August 12, 2020 Negotiation Session

Notes contributed by OT-AAUP bargaining team member Dr. David Johnston, Natural Sciences, with minor edits by Communications Committee Member Dr. Ben Bunting, Humanities and Social Sciences

The OT-AAUP and Oregon Tech negotiating teams met on Wednesday, August 12, to continue the fourth bargaining round of the summer. OT-AAUP presented a counter proposal on Position Descriptions, and the Oregon Tech team presented a counter-proposal on Notices of Appointment.

Notices of Appointment
The Oregon Tech team went first and presented their counter proposal on Notices of Appointment. They agreed to incorporate the language from OT-AAUP’s previous proposal on Notices of Appointment, which would inform bargaining unit members that their position was subject to a CBA and would include a link to the CBA. Note, in Oregon, when a position is covered by a CBA an employer is legally obligated to inform an employee. However, Oregon Tech would still not commit to a timeline for when these Notices of Appointment would be sent out to faculty. Additionally, when asked why they did not want to include the bargaining unit member’s department and direct supervisor, the Administration’s response was that those might change during the year, and they did not want to have to reissue a new Notice of Appointment. Furthermore, when the Association asked why they did not want to include FTE on the Notices of Appointment, even though that is currently included, the Oregon Tech team responded that they felt their proposal included sufficient information and they suggested that the parties move on to considering other matters.

Position Descriptions
Next, OT-AAUP presented their renewed proposal on Position Descriptions. The Association negotiating team stressed that it was not their intention to tell the Administration what should be in an individual faculty member’s Position Description. Rather, it was the intent of OT-AAUP, through this article, to make sure that Position Descriptions would be provided to all bargaining unit members, and that said Position Descriptions would clearly state the duties and expectations required of each faculty member, as well as the criteria under which the faculty member would be evaluated. The Association explained that their interest in having this article was based on numerous examples over many years where faculty were, either, not judged for something they were asked to do by a senior administrator, or judged for something they were never told they had to do. When pressed for comments about this proposal, the Administration stated that they would need to caucus and discuss the article amongst themselves before they could give comments to the OT-AAUP team.

Further Discussion
Then, the OT-AAUP team asked if the Oregon Tech team would be willing to further comment on the parts of the Association’s Annual Evaluation of Faculty proposal that they felt were permissive and which parts they felt were mandatory. The Administration team stated that they were not obligated to explain the differences. However, they would stick to their original assessment that the entire article was permissive, but that there were certain aspects such as procedures and timelines that were mandatory, and the Administration was open to discussing a proposal containing only those mandatory elements.

Lastly, there was some discussion about when the Association could expect Oregon Tech’s Compensation Proposal, and the Oregon Tech team stated that it would be ready for the August 25th session.