One members recap of Thursday March 25 bargaining session

Today felt to me as one of the more positive sessions we've had. Both sides seemed to actually dialogue and respond to each other on some points and said they "heard" (even if did not necessarily agree with) the other side's perspective on a few things. I don't think any tentative agreements were reached today though. A partial summary follows hopefully other folks who were there can chime in.

KEY THING I noticed (somebody else pointed this out): their level of willingness to hear us out and dialogue with us seems correlated to the presence of UNTF observers in the room, there were 2 such folks today. So it is crucial that different UNTF members come to at least 1 bargaining session; the ones who come always find it interesting and you don't have to say anything, just sit quietly in the back row (you can even be like your students and slyly read your State News during the boring parts...).

Discipline section: frank exchange on what a process for discipline should look like. Our proposal describes a 3 step process, they seem to want a more informal process which of course would leave the union out of the loop.

Grievances: they still really seem to want the union member to sign a grievance but conceded the union does own the grievance. One of their team expressed the concern about having an "out" for a member who REALLY does not want a grievance filed on their behalf. We responded with our concern that out of fear and powerlessness a member may be afraid to press a grievance but does that mean they don't want to? Other people who were there may wish to clarify my explanation of this.

Health and safety: they had given us a counter proposal deleting major portions of ours: our request for some kind of process to ensure employees know the basic MSU resources re: these issues. They repeated their view that health/safety issues vary by unit and that maybe we should develop these in an ongoing conversation with the administration outside the contract. Seems to be a misunderstanding on their part about what we are asking for: we are not asking to develop detailed instructions re: classroom violence etc. we are just asking that MSU (either centrally or via its colleges or units) commit to ensuring employees know some basics and where to go for help and information.

The psychology of the taboo trade-off: Surprising insights into sacred values, and what they mean for negotiation.

This intriguing Scientific American article argues certain things (your lucky beer mug, "right to choose", "right to life", whatever) have a special sacred meaning to people, and that negotiating about these can be very tricky. I'm skeptical about reductionistic pop psychology, but I wonder if this perhaps explains the MSU administration's seemingly irrational, rigid position on a variety of small issues (no bulletin boards for example): maybe they represent a bigger sacred something to them. If we could figure out what this is maybe we'd have a better handle on how to negotiate with them. (Of course, the converse is also probably true).

"What truly distinguishes sacred values from secular ones is how people behave when asked to compromise them. When people are asked to trade their sacred values for values considered to be secular—what psychologist Philip Tetlock refers to as a “taboo tradeoff”—they exhibit moral outrage, express anger and disgust, become increasingly inflexible in negotiations, and display an insensitivity to a strict cost-benefit analysis of the exchange....A more successful tack for negotiating over sacred values, as it turns out, is to simply use the right words. ...using specific rhetorical strategies can make trade-offs seem less taboo and can facilitate conflict resolution." http://bit.ly/9vGnNn

Stormy weather ahead...

Atmospherics today were relatively good, maybe the nice weather or the fact it was their lead negotiator’s birthday (since we negotiate in his building he even offered us leftover cake from an earlier workplace celebration), or maybe it was because we only discussed a few minor issues. But stormy weather lies ahead. I am excited and worried, because we are moving to the high stakes controversial stuff like our right to strike, wages, discipline procedures, review procedures, and job security.

Today there was not too much to talk about. We gave them a copy of a half finished counter proposal on grievances. They gave us a completed counter on supplies and equipment, a topic on which we’ve spent WAY too much time in my opinion. Let's focus on the grievance issues, since this is a key part of our contract:

Grievances: Alex our lead negotiator today explained key aspects of our half finished counter proposal. Essentially, the union wants to own the grievance procedure and specifically the right to file a grievance on behalf of an individual even if the individual does not sign the grievance. Essentially, we want a low barrier for filing a grievance and a high barrier for halting this process, administration wants the reverse. Besides that, we want a longer time period to file a grievance, whereas they want a very short time window (e.g. something bad happens to employee, employee must initiate the grievance process within 10 days of that, problem is, often you're not immediately aware something happened, or you are not able to meet your Chair within 10 days because of scheduling problems).

Regarding who "owns" the grievance (employee or union), I’m still not sure about all the issues here. Obviously if a member has to sign a grievance, intimidation factors may work against this. Administration’s concern is that such matters are often best resolved informally and grievances will escalate matters, an example was cited of an employee who really did not want to be at a grievance (this was another MSU union I presume) who started crying. We explained the union would be reasonable in these matters. So hopefully all sides can work something out. Commonsense tells me that if a member does not want their issue trapped in a high stakes, high visibility grievance procedure, then how would the union even know about this issue? It’s true there could be a widespread problem the union wants to file a grievance about and that I the meek employee might not want to be involved in that and might have to testify. But isn’t the whole point of the union so that I have a means of redressing problems in the workplace rather than meekly accepting them out of fear?

I did not have time to review their counter on supplies, they said it had 4 bullet points that essentially dove tailed with our proposal. All I can say is that it is ridiculous that the administration is fighting over the wording of simple things like access to buildings and mailboxes, I need to sit down and see if in this latest proposal they have stopped being so recalcitrant.

For Thursday: I suppose they will respond to our grievance counter proposal. Oops, just got an email from Alex (UNTF staff) that we have to meet on Wednesday to work on some more stuff, so I guess more stuff will be discussed.

Not quite time for Kumbaya (Bargaining on 3/15)

This last Monday’s bargaining session is not what you would call radical or highly successful, but for me it represented a shift in thinking about our bargaining experience. Even though we did reach a tentative agreement on medical disputes and came close to a couple of others, for me, the progress was in the interactions between the union and the administration. More than once we had discussions about the issues, what we were attempting to achieve with our language and what the administration was attempting with theirs. We did not sit around and sing Kumbaya together, but I think it did foster some indication that we are all interested in helping to strengthen the university.

It strengthen was during one of these explanations of viewpoint that I realized one of the difficulties we are wrestling with at the table is with the level of organization. Anyone who has been at MSU long can tell you that it has a very strong decentralized approach to many of its academic policies. This approach allows departments to have a lot of freedom for how they approach education, which can be a good thing. However, this approach has allowed for some departments to exploit non-tenure track faculty. Many of the things the union is asking for is a centralizing and standardizing of some academic policies, which may go against MSU’s institutional “grain”.

So, I guess the epiphany for me this week was that institutional structure may be one of the bigger hurdles we have to overcome to reach our goals for this contract…and it isn’t just a greedy, power-hungry administration trying to keep the little guy down (I think).

--A Bargain

From the Table 3/11

At the table today, March 11, 2010, Penny Gardner, Bargaining Committee reporting!

Sometimes I am a Rachel Madow wannabe..

Anyway, at the negotiating table today, we made progress through testy moments provided by those across the table from the UNTF bargaining committee. Proposals and counter proposals were presented by both sides, and hallelujah even three tentative agreements were signed. It is a chipping away process to come to agreement and our chief negotiator keeps strong presence in light of hostility and negativity that erupts from the other side. The last thing today was our words "without penalty" in the medical dispute section being replaced by them with the words "without termination" counter proposed by us with the words "without discipline" countered by them, "without discipline and/or discharge". We agreed. Of course there was much more to this than meets the eye, but I couldn't resist sharing this little moment of progress....

Come join us. There is lots to learn. Contact us to sign-up and be caught up! Penny

Membership Meeting @ Dublin Square March 18th, 5:30-8:00pm

Hi Everyone,

We'll be sending out emails and putting some flyers in folks mailboxes about this event, too. It is a great opportunity to talk directly to the bargaining team and have your voice heard as to the progress of contract negotiations.

We are going to have some hot apps for people to snack on, and of course, access to Dublin Square's excellent selection of on tap brew, and Scotch and Irish Whiskeys.

See You There!!!

Thusday March 18th, 5:30-8:00pm, in the Event Room at Dublin Square.

Thoughts from an Observer

I was mostly aware of the energy flows in the room. It was interesting to observe the ritual of gauging the opposing side by
their demeanor, their tone of voice, eye contact, sense of humor, and ability to articulate points in a logically convincing way. On one level, it seemed there was a lot of straight forward stuff, given that there are precedents for many of the contract points discussed, so that the process became more of a reasonable exchange (compromise) on both parts to arrive at the middle, where some things may be granted and others withheld given the particular atmosphere in the room that day. By that I mean that, everything else being equal (the precedent of other contracts), our presence in the room or the perception of it by management may tip the scale. So, while some things did seem more difficult to pass and were deferred, others seemed to respond more easily to the atmosphere and presence that we may have in the room either as articulate, intelligent, and able to counter back arguments or as an incompetent and easily tricked bunch of people. Alyssa--our lead negotiator--seems to handle them (and their egos) beautifully. So, it seems that, at least on one level, management?s perception of a strong will (ours) and controlled egos (ours) does play a role in our favor.

Editorial: Raises for MSU Administrators

The following editorial was among the several letters submitted by UNTF members in response to a Lansing State Journal Article reporting that MSU administrators are accepting big raises in years when the faculty and the many of the unions on campus are receiving very little or no adjustments.

Read the article at http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=20102280561

Dear Editor:
I was astounded to read the State News editorial justifying raises for William Strampel, dean of the College of Osteopathic Medicine (58%), Marsha Rappley, dean of the College of Human Medicine (26%), and Provost Kim Wilcox (20%)—all within a 3-year period.

This comes at a time when the University is demanding that non-tenured track teachers pay 50% of their health care and that ALL MSU unions agree to cancel post-retirement health care for new employees. This comes at a time when many people at MSU have lost jobs, when programs are being cut, and when many students have to take on crippling debt in order to pay tuition.
Yes, while some employees make enormous sums, the University is trying to take health care away from other employees. By what possible system of ethics, morality or social planning can this possibly make sense?

In truth, it doesn't make sense. We cannot have a healthy society when some people live like royalty and others cannot get health care.

The rational that both your editorial and that the administration give is shocking, frankly. Are we to believe that these deans have so little dedication to their work that they have to be bribed with great sums of money in order to stay at MSU? Are we to believe that in this great nation of ours there are no other people qualified for these jobs?

When our country was founded, we chose not to create a King and aristocracy. However, the exorbitant pay for corporate and academic administrators in this country convinces me that we have created a financial aristocracy, which rules with the same blindness and lack of compassion, as did aristocracies of yore.

RS

Layoffs at MSU: the best of times and the worst of times...

Though continuing MSU layoffs (through Spring 2011 and possibly beyond!) are likely in this economic climate, a strong UNTF can advocate for its members regarding layoff decisions and provisions, and work to avoid situations where somebody is laid off only to be eventually replaced with cheaper labor. A strong UNTF can also push so that our members don't bear the brunt of these budget cuts and layoffs (whereas with no union, the pattern will continue of administrators giving themselves raises while cutting budgets and laying off staff, as was documented in a recent Lansing State Journal article.

Layoff provisions will be part of the contract we are currently negotiating, and will surely be a top priority and contested item. The contract should be in place in time to affect layoffs in Fall 2010 and afterwards. So it is vital that we secure good layoff terms in our first contract given that this issue is very real. For example, widespread in many faculty contracts is "layoff status" which in part determines if and how laid off workers will have "first dibs" should the employer once again require somebody to do the work they were doing. For example, if you are laid off because the course you are teaching is cancelled, you would want your contract to specify that you have certain rights if that course (or a similar one) is offered a semester or year later. How favorable this and other UNTF contract items end up depends a lot on the MSU Administration's perceptions of UNTF member support. We know we have a strong group of supporters but the Administration doesn't know this and so must see signs of this. Therefore, your support in upcoming UNTF events (which includes showing up as a guest observer at one of our bargaining sessions) is ESSENTIAL to visibly show the Administration we are a strong union.

Signs are not good, with Michigan facing a serious budget deficit next year. The MSU administration clearly anticipates layoffs, and without a strong contract and union, non-tenure track folks at MSU are particularly vulnerable. You may be aware the Administration has recently asked unit heads to prepare budget scenarios for next year that respond to 3 levels of budget cuts. Another round of program (and maybe even department) cuts is inevitable. All of this comes only a few weeks after Academic Human Resources and Human Resources presented a LEAD workshop in early February, "Being Prepared: What Administrators Need to Know in the Event of Personnel Reductions". Documents were distributed with detailed instructions for layoffs and position elimination for both faculty and academic staff positions, and for support staff positions ("Layoff Summary Chart and Process"; "Elimination of faculty academic staff 2010"; "Involuntary Reduction in Percent Employed").

This is truly the best of times and worst of times to be negotiating a faculty union contract at MSU!

Coffee Talk

Today’s session at the bargaining table, as far as they go, was quite congenial. We were able to sign a couple of tentative agreements and got closer to two or three more. Right now we are looking at non-economic issues, with today’s main attraction being the resources fixed-term faculty have to carry out their jobs (office space, mailboxes, textbooks, access to classrooms, etc.).

The administration thought some of our language was taken from other contracts and that it did not represent the situation on MSU’s campus. For example, they thought that all faculty had office space and resources that accompany an office. We told them that is not the case and gave examples of fixed-term faculty who share one desk with 10 other faculty. To gain access to this office, administrative assistants have to unlock the door for the faculty, and they only have two hours in that space for each class they teach. Other fixed-term faculty have to hold office hours in coffee shops because they don’t have an office. Although this improve drink options, it makes it hard to set the proper tone to discuss issues such as student grades with mocha lattes surrounding you. The administration seemed to take the examples to heart.

In general the tone was better than I had seen to date. There were a few times where the two sides seemed to be cooperatively working on creating a formal system of recognition and rights for nontenure-track faculty. It was very warming...not like having your own barista in your “office”, but a definite start.