Last Friday we met with administration for our final attempt to establish ground rules for bargaining.
The College still owes us a response to our Feb. 10 counter proposal. (You can track the progress and read the proposals here, including their two attempts to respond with proposals containing typos, errors and inconsistencies). We’ve been asking them for a clear proposal that strikes out language they don’t want, and underlines language they want to add.
On Friday, Trevor Caldwell (the College’s lead negotiator from the law firm Miller Nash) presented the FFAP bargaining team with a brand new proposal, declaring a “fresh start” and saying the College would like to withdraw their previous proposal.
Setting aside for a moment the College’s shaky legal ground of withdrawing a proposal, we were pleased to see that the new proposal allowed for in-person observers. We continued to make the case for live streaming so that bargaining is transparent and accessible.
Toward the end of the meeting, we emphasized how bad morale is among faculty and APs by sharing some sobering data from our bargaining survey. (You can see some of the slides below, and access all the slides here).
We maintain that a successful and transparent bargaining process can go a long way toward restoring trust between the administration and our members.
We have 2 weeks until our next bargaining session, but our team is ready to move on, with or without ground rules. In the meantime we will continue to try to reach an agreement on livestreaming with administration via email. With 99% of our members demanding access and transparency, we’re not going to budge.
Stay tuned for more news from our organizing committee in the coming days.