October 28 and 29 UNAC-UA negotiations )
2024-10-28
Instead of open negotiations, The University asked for a closed day of discussion. Their purpose was to bring in an in-house “expert” who could explain their positions on the changes to article 9, on faculty status.
The expert is UAF’s “Chief of Faculty Affairs and Services,” Jennifer Hoppough Being that her FY25 salary is $105,581, it is to be understood that she is completely objective. After all, she cannot know the plight of UA workers making significantly less.
What she said, we don’t know. We do know the context: the University’s desire to reduce the rights of visiting professors and postdocs.
2024-10-29, 09:00
UNAC (faculty union) and the University once again met behind closed doors. This time they talked about health insurance costs with UA’s Director of Benefits, Heather Arana (FY 25 salary: $132,965).
We don’t know the precise details of what was said. That said, UNAC has publicly shared a summary of the morning’s session in their 2024-10-29 negotiations update. We direct you to that since the subject is technical and cannot be summarized any better.
Finally, UNAC – to their credit – publicly stated in their 2024-10-28 negotiations update that UNAC had only reluctantly agreed to closed meetings, and would not do so again unless they saw real results from this concession. They further said,
Thank you for bearing with us as we temporarily deviate from our 26 year practice of having open bargaining sessions in an effort to move this stalled process along. We have never before had so much difficulty getting management’s team to have discussions about the intent behind both teams’ proposals.
2024-10-29, 10:30
A short 15 minute session.
UNAC summarized the closed meetings as “agreeable and productive” discussions.
UNAC and the University tentatively agreed to a change to Article 20 about how often the University and UNAC meet. The change would reduce the frequency of these meetings. Previously, UNAC has said they are fine with this change (which the University introduced) since UNAC finds these meetings to have little value.
The other topic discussed was the schedule of the negotiations. Both sides have different ideas for speeding things up.