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NEWSLETTER, GRIEVANCES

Portland Streetcar Grievance Update

August 21, 2017 / Phil Lesch

On August 4 we reported that we had stipulated that the consultation meeting would not resolve the matter, and that we planned to do a survey about member use of the streetcar. 

The survey went out on Tuesday and we had over 300 responses. The survey results are here . While the survey was rather coarse and there were a number of complaints about it, the survey did reveal that there were a population of PSU-AAUP members who will be adversely impacted by a change to the streetcar benefit.

On August 17 PSU-AAUP leadership met with the administration in the consultation meeting, and as the first meeting for interim bargaining. As expressed previously, the University's position is that this is a matter for interim bargaining, that administration provided the requisite notice to PSU-AAUP, that PSU-AAUP submitted the demand to bargain pursuant to ORS 243.698, and the 90 day timeline for interim bargaining has, thus, begun.

To PSU-AAUP, it is not clear that the Association has an obligation to bargain based on Article 42 of the CBA which may require the administration to maintain the free streetcar access until the matter is presumably bargained and implemented after bargaining over the successor agreement to the 2015-19 CBA. We have, thus, requested a legal opinion about the matter. 

That said, the August 17 session was worthwhile. Administrators from Transportation and Parking shared their philosophy about parking and transportation services and their preference to provide the same services at the same cost to all campus community members. They also shared that they will maintain the status quo until such a time that the matter is resolved with PSU-AAUP. The status quo will likely require that PSU-AAUP members who have relied on the ability to show their PSU ID to access the streetcar will need to get a Streetcar sticker for their PSUID to continue the benefit. 

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