Last Friday we had another frustrating meeting with administration in which they could not provide answers to questions about the College budget. Our frustration is growing as fast as management FTE!
Admin claimed that the $17M increase in the President’s Office budget was the result of restructuring, not increased spending. We asked them to substantiate this by showing us a corresponding decrease in another area and the Associate VP for Finance Mike Mathews said “I’m not the expert in the budget area.” Dina Farrell, the College’s Chief Financial Officer, has not attended a bargaining session since October.
One of the sticking points has been management’s insistence that step advancement for faculty and APs will cost $11.4 million over the biennium, which we believe is overestimating by $4M. FFAP bargaining team member Alex Jordan made this video to explain our math. A link to the spreadsheet he cites in the video can be found here. Admin has so far refused to provide an explanation of their $11.4M estimate. It is not unreasonable for us to conclude they are inflating their estimates to bolster their “budget crisis” narrative!
Management offered a new health insurance proposal that would allow members who enroll in low-premium/high-deductible health plans to put money into a health savings account (HSA), up to the negotiated cap. We think this would be a good option for some members but it does nothing for folks with high healthcare expenses who cannot afford a high-deductible plan or members over age 65 who do not qualify for HSAs. We’ll continue to advocate for a meaningful increase to the cap for all members, including pro-rated coverage for part-time employees.
Toward the end of the meeting management claimed that only 3 of our proposals were mandatory subjects of bargaining, and they are not obligated to discuss the 27 other proposals. This was quite a surprising thing to announce after more than six months of bargaining! It’s also a narrow and incorrect reading of Oregon law, and we advised them to check with their lawyers before bringing that claim to the mediator.