November 12, 2024
We opened the bargaining session by presenting counters on Grievance, Nondiscrimination, and Disability. Grievance and Nondiscrimination were part of a package that includes a withdrawal of Professional Ethics and Workplace Bullying conditional upon acceptance of specific parts of the Grievance and Nondiscrimination proposals. The Disability counter includes a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on proactive disability measures.
Bennett took umbrage with our wanting to be able to grieve long standing interpretations of and past practices related to policy. We believe that if the university fails to adhere to policy or the university fails to follow past practices should be able to be grieved. Bennet asserts that it is the university’s right to determine how it interprets and enforces policies. We continue to hold on to the ability to grieve the procedural process of decisions but not the decision itself in arbitration.
We continue to hold on the right to grieve discrimination where the Union is the grievant because of systemic discrimination against our members. Bennet has some concerns on the timeline given the amount of time an investigation might take. We note that we can’t file with the OEOC as the Union and we need the ability to have redress that is not an employer controlled forum to have recourse.
We looked to the Job Accommodation Network (JAN) and Employer Assistance and Resources Network on Disability Inclusion (EARN) from the federal government to develop language for our revised Disability proposal. Our counter also responded to our disabled members’ biggest concern about timelines and recertification of disability. The administration continues to be concerned about the timeline because of factors outside of their control. We did acknowledge this concern in our counter. We moved our proactive measures to a MOU including a joint accessibility advisory panel and an annual report about efforts made during the year to improve accessibility on campus.
The administration presented counters on Milner Library and Layoffs. The administration position is still that Milner should be kept separate from the general workload policy. They modified their proposal noting Milner Library Faculty are FLSA exempt and that their hours might require them to work outside of standard hours. The employer made it clear in the layoff proposal that they will not hire NTTs to replace TT faculty. Bennett stated that their intent is not to lay off TT to make them NTTs.
When asked where we are on Management Rights, we stated we are not close because there are a number of things we haven't discussed yet mentioned in it, especially economics. We expressed concern that sections of admin’s “management rights” proposal might erode shared governance.
We returned from caucus with answers to their questions on grievance and disabilities. We also were ready to TA the Layoffs proposal given they stated their intent not to pursue laying off TTs to replace them with NTTs. They stated they wanted to review it before signing the TA. Our lead spokesperson, Dr. Ashley Farmer, noted that we have not responded to management rights because of items contained within it and the lack of economic proposals. She also noted we are running out of space for negotiation without seeing economic proposals. We did get a TA during our caucus on Layoffs during the second caucus. The session was called early because the administration team would not have any counters done during the remaining time.