COHE has prepared the attached list of proposals for the 2012 Bargaining Round.  I have just released them to the BOR negotiators for our bargaining session on Tuesday, April 3.

 

Our proposals include all five items listed in our survey from a few weeks ago, which showed significant support for all five proposals.  Here are the results of that survey.  Based on these results, our primary goal is to gain a $1,000 step increase for all faculty annually, before the "salary policy formula" kicks in to distribute any remaining funds.   We have also prepared proposals which

 

• Reform the P&T process, including transparency.
• Reform the Reduction in Force procedures (layoffs) to employ ranks and seniority.
• We continue to fight for the items on which we reached impasse: intellectual property and the removal of tenure-tracks for librarians.

 

Moreover, we have listened to faculty as they begin to grasp the implications of the new imposed terms.   We will seek to delay implementation of the twelve-month payout until 2013.  Just to remind you, under state law, the BOR could have imposed this item, so we worked to improve it (e.g., protecting those near-retirement, reminding administrators that we are still typically nine-month employees, etc.).   When we negotiated the trade for 8% of annual base salary for self-support overload courses, we anticipated contract negotiations would allow a new contract to take effect on July 1, 2011.  This would have given more than one year's notice of the change to twelve-month payout.   Of course with the imposition in December, faculty have not received adequate notice.  So, we will work actively to delay the implementation. The BOR will need to act at its May meeting to make this possible.

 

We have also heard about a number of challenges with the creation of the lecturer ranks.  COHE will bring forth these issues on Tuesday as well.  They include:

• Local administrations are interpreting that it requires placement of former non tenure-track assistant professors to senior lecturer rank.   Rather, our interpretation is that they have discretion to place all term contract faculty to the Instructor ranks, giving them the possibility of promotional salary increases.
• Some lecturers are required to teach specific graduate classes to maintain program accreditation
• A few lecturers have partial research assignments.
• Inadequate release time for service (only three credits, we pushed for six last year, and will bring it forward again).
• No release time for scholarship of teaching and learning.  We are proposing this allowance be inserted.

 

Moreover, we are developing additional proposals which would allow administration discretion for the possibility of (1) three-year continuing contracts for Librarian and Lecturer ranks after six years of service and (2) a new category of Librarian ranks (Professorial) that would allow tenure-track positions.

 

We also have a second bargaining session scheduled for April 10 in Chamberlain and have tentatively identified dates in early May for a third, possibly multi-day, bargaining session.

On housekeeping matters:

 

We have not heard whether the BOR negotiators will offer any new proposals this round.   So, we are in the dark if any will be forthcoming.

 

Many thanks,

Gary Aguiar

COHE President