Announcements:
INFORMATION PICKET: Thurs., Feb 27th, 11 - 1, Park Blocks near Stage
Plan to Be There, if you want a Decent Contract - Everyone Needed!
Upcoming Caucus Meetings:
AP Caucus: Tues, Feb 18, Noon to 1:30, SMSU 333 - Lunch Provided
Fixed-Term Teaching & Research Faculty Caucus: Thurs, Feb 20, 4 - 5, SMSU 238
Tenure-Line Faculty Caucus: Tuesday, Feb 25, 4-5, SMSU 333
Want to check out PSU salary info for yourself?
You can follow individual positions and salaries from 2005 to 2013, in digital records held in the PSU library (and go back further with hard copy): http://vikat.pdx.edu/search?/tunclassified+positions/tunclassified+positions/-3%2C0%2C0%2CB/frameset&FF=tunclassified+employee+list&1%2C1%2C/indexsort=-
NEWS
Bogus! Bogus! Bogus!
The REAL Bargaining Update
Bogus! Bogus! Bogus!
The spin machine is in full gear at PSU - in the Admin's Thursday e-mail blast, on the Budget website, and in Pres Wiewel's remarks to PSU's incoming Board.
Let me tell you about Thursday's meeting of our new, Incoming PSU Board. Rayleen McMillan, ASPSU's University Affairs Director, mentioned, as a brief part of her regular 5-minute update, that students are concerned about the possibility of a faculty strike.
Questioned later by Board members, Pres Wiewel is reported by AAUP members in attendance to have told the Board:
1) Admin was handling everything in the best interest of the University,
2) our compensation was 97% that of our comparators, and
3) turnover was extremely low.
Fact Check: The 97% figure is not published anywhere by anyone, but only available from the PSU Admin, standing in stark contrast to the salary data published by
a) the Oregon University System, in their most recent Factbook, which yet again placed us at 19th of 19 joint system comparators, and 10th of 10 comparators for PSU alone (p. 99 and 101): http://www.ous.edu/factreport/factbook
b) the national AAUP Annual Salary Survey, published in the March/April issue of Academe, which regularly puts PSU in the bottom 5th of public research universities. When asked where we fell exactly, national AAUP reported that we're in the bottom 7% of all doctoral granting universities and the bottom 10% of public doctoral granting institutions.
Pres Wiewel is claiming that our benefits - mostly retirement - are so good that, while our salaries are low, our total compensation puts us at 97% of our comparators.
HOWEVER
* PSU doesn't subscribe to the only database with decent information on benefits, as we
learned in bargaining.
* PSU uses the estimates of benefits published as part of the national AAUP salary
survey, though national AAUP says that these are extremely unreliable, because
university reporting on benefits is very uneven.
* PSU claims to have NO KNOWLEDGE of the turnover rate AND NO ABILITY to
measure it! We met with Admin reps 2 or 3 times this fall, asking for a joint retention
study, and were told that PSU data won't support an estimate of the number of people
who leave in mid-career AND that no exit interviews are done.
* Job candidates - at least in the Econ Dept, where I was Chair for 6 years - don't seem
too impressed by the opportunity to earn these great benefits, even though we don't
tell them that they'll come in at Tier 4 in a retirement system that's a political football,
embroiled in court fights, a favorite target of the local paper and recently raided to
buy down tuition increases. Yes, lower tuition is a good thing, but does it have to be
funded from teachers' and other public employees' retirements?
LET'S GET STARTED ON OUR OWN RETENTION STUDY! Please e-mail me (maryking@psuaaup.net) with the names of anyone you know who left PSU in the past 10 years, specifying whether they left to
a) earn more money
b) obtain more research, teaching or other professional support
c) lower their teaching load or non-teaching work load, or
d) some combination, or other related to PSU.
Next week - after I learn how to embed images into this message - I'll send you a point-by-point refutation of the Admin's Thursday response to our letter questioning the case for a "$15 miillion structural deficit." If you were one of the people crammed into SMSU 333 to hear Howard Bunsis' presentation on Friday the 24th, you'll be able to tell yourself half of it, already. (Available here: https://www.psuaaup.net/assets/docs/images/blog/entry/standing-room-only-at-howard-bunsis-psu-budget-presentation.)
There are also some astonishing points being made on PSU's Budget FAQ page. My personal favorite: "PSU is committed to being a major public research institution and Athletics factors into that future." Huh, some of us might have thought strong PhD programs were the essential ingredient of a research university, if you had to pick one thing to invest in, and that PSU ought to be fundraising for Faculty Chairs, not just buildings....
The Real Bargaining Update
The real update is that we're in Mediation all day Feb 10, after 2 sessions of one-on-one conversations, trying to get real. The first of these one-on-one sessions between Chief Negotiators took place on Thursday the 30th, the second will be Tuesday the 4th. The point we're making in the one-on-one sessions is that there's NO WAY that PSU faculty and APs are going backward on everything, while U of O, OSU, OIT, our comparators and our own administration go forward. We'll see if there's a combo-pack we think you all will ratify of
a) retaining power in the contract to back up the Faculty Senate's evaluation language,
as well as unwritten poilcies governing work in the past,
b) reversing the erosion of faculty contracts and gaining a path forward for APs and
fixed-term faculty, and
c) guaranteeing wages equal to inflation plus something toward competitiveness.
If not, we'll have to take that next step, and we'll be coming to you to authorize a strike.