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1. Who exactly is covered
by this contract?
2: Who is included in the
2004-05 retroactive pay increase and the first year 2005-06 raise?
3:
Does the healthcare increase eat up all of my raises?
4: The Retrenchment
article language is pretty scary sounding? Are we protected by it?
5: In Academic Freedom,
the language says that faculty should not introduce controversial material into their class that is unrelated to the class. Does this
constrain us inappropriately?
6: I thought we were
opposed to flat rates for Summer Compensation?
7: With the new flat rates
for summer compensation, by my calculations, I make less than I used
to. Why is that?
8: How does our
Governance language look now compared to other unionized schools?
9. What exactly is
faculty’s role in chair selection now?
10: Is our HealthCare
coverage kind of expensive now?
11: Didn’t we deserve
more money in Retroactive pay?
12: If there are
particular features of this Contract that could be better, are we
stuck with it?
Answers
Q1. Who exactly is
covered by this contract?A. “Bargaining unit faculty,” as defined in
Article 3 - Recognition of the Bargaining Unit. This includes
full-time Instructors, Assistant, Associate, and Full Professors; but
excludes Visiting and Temporary Instructors and Professors (see
Article 3 for full list).
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Q2: Who is included
in the 2004-05 retroactive pay increase and the first year 2005-06
raise?
A: The TA'd
Compensation Article allows a retroactive pay increase of 2.5% back
to July 1, 2004-05 for all bargaining unit faculty who began service on
or
before that date. The retroactive raise would include also include a
lump cash sum payment for the 2004-05 academic year.
Faculty do not normally receive pay increases in their first year of
service.
The
Compensation Article also allows an across-the-board pay increase of
2.5% back to July 1, 2005 for all bargaining unit faculty who began
service on or before that date. This raise would also include a lump
sum cash payment for the months of the 2005 academic year (i.e.,
September 05 through to the month in which the contract is ratified).
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Q3: Does the healthcare increase eat up all of my
raises?
A: NO. In January 2006 you will receive a 1.2 percentage increase to
base pay and a flat amount to base pay, depending on your coverage
selected, that will completely cover the healthcare costs for 99% of
faculty and staff. Overall, the salary pool for the four years is up to
19.3% (including healthcare offset and market adjustment pool).
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Q4: The
Retrenchment article language is pretty scary sounding? Are we
protected by it?
A. Yes. The
Board accepted our Retrenchment language, and it has important
protections for faculty, including protections for rank, seniority, and
tenure. It also ensures that if retrenchment occurs, it can only be at
the programmatic level, and the criteria triggering retrenchment are
clearly specified. Also, individual faculty cannot be cherry-picked for
retrenchment. Furthermore, if a financial exigency is declared, it must
be for clearly documentable reasons.
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Q5: In Academic
Freedom, the language says that faculty should not introduce
controversial material into their class that is unrelated to the class.
Does this constrain us inappropriately?
A: No.
The language in Academic Freedom is our proposed language, which is
taken directly from national AAUP guidelines. It reads like virtually
every contract in the country. It guarantees your right to decide what
materials relate to the subject matter you are discussing in your
class.
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Q6: I thought we
were opposed to flat rates for Summer Compensation?
A: We were
opposed to the Board’s initial proposal for flat rates per rank because
it harmed ALL faculty who taught in the summer. However, we 1)
negotiated UP the flat rates per rank, 2) lowered the number of students
required to have a fully enrolled class, and 3) got the Board to add 2%
to the base pay salary pool in year 2 of the contract to compensate
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Q7: How does our
Governance language look now compared to other unionized schools?
A: It
looks good. Faculty are guaranteed a substantial role in the selection
and review of Chairs and Deans. Their role in the process for selecting
the Provost and President is the current university rule, which is also
now guaranteed in the contract. Rodger Govea of Cleveland State AAUP,
and member of the national AAUP Collective Bargaining Congress, believes
this is a good agreement.
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Q8. What exactly is
faculty’s role in chair selection now?
A. The department uses whatever rules it has devised (i.e. departmental
bylaws) to elect the pool of bargaining unit faculty from which the Dean
selects at least two. The Dean may then add others to the committee
provided that there is a majority of bargaining unit faculty. It is
not a requirement that the group doing the electing of the pool be
exclusively bargaining unit faculty. A department may include others in
that electorate in their departmental bylaws.
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Q9: Is our
HealthCare coverage kind of expensive now?
A: Our
contribution toward healthcare coverage did go up noticeably, as it has
elsewhere. However, we also bargained for a structure that did not harm
lower paid faculty and staff, and the compensatory raises in January
2006 cover the increased contributions and go to base pay (thus helping
toward retirement and future raises). Not all university contracts,
such as Cleveland State’s, include compensatory raises to
cover healthcare cost increases.
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Q10: Didn’t we
deserve more money in Retroactive pay?
A: You
always deserve more money. There were two years for which faculty did
not have raises. We got retro pay for one of those, 2004-2005. Neither
faculty nor staff received raises in 2003-2004. However, faculty
recently received 1.6% to base pay and $900 each as part of the ULP
settlement. These are additional monies that only faculty received, not
staff. So, counting that, our retroactive pay is better than at first
glance. Overall, our 19.3% salary pool over four years of the contract
is quite good.
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Q11: If there
are particular features of this Contract that could be better, are we
stuck with it?
A: Absolutely not. What you should do is contact members of the
Akron-AAUP Executive Committee and suggest language for improvement in
the next round of negotiations. In fact, we might ask you to draft
some language. The beauty of a contract is that not only is it
guaranteed, but also it is up for renegotiation every few years.
So, what we didn’t get exactly as we want this time, we can improve on
next time.
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Q12. With the
new flat rates for summer compensation, by my calculations, I make less
than I used to. Why is that?
A. This is complex, but we'll try to work through it.
Summer compensation at UA has always been, in most everyone's
institutional memory, at a 25% reduction of faculty 9 month contract
rate. We'd become accustomed to this treatment, recent summer changes
prior to the tentative agreement notwithstanding. In the words of a
couple of faculty, this was a "good deal", especially when compared to
summer comp on other campuses around the state. The flat rate policy is
more common than not, and UA faculty were compensated somewhat better as
a percentage of their salary. However, faculty on other campuses have,
for years, made more money than UA faculty during their 9 month
appointments.
Looking at summer compensation only:
The proposed summer flat rate compensation scheme will result in a
summer pay increase for UA faculty whose salary is significantly below
the median for their rank, no difference in pay for those at the median
for their rank, and a pay decrease for faculty whose salary is
significantly above the median for their rank. This is only true for
faculty who regularly teach in the summer.
To be fair in assessing the overall compensation for the entire first
year of the contract - 2005-06, one should not concentrate only on the
summer pay structure.
While there is the flat rate summer structure, there are also the
following raises for 2005-06:
a 1.6% pay increase in July 2005 as a result of the ULP settlement
a 2.5% retroactive raise to July 2004-05 for faculty employed full time
at that point.
a 1.2% pay increase + cash ($450 for faculty with a single insured h.c.
plan)
a 2.5% pay increase for this year 2005-06 for faculty employed full time
at that point.
This amounts to a 7.8% pay increase for the nine month salary -all
across the board - plus the cash-to-base health care.
In practical terms, without the cash-to-base figured in, a full
professor making $70,000 and teaching 9 credits at the flat rate this
summer will make an additional $4,049 THIS YEAR at the end of the
summer. See the 1st year calculator at
http://www.akronaaup.org/negotiations/1styearaiseworksheet.xls.
For the 2nd year 2006-07, the contract includes a 2.5% of the year two
raise. That raise is attributed to the administration's "savings" from
the summer compensation changes-both the change to flat per credit hour
rates and the elimination of pay for graduate student advising.
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