March 24, 2025 Mediation Update

We will not accept language that puts members at risk for having a higher teaching load than they currently have.

Today we began our mediation session with an Admin counter on economics and ended it 11 hours later with a Union counter on economics. There were counterproposals exchanged during the day, as well as informal discussions between parties on possible paths to agreement. 

Admin presented an economic counter in the morning. We presented our counter in the afternoon. They came back with another counter in the early evening. And we ended with another counter from us. So where are we on economics? 

Our final counter of the day was presented as a package. That means that we present movement in some areas, but that movement is contingent on accepting our offer in other areas. For example, we accepted their language on floors–minimum salaries at different ranks–contingent on other aspects of our proposal, including retroactive pay and increases to promotion bumps. 

Here’s generally where we are: Our across-the-board (ATB) raises are higher than theirs. These are the raises we are guaranteed to get. Our Year 1 ATB is retroactive and attempts to mediate wage erosion in past years. They are not yet offering retroactive raises.  In subsequent years, our ATB is higher than theirs. Their proposed ATB raises still do not keep up with inflation. 

We are in agreement on the promotion raise from Associate to Full and closer on promotion raise from Assistant to Associate. We are in agreement on some floors, contingent on ATB raises, but still have differences in Associate Professor floors. We have agreement on a post-tenure merit raise pool. They continue to reject funds for conference travel and professional development, as well as our proposal for enhanced mental health support for students. We slightly lowered our per credit hour pay for overload and summer and winter pay, but still have some space between our proposal and their proposal. 

They made movement on sabbatical, matching our latest language on allowing for a full academic year sabbatical to be paid at 66.67% salary instead of the current policy of 50% salary. We are still in disagreement on Parental Leave and Caretaker Leave. For Parental Leave, we are still asking for a longer paid leave that can be taken at continuous, intermittent, or reduced load status. For Caretaker Leave, they have continued to reject our proposal. We made movement to decrease the amount of paid leave allowed for this benefit. 

Aside from these multiple on-the-record counters related to compensation, we exchanged multiple off-the-record discussions of movement related to Workload. We are getting very close on this, but the bargaining team is still looking closely at language that protects our current teaching load. We will not accept language that puts members at risk for having a higher teaching load than they currently have. 

Bargaining wrapped up at about 8:00 pm, 11 hours after it started. Your bargaining team is committed to putting the hours in to work toward an agreement.