Last Friday the FFAP Bargaining team sat down for the second time with PCC management to talk about ground rules. We continue to insist that labor negotiations are public meetings under Oregon law. They continue to insist the opposite. Both sides have lawyers and case law to support their positions, and it was starting to feel like a bit of a stalemate with no clear legal resolution.
Then two things happened.
First, we took a closer look at the proposal the college gave us on February 2, which read in part, “Employees or other invitees who attend negotiations as observers, whether in-person or remotely, will do so as silent observers.” Setting aside the issue of public meeting law, this is the college on record agreeing to both in-person and remote observers. (without getting into the weeds on labor law, just know that it’s illegal for them to agree to something then rescind it in a subsequent proposal)
Second, we dug up our ground rules agreement from 2019, in which the College signed off on what is our interpretation of Oregon Public meeting law. So we have the college on record agreeing that Oregon public meeting law DOES apply to labor negotiations, and that either side may unilaterally declare a public meeting.
The College gave us two proposals on Friday, the first of which they admitted was prepared at 6:00 a.m. that morning, despite having had three weeks to work on it. Both proposals contained typos and errors, including outright deletion of the language about observers. We told them we can’t respond until they give us a clean proposal, and if their intention is to rescind the language about observers (remember – that would be illegal), they need to give us a proposal that strikes it out, rather than deletes it.
Last Friday was a great reminder that bargaining consists of long, boring meetings punctuated by sudden bursts of courtroom-TV-worthy drama. We appreciate everyone’s patience as we work through these tedious, but important issues, and we look forward to inviting you to see for yourselves as observers very soon.
You can help us keep up the momentum by joining us for a Zoom member meeting on March 8 at 4pm (LINK HERE). We’ve planned a top-secret, quick, and powerful group action to help pressure administration to allow observers.