: To make some headway on this issue, the proposal is now focusing on The Tuition Exchange. It allows the dependents of full-time TAUP bargaining unit members to apply for special scholarships at nearly 700 colleges and universities. The 2019-20 value of the scholarship is either tuition at the school in question or $37,000, whichever is lower.
- Tenure-Track Hiring: Our current proposal is for a commitment from the administration to maintain the current number of tenure-track faculty through the end of this contract unless there is a financial exigency severe enough to trigger retrenchment. It is the least the administration can do to live up to the commitment made in the prior contract to a “sizable complement of tenure-track faculty.”
Despite this past commitment, the administration insists that hiring is solely a management right and thus not a proper topic for negotiation. We urge them to reconsider on this critical matter.
As our review of our Temple’s newly released audited financial shows, Temple can afford the reasonable proposals on wages, NTT pensions, and maternity leave for librarians that the union is proposing. The large healthcare givebacks they are proposing are not financially necessary.
We head into the next negotiating session on the 25th seeking a fair settlement on these and other compensation issues that remain on the table.
Members are welcome to attend; RSVP here.