March 10, 2025
Mediation today started at 9am with Mark Bennett, ISU Admin Lead, presenting a new economic and workload counter. For compensation, admin kept the total annual salary increase pool, a combination of across the board and merit increases, at 2.75% each year. The movement they made was to increase across the board from .5% each year to 1.0% to 1.5% each year, with merit raises making up the rest of the 2.75% salary increase pool. Though they doubled and tripled their across-the-board raises, they are still offering less than a 3% annual raise pool. The maximum guaranteed raise for an individual would be in years 3 and 4 at 1.5%. Because we have experienced the dire consequences of wage erosion for our members over their decades of service, these numbers will still fail to bring us up to a fair wage.
Administration continues to refuse any retroactive application of salary adjustments or longevity adjustments. , And they said they would never agree to guaranteed funds for travel and professional development , which are funds to support work they require us to do in order to keep our jobs. Admin continued to reject any improvement to current leave policies, including improved sabbaticals, new child leave, and caregiver leave. They also continue to reject our proposals for increased student mental health support.
After asking questions about their counters, we went to caucus for 4 hours, where we worked diligently in small groups to turn around ALL existing proposals. We made considerable and thoughtful movement on compensation and leaves. Our counters included continuing to ask for new child and caretaker leave, improved sabbaticals, travel funds, and student support. We continued to ask for higher annual across-the-board raises, salary floors, and increased funds for promotion and longevity to reflect our value to this institution and the high increases in cost of living in recent years. .
We decided to stay late so administration could give us a completed counter proposal on workload. In its morning counter, admin held on a requirement that faculty hold office hours on campus 3 separate days a week to ensure faculty are accessible to students. This is where we saw positive movement. At the end of a very long day and after our counter on workload, they returned with a workload counter that removed the on campus office hours requirement, instead referring to the current university policy on responsibilities to students. They continue to reject our proposal that, unless teaching a course that meets five days a week, faculty members' teaching schedules will always allow for one weekday without teaching.
They rejected our proposed guarantee that anyone currently teaching less than a 3/3 would keep this workload. The mediation team perceived this as evidence of something many of us have been concerned about in recent years, that admin wants to increase teaching loads.
We finished the day at approx 6:40pm and will await their counter proposal on economics in our next mediation session on Wednesday, March 19th.
Today your team worked their asses off on hard metal chairs for almost 10 hours straight (during spring break) because we ALL deserve a great contract!
