After nine months of careful and sometimes contentious bargaining, the first ever faculty union contract between teachers and University of Oregon reached a handshake agreement Wednesday afternoon.
Members of United Academics, the faculty union, will vote to ratify the contract next month. Bargaining leaders are optimistic that the tenets of the contract will be please the teachers, who only became certified in April 2012.
“Our students benefit from the talents of professors who share their knowledge and passion for research and scholarship every day,” said University President Michael Gottfredson in a statement, “and this first contract reflects a fiscally responsible agreement that rewards excellence and invests in our faculty – strengthening the University of Oregon for all of our community.”
Faculty bargainers posed for pictures together after a deal was tentatively struck. The deal is the culmination of nine months of back-and-forth, where the University has been reluctant to offer salary increases in the face of declining state support and locked-in tuition rates for the next couple years.
“We firmly believe that this is a good contract not only for the faculty of the University of Oregon but for the University of Oregon,” said Dave Cecil, a lead bargainer and director of the American Federation of Teachers, Oregon. “I know the [bargaining] team hopes it’s overwhelmingly received, it’s a really good agreement.”
Much of the bargaining centered around faculty salaries, academic freedom and policymaking within the university. Salaries have historically lagged behind other public research universities in the country.
“We put a salary and compensation package in place that helps the University moves closer to our peer institutions, but do it in a fiscally responsible way,” said Tim Gleason, Dean of the Journalism School and a member of the university’s bargaining team. “We put as much money on the table as we could.” The University of Oregon agreed to raise faculty salaries to 11.9 percent and 12.4 percent for tenure/tenure-track and non-tenure track respectively.
Other issues have been about academic freedom. Teachers have been concerned with both their right to voice concerns with university operations, as well as helping implement policies throughout the campus, which have often been top-down decisions from the administration in the past.
“The nice thing is that even tenure-track faculty who really never had a voice before will have a voice in how their merit raises are configured, what are the requirements, how we internally govern ourselves,” said Deborah Green, associate professor of Hebrew literature and language at UO and a member of the union bargaining team. “We protected a lot of that and made, I think, a real difference in how the university works.”
The University of Oregon will also boost merit raises 8 percent, offer longer contracts for non-tenure-track faculty, and relax previous rules against tuition discounts for children of faculty. The contract will be effective through June 30, 2015.