e-Bulletin20180830
Everyone thinks about things that they’d like to change in their work environment. We all want to be able to perform our best as we interact with students, focus on research, or serve our areas, programs, departments and schools.
The Union can’t negotiate over everything, but there is much that we can do, and have done, to improve working conditions, job security, compensation and more. Many of these things seem so normal they’re taken them for granted. Everything that TAUP members have, they deserve and have earned. But without the Union, the fact that you deserve something would not necessarily mean the University would grant it.
It is only through our collective bargaining that we have the salaries, benefits, degrees of job security, and the support for our work that we have. If you want to consider how faculty would be treated without a union, remember the treatment of adjuncts before unionization. Remember that there used to be a 6 year cut off for NTTs, where they wouldn’t be rehired beyond that point if they hadn’t acquired a TT position. Remember when sabbaticals for tenure-track faculty weren’t guaranteed every seven years and at 65% of salary for a full-year’s leave, and new fathers and mothers couldn’t get a semester’s leave from teaching?
The fact is, as they say: “You will not get what you deserve. You will get what you negotiate.”
In spring of 2019 we’ll be back in negotiations together. There’s a lot to do between now and then. One of the most important things is for members communicate and commit to changing issues that are of great importance.
Last semester, TAUP President Steve Newman and Vice President Jennie Shanker began attending departmental faculty meetings to gain a greater understanding of how the Union can make a difference. Every department needs to engage in these discussions, and can do so by contacting the TAUP office.
When we get to the table in the spring, to do well, we need strong connections to every department in the TAUP bargaining unit. We can create significant change together. Reach out, connect and commit to being a part of the collective force that will working towards change in the 2019 negotiations.