Western professors gathered Jan. 31 in Arntzen Hall Room 100 to learn how their wages, benefits and working conditions could change this year.

In 2006, Western faculty voted to create a union called the United Faculty of Western Washington. Bill Lyne, faculty union president, said when a group of employees decides to unionize, it bargains with its employer about what goes in the employee contract.

The contract, which is valid for two years and affects all 750 Western faculty members, is still being negotiated. After 29 bargaining sessions between the faculty union and administration, the two sides decided they needed an impartial third party or mediator to assist in the process because they were unable to agree on five issues, Lyne said.

Lyne said these five issues are how much faculty should be paid, whether the faculty senate's preservation needs to be guaranteed on the contract, whether non-permanent faculty should be given priority in hiring and be reappointed, whether faculty's workload should increase and whether grievance and arbitration policies should be kept.

A mediator from Washington's Public Employment Relations Commission is coming to Western in February to help the bargaining teams reach an agreement on what will go in the contract, said Eileen Coughlin, vice president of student affairs and member of the administration's bargaining team.

The faculty union gave a presentation in Arntzen Hall to update all Western faculty members on the bargaining process, to share its proposals for the new contract and get feedback from faculty members.

The audience included more than 300 Western faculty members — union-members, non-union members, permanent professors and non-permanent professors.

Before the bargaining process began, the union surveyed faculty members to see what they thought about their workload, salary, and benefits.
The survey results have helped shape the union's positions and ideas for the contract, Lyne said.

The faculty union bargaining team includes 13 Western professors from 10 different departments and Fairhaven.

Western professor Vicki Hamblin, who teaches French, is a member of the faculty union's bargaining team.

Hamblin said she's taught at Western for 18 years and during that time she has seen how hard faculty work and how little they receive in compensation, salary and benefits from the administration.   

Lyne said improving salary is probably one of the most important issues to faculty because Western pays roughly $8,000 less per year than schools similar to Western in terms of size, public funding and diversity. 

The projected average faculty salary of institutions similar to Western for 2008-2009 is $70,921 and Western's current average faculty salary is $62,230, Lyne said.

Negotiations about salaries and compensation are not necessarily disagreements about ideals or long-range goals, Coughlin said.

 "They may represent issues of timing, limited resources provided for salaries by the legislature and difficult decisions over meeting all of the demands and needs of the university," she said.

The union wants the new contract to make sure the faculty senate, an elected group of Western professors who advise the Western administration, continues to exist.

The faculty senate is not protected under contract and the board of trustees has the power to end the senate at any time.
One of the things the faculty senate controls is Western's curriculum.

If the board of trustees put an end to the faculty senate, the administration would most likely begin to control the curriculum, Lyne said.
Most faculty members believe they should have authority in deciding what students learn, not administrators, he said.

"With all due respect to my administrative friends, I feel like, in terms of curriculum or English departments or African American literature, I know better than they do," Lyne said.

The administration's bargaining team says the faculty senate is important and here to stay, Lyne said. However, it refuses to put this in the contract because the faculty senate is not a decision-maker in the negotiation process and has no say in what goes into the contract, Lyne said.

The mediator will assist in improving communication between the faculty union and the administration, but the two bargaining teams have the final say on the contract, Coughlin said.

It's unclear how long the mediator's service will be required, Lyne said.

When the mediator leaves and an agreement is reached, the new contract will likely take affect before the end of 2008, he said.

Hamblin said neither of the bargaining teams will be completely satisfied with the new contract nor get all their needs met. 

Jeff Newcomer, president of the faculty senate, said he was against forming a union in 2006. However, he said the policies the union is fighting for are relevant to all faculty members, which is why he now supports the union's actions.

The union wants Western's 345 non-permanent faculty to be given priority in hiring and be reappointed based on how long they have been teaching at Western. Currently, there is no rule protecting non-permanent faculty from being fired if the administration is able to hire someone for a lower salary, Lyne said.

The administration doesn't support reappointment priorities for non-permanent faculty, Lyne said.

Western Professor Gene Myers teaches environmental studies at Huxley College and attended the faculty union's presentation in Arntzen Hall.

Myers said he supports the union's ideas for the faculty contract and thinks the union's position on non-permanent faculty is one of the most important. Non-permanent faculty could be dismissed much more easily than permanent faculty with tenure, Myers said.

“The union represents the interests of all faculty and thus plays an important role in ensuring academic freedom at Western,” Myers said.

Coughlin did not give specific information as to the administrative bargaining team's views. The faculty union and administrative team have made great progress in some areas, she said.

The two bargaining teams have come to an agreement on issues concerning faculty retirement plans, discrimination and workplace violence policies, Lyne said.

Where there is a disagreement, the teams are working to find points that represent their mutual interests and bring closure to the contract, Coughlin said.

Because many faculty members didn’t want to unionize, it doesn’t occur to the administration that all faculty, union members and non-union members alike, would feel the same about improved wages, benefits and workloads, Lyne said.

“We wanted to show these are concerns held by the whole faculty and to let everybody know the faculty is genuinely united,” Lyne said at the meeting in Artnzen Hall. “Our working conditions are our students' learning conditions,” he said.  

 

Comments (1)

Posted by jonsayer, on Feb. 05, 2008 11:45AM This article made my brain hurt.    The infograph at the end saved my brain from total confusion. Report

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