AAUP Executive Board meeting, Thursday 15 September 2016 in UW Club, University of Washington, Seattle. 3:30-5:00pm, Dial in: 206-616-2663, code 338108

STRATEGIC PLANNING PLANKS

1. Improve conditions for lecturer faculty at the UW

2. Engage in advocating for better higher ed funding in Washington State; work in coalition with other stakeholders.

3. Faculty Senate Resolution to get faculty representatives on search committees for deans, provosts Board of Regents faculty representation

4. Partner with other universities for appeals to the legislature

5. Faculty unionization

6. Work to repair the UW’s faculty grievance adjudication system

7. Build faculty understanding of “Activity Based Budgeting.”

8. Involve the AAUP in the Faculty Council’s committee on intellectual property.

9. Work to increase the capacity of faculty to provide better oversight to unpaid internships.

10. Examine the shared governance issues associated with the UW’s move towards an on-line learning undergraduate degree completion program.

11. Monitor search process for open University administrative positions to ensure they are open.

Attendance: Bert Stover/treasurer (chaired meeting), Amy Hagopian/secretary, Abraham Flaxman/List server VP, Charlie Collins, Diane Morrison, Jay Johnson, Bruce Kochis, Eva Cherniavsky, Hwasook Nam, Duane Storti, Jim Gregory, Michael Honey, Libi Sundermann (phone), Jim Liner (phone).

Absent: Christoph Giebel, Max Lieblich, Ann Mescher, Dan Jacoby/president, and Rob Wood/past-president.

We welcomed new board members (Charlie Collins, Hwasook Nam, Eva Cherniavsky)

SEIU/AAUP relationship

The SEIU drive to collect PERC cards last year did not succeed in collecting sufficient signatures by year end. We have now organized a “voluntary union.” We discussed the relationship between AAUP and SEIU. AAUP president (Howard Bunsis) had sent us a letter last spring, and Dan drafted a response, but it was never sent.

Michael Honey reported he met with AAUP regional staff (Jim Bakken) and Henry Reichman at the national meeting. Bakken, who seemed very knowledgeable to Mike, had previously worked for SEIU, and is very strong on AAUP collective bargaining organizing. He’s based in Eugene. AAUP national leaders remain convinced we need to change Washington state law to make it more possible to organize. [note: Jim Bakken, AAUP Pacific Northwest Lead Organizer, (503) 400-1295, jbakken@aaup.org]

Conversation: What would an SEIU/AAUP partnership look like? Where do we even start here? Who has authority to move forward? The California Faculty Association, for example, has an SEIU/AAUP union partnership. (see http://www.calfac.org/cfa-affiliates) AAUP at Rutgers partners with AFT because they wanted a lobbying party.

Eva reported on a meeting this summer with Diane, Amy, Christoph and Bill Lyne, who chairs the United Faculty of Washington. He is eager to work with SEIU Faculty Forward as we work towards unionization. He reported SEIU (Michael Laslett) approached him and the NEA/AFT in 2014 about collaborating. He also said United Faculty would tolerate a state law change that allows each school to organize separately, but would not want to see a change that allows lecturers to organize separately from tenured track faculty. An obvious first step, should the law change, would be to organize UW Tacoma. Steve Conway, Tacoma’s legislative rep, helped author that law.

Libi suggested we do a reset, and try again with AAUP, and include United Faculty as well.

On November 19, there will be a founding meeting of SEIU 925 Faculty Forward at UW Tacoma, where we will form our UW chapter in a formal way. We will elect representatives to the statewide council at that meeting.

The concern is whether people are willing to pay dues or give energy to both organizations. At the least it would be nice to have a discount in dues that encourages membership in both. AAUP is a 100-year-old organization with deep roots at the UW, and it would be a shame to lose it; at the UW it is the only lifeboat for shared governance. Especially in Tacoma, an AAUP chapter doesn’t seem feasible at this time; on the other hand, Tacoma appreciates the union drive.

The organizing issues SEIU is focusing on include state funding/tuition, board of Regents representation, race/equity issues, workload and working conditions, status of lecturers, and “university in community” issues (housing, transportation and child care). These will all be discussed at the Nov. 19 meeting in Tacoma.

Amy reported on the SEIU’s open meeting at Mary Gates Hall the other night where four city council people came to hear testimony from classified staff union members about the cost and time of transportation to campus because housing is so unaffordable in the city. Negotiations are underway for a new contract with 10,000 members of SEIU (classified) and WFSE (janitors), and talks are reportedly not going well.

Duane and Jim discussed the role of Senate Committee on Planning and Budgeting in the UW’s budget. AAUP should continue to engage with the Faculty Senate. The Faculty Senate’s past chair, Norm Beauchamp, is leaving UW to go to Michigan State; therefore the leadership of the chair of SCPB is vacant. We discussed how strange the budgeting process is at UW, and how little everyone knows, including the people at the top. The Regents just rubber stamp it.

Decision: We’ll start anew with the regional AAUP organizer (Jim Bakken) to make an effort to bring SEIU and AAUP together in a union organizing drive.

Decision: We need to respond to the AAUP letter, still. Reconsider a defensive response, and notify them of our intent to talk with Jim Bakken. Keep in mind what we want to accomplish. We could keep our detailed response to ourselves at this point.

Decision: Talk further with SEIU, Bill Lyne and others about a law change.

Faculty Senate issues

Next meeting is October 20.

a. Salary Policy: what’s next? Unknown.

b. Regents issue in the legislature this year: Are we just going to let JoAnn Taricani decide whether the Faculty Senate will support a faculty regents, or will the Senate have a serious legislative agenda?

c. FCFA Work on Lecturers; This is definitely a work in progress, needs work to delineate the rights of part time lecturers in particular.

d. Amy approached FCTL last spring with a plea to address the plight of fee-based master’s students, who now comprise the majority of masters students on campus. FCTL doesn’t believe this topic is in its wheelhouse. Meanwhile, oversight on fee-based student programs is minimal, grad students in fee-based programs can’t get TAships, state-based students can’t take fee-based courses, and there is lots of dysfunction. Maybe Faculty Council on Academic Standards, chaired by Sarah Stroup. would be interested? They’re interested in ABB distribution.

e. Research Misconduct policy: We’ve still never discovered what are the federal regulations that required us to eliminate adjudication from UW policy. Faculty Council on Research might still be interested.

f. ABB effects survey; what’s up with that?

OTHER THINGS

Jay reported he visited the Wall of Public Good at University of Minnesota, which memorializes faculty accomplishments. Our chapter proposed doing something similar here at UW, but there’s not been progress on this.

Dental School deficit, which we discussed in the spring. The Dental School Faculty Council wrote a letter to the Provost (May 12) rejecting the bailout plan. The Board of Regents had approved the plan, pending approval from the Faculty Council. So did the Regents eventually reject the plan?

We discussed the Long Island University faculty lock-out.

Michael Honey suggested we support the Univ of Massachusetts labor studies program, threatened with elimination. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/09/umass-labor-center-cuts-corporate-university-union-education/ We agreed in principle, asked Michael to determine the best way to express our support.

Decision: Invite Provost to discuss some of the above issues.

Decision: next meeting of AAUP board was moved from Thursday 10/20 (which conflicts with the Faculty Senate) to Friday 10/21, 3:30. LOCATION?

Treasurer report: Bert said we have $23,000 in the bank; we owe national $10,000 before we collect

AAUP Meeting schedule 2015/2016 (3:30 pm to 5 pm)