Contents:
1. Bargaining Tuesday, Oct. 15, 12:30 - 3, ED 414
2. Faculty Senate Update on Bargaining, Monday, Nov. 4th, CH 53 - Be There!
3. PSU Admin's Peculiar Priorities: Tuition Subsidizes Athletics, University Place,
Business Accelerator & More!
4. Travel Funding Restored After PSU Admin Challenged on Suspension
5. Membership Meeting with Lil Taiz, Weds, Oct. 16, SMSU 328, Noon to 1:30
6. Health Benefits: Don't Forget to Re-Enroll! News from SEIU - costs may fall!
7. Portland Teachers Support Rally, planned for Oct 14, 5:30 pm is CANCELLED
Bargaining Continues Tuesday, Oct. 15th, 12:30 to 3, ED 414
The PSU-AAUP Bargaining Team will send across the table its full package proposal,
calling for the PSU Admin to get in line with other OUS campuses:
* wage increases to cover inflation, retirement income losses due to the "Grand
Bargain," and to start catching up with our comparators
* more job security for fixed-term faculty and Academic Professionals
* retention of contract protection of promotion & tenure, evaluation and post-tenure
review procedures
* more!
Please come observe bargaining, if you can - bring your work with you! We'd love to have you, if you can come, but if you have to pick and choose, our highest priority for turnout is the Nov. 4th Meeting of the Faculty Senate, 3 pm, in CH 53.
VP for Bargaining, Ron Narode, will update the Faculty Senate on Monday,
Nov. 4th, 3 - 5 pm in CH 53
Please save this time slot, to come out and bring your colleagues, to impress on the Administration how many of the faculty care deeply about making progress at PSU. The decision-makers are NOT at the bargaining table; we have to take our message to the people with the power to make changes.
Think PSU's Broke? No, just spending money in very odd places!
As you think about numbers, remember that $3 million a year would get us
* a raise of more than 3% for all PSU faculty, including Academic Professionals,
* a new endowed Professorship every year, to anchor graduate programs, or
* annual tuition and fees for 381 in-state undergrads (306, if they study engineering!)
VP Rimai reported to the Faculty Senate that E & G funds - meaning tuition dollars and therefore student debt - subsidize
* Athletics = $3 million a year
* Auxiliaries = $5.9 million a year
including $419k a year lost by University Place
* PSU Business Accelerator = $250k a year
As well as externally funded research, which does not even pay for itself, forget being a "fiscal strategy!"
Faculty Travel Funding Restored for Fall 2013
This year the PSU Administration suspended the Professional Development travel fund -- created by PSU-AAUP in bargaining --in an unprecedented pressure tactic on negotiations. Challenged with the gratuitous, destructive, and questionably legal, nature of this move at the table, the travel fund has been reinstated for this Fall, with the deadline shifted to Oct. 25th at 5 pm.
Be sure to get your travel fund application in by Oct. 25th! As you put it together you can ponder the question of one member: do you think that PSU administrators pay 20% of THEIR travel expenses? Or limit themselves to one trip a year at most, regardless of the impact on their professional development?
PSU-AAUP Fall Membership Meeting, Weds., Oct. 16th, Noon to 1:30 in SMSU 328
Lil Taiz, President of the very successful California Faculty Association, will speak and take questions, in addition to PSU-AAUP updates and lunch with colleagues! I hope to see you there!
While Lil Taiz is here, she'll meet with Together 4 PSU, PSU-AAUP's coalition with PSU students, adjuncts and staff, as well as brainstorm with the PSU-AAUP Executive Council and committee members.
Be Sure to Take Care of Your Health Benefits well before the end of October!
Remember how the computer systems failed under the crush in the final days of October last year, now that everyone has to re-enroll in health benefits AND participate in the Health Engagement Model (HEM) every year? Do it now!
In other health news, costs are not increasing and may fall! PEBB reports that health premium costs are not going up at all for '13/'14 and OUS backed off asking classified staff to pay 10% of their health care premiums this biennium, sticking with the 5% the Governor demanded last biennium.
SEIU also negotiated
* moving their cost of living increase earlier, if health care cost increases in the second
year of the biennium are 3.4% or less, and
* a route to paying 3% of the health care premium in the '15/'16 biennium, for people
who choose Kaiser or another lower cost option.
The Portland Association of Teachers (PAT) is struggling with the district to raise standards and improve working conditions.
They had asked for community support at a rally planned for the evening of Monday, Oct. 14th, but it has been cancelled.
Best!
Mary King
President, PSU-AAUP