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Negotiation Updates
by Linda Marie Rouillard, UT-AAUP Executive Board
It has been a long process: first, because the Administration was banking on Senate Bill 5 passing and destroying collective bargaining, they extended our 2008-2011 contract until June 2012. Negotiations were to start in January 2012 after the November 2011 election, but were delayed by the Administration. After SB5 was defeated, meetings were infrequent and sometimes cancelled at the last minute by the Administration through the Spring of 2012. Some members of the UT-AAUP Board have commented that this has been the slowest negotiation they have experienced. We also note that the Lecturers' contract has been put on hold by the Administration until the tenured/tenure track faculty contract is settled.
In the middle of July, the Administration abruptly cancelled the remaining scheduled negotiations for the rest of the summer. Negotiations resumed on October 12. We currently have five more scheduled meetings between now and the end of the year, largely because of the UT-AAUP 's prodding. The Administration's lawyer insists that his current schedule leaves him unavailable to negotiate with us more frequently than once every 2 or 3 weeks. When we offered to negotiate on any day of the week except for Tuesdays, the response was to give us only one extra meeting between now and December 31. This is unacceptable. We do not understand why the Administration is dragging out these negotiations.
In terms of contract issues, both sides have tentatively agreed to two Articles. Pending a change from the Administration, we will be ready to tentatively agree to Article 3 Non-Discrimination. Both sides agreed to make no changes to Article 6 Conflict of Interest, 17 Discoveries, Inventions, Patents and Copyrights, 24 Separability, and 25 Labor-Management Meeting.
The Administration has made proposals for changes to the following Articles: 5 Faculty Rights and Responsibilities, 9 Evaluation, 11 Institutional Environment, 16 Outside Employment, 21 No Strike-No Lockout, 23 Entire Agreement, and 27 Distribution of Agreement. We have made counterproposals to Articles 5, 9 and 11, taking their other proposals under consideration.
The UT-AAUP presented its proposals for Articles 7 Academic Governance, 12 Compensation, and 13 Health Care Benefits. When we tried to address Health Care Benefits this summer, the Administration specifically stated that it would not consider health care at that time. Our UT-AAUP Executive Director hand-delivered our health care proposal to Dr. Jacobs and Kevin West, and sent it to the Administration's lawyer by registered mail in late July. To date, the Administration has not responded to this proposal.
At our negotiation meeting last week, the Administration indicated that it was planning to recommend changes to Article 8 on Tenure and Promotion, but had no written proposal.
Why is the Administration prolonging the negotiation process?
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