Greetings!
On 28 October, 2011, negotiators from the COHE Board and the Board of Regents met in Pierre for a fact finding hearing before Mr. James Marsh of the South Dakota Department of Labor. At issue were three points. The first point concerned non-renewal of tenure track contracts with COHE arguing for a one year contract for faculty terminated due to a reduction in force. The second point concerned the librarian ranks proposed by the BOR with COHE arguing that the library faculty should remain a full part of the professoriate and not be divided into separate ranks. The third point concerned removing intellectual property as a working condition that would be subject to collective bargaining with COHE's position being that IP issues should be subject to collective bargaining. Mr. Marsh found in favor of the BOR's position on all three points at issue. Download the report here. This is no surprise as the Daugaard administration has implemented an additional step in the fact finding process. Now, a political appointee, Secretary of Labor Pam Roberts, must sign off/approve the Fact Finder's official report. This fact finding hearing was the last step in the bargaining process available to us before choosing to pursue any litigation. In South Dakota, fact finding hearings and the resulting recommendations are not binding on the agency. Now the BOR has the option of imposing their last best offer in the form of a one year contract, presumably ending 30 June 2012, which they could do during their 15-16 December 2011 meeting at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology. However, they could also do it at any time now via a telephone conference call/meeting. It is our intent to challenge their decision to remove IP as a bargain-able issue. We hold it is an essential working condition and making intellectual property decisions via Board of Regents policy is an unfair labor practice. As soon as we are able, we intend to file a lawsuit to that effect in state district court. If the membership agrees, we also intend to bring the other two contentious items back for the next round of bargaining, which should begin in early 2012. As we did last year, COHE will seek your input to advise us in this effort. Of course, dues-paying members' voices carry more weight. Last year, this was not a problem as the differences between members and non-members were not statistically significant. However, the response rate from both groups was rather low. The arguments of the COHE bargaining team carry more weight if we can show that we are speaking on behalf of the entire faculty. We encourage you to participate in the survey and express your opinion in January when the survey is released.
Also, please forward this email to new faculty members. This distribution list now requires self-registration. Please encourage all faculty in the bargaining unit to register at http://www.sdcohe.org!
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