October 23 UNAC-UA negotiations )
Strangely, UNAC (the faculty union) has not posted a summary of this day of negotiation on its “bargaining updates” page. Maybe because they pitched it as a “special bargaining session,” an “abbreviated” one. So it’s up to us!
2024-10-23, 15:30
UNAC’s purpose was to respond to management’s proposal of October 15.
The meeting began with the University demanding to know who on the UNAC side was keeping the “roster” of everyone who connected to the Zoom meeting. At one point UNAC bristled, leading to a tense exchange in which UNAC and the University traded blame for the necessity of the roster.
At any rate, the highlights are that UNAC
- Rejected language that would let the University avoid retroactive raises
- Rejected the frankly strange language conflating “shared governance” with “union business,” the latter of which the University demanded no longer occur “outside compensated time”
- Rejected potential furloughs of faculty
- Rejected the University keeping disciplinary Letters of Expectation forever, rather than 2 years, and insisted that Letters of Expectation not include unsubstantiated allegations
- Added language that attempts to protect and extend the rights of postdocs, visiting faculty, and non-tenure track faculty (e.g., multi-year contracts for the latter).
Well and good, but we draw your attention to the accusation UNAC made against the University at the outset of the meeting:
“I fail to understand how presenting a package knowing that we will find unacceptable, not proposing any compromise, or not giving any indication why our proposals are unacceptable to management, is conducive to good-faith bargaining or reaching agreement.”
This is the trouble with unions in short: they are not about decisive, by-any-means-necessary action. They are about legality, about compromise, about good-faith bargaining, about reaching agreements both sides will tolerate.
As workers, we don’t want that. We want to impose our will on our class enemies! And this requires busting out of the narrow legal framework that your good-intentioned union forces you into.