PRESS RELEASE: OT-AAUP Responds to Impasse Declaration: “… our faculty’s working conditions are our students’ learning conditions.”
PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release
March 12, 2021
Contact
Kari Lundgren, Secretary for Oregon Tech AAUP
Email: unite@oregontechaaup.org
Klamath Falls, Oregon – The University Shared Services Enterprise attorneys, representing Oregon Tech’s senior administration in bargaining with its faculty, declared impasse in negotiations on March 10th – cancelling a previously scheduled bargaining session for March 11th. This means that the parties will provide final offers by March 17th and the 30-day cooling off period will begin March 18th.
This came as a surprise to many in the Oregon Tech community as faculty have been coming to the table, prepared and ready to bargain in good faith, for almost a year and half. Oregon Tech AAUP’s proposals have attempted to address key concerns about compensation, unilaterally changed workloads, and protections for public health benefits in an ongoing pandemic.
“Senior administration’s proposals are out of touch with the reality that our faculty’s working conditions are our students’ learning conditions. Without faculty, there is no university,” says C.J. Riley, Professor in Civil Engineering.
Faculty, on a day-to-day basis, have the greatest contact with students. They provide the very hands-on and project-based learning environments on which Oregon Tech bases its mission. Faculty create enthusiasm in the classroom around big ideas, use their laboratories to bring learning to life, and guide extracurricular activities that connect students to professional networks and their future careers.
“To put it simply, our faculty have been underpaid for years,” says Sean St. Clair, President of Oregon Tech AAUP. “Our compensation proposal is simply closing the gap between what our faculty earn and what our faculty peers earn at other institutions.”
Between 2018 and 2020, administrator salaries at Oregon Tech increased from $8.1M to $9.6M, based on publicly available data available at Oregon Tech’s library. That is an 18.7% salary increase during the two years that faculty did not receive any cost-of-living adjustments and during which faculty unionized as a way to address concerns about transparency in senior administrative decision making, consistency in policy application, and respect for the faculty who make this university a university at all. Oregon Tech President Dr. Nagi Naganathan publicly expressed disappointment about the faculty compensation proposal but had already bolstered administrative salaries for the previous three years.
Oregon Tech AAUP is committed to continuing bargaining and to reaching an agreement that allows faculty to truly serve the mission of Oregon Tech.
