Executive Council adopts positions on 4 bills, including bill on post docs

At its March 2nd meeting the Executive Council adopted positions on the following bills:

SUPPORT SB 214-1: Provides that post-doctoral scholars at public universities and Oregon Health and Science University are not eligible to participate in Public Employees Retirement System or optional retirement plans offered by universities.

The bill creates a new employee category, post-doctoral scholar. The attraction of the bill for universities is that it allows them to save on PERS benefits, and makes Oregon universities more cost-competitive in attracting external funding.

PSU-AAUP and AAUP-Oregon worked with the government relations of PSU, UO, and other Oregon Universities, to fix serious concerns that we had about the original bill. Our concerns, both of which have been fixed, were the following:

• The original bill had no retirement benefits at all for post-doctoral scholars, which served to create a cheap labor option for universities, and an incentive to move work done by our Research Assistants and Associates to these new positions. The amendment provides for an important modification in the portable retirement program in the Optional Retirement Program Tier 4. Tier 4 provides that employers match up to 4% that employees are allowed to contribute to their defined contribution program. The modification for post doctoral scholars relieves the universities from having to make the additional employer contribution for which the post doctoral scholar would not vest because their employment is limited to less than 5 years. 
• The original bill had an ambiguous definition for mentoring supervision. That ambiguity would have allowed the employer to call anyone a post-doctoral scholar. The amendment defines the mentoring and guidance training program specifically so that it is clear that employees can be categorized as post-doctoral scholars only if they meet this specific statutory definition.

SUPPORT HB 2187 Requires issue subject to collective bargaining during term of collective bargaining agreement that is not resolved through negotiation or mediation to be resolved through binding arbitration. It would become prohibited for public employees to strike when issue subject to collective bargaining during the term of a collective bargaining agreement is also subject to binding arbitration. This bill would provide an incentive for our administrative team to negotiate in good faith over interim bargaining matters. 

OPPOSE: HB 2265 Allows parties to agree in writing to when collective bargaining starts for the purposes of  150-day period after which parties involved in negotiations over terms of collective bargaining agreement may notify Employment Relations Board of need for mediator.

By eliminating the requirement that the parties actually exchange proposals in order to trigger the 150-day clock, the Legislature will effectively shorten the time the PECBA requires public sector employers and labor organizations to engage in good faith bargaining before resorting to the dispute resolution procedures.  This would undermine one of the purposes of the PECBA:  to encourage “collective negotiation between public employers and public employee organizations” in order to “alleviate various forms of strife and unrest."

OPPOSE SB 648: Requires that labor negotiations be conducted in open meetings subject to notification requirements. This bill interferes with the rights of the collective bargaining team to choose between open or closed meetings. The bill would also make IBB untenable.