Negotiators for the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties (APSCUF) and the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) met June 10 and 24 with little result.
An APSCUF release says the union will hold a conference call Aug. 25 with delegates from the 14 state-owned universities to decide whether to call for a strike authorization vote.
Should the delegates agree to call for the vote, all APSCUF members will vote on whether to give APSCUF president Ken Mash the authority to set a strike date in consultation with the negotiations committee.
If a strike should be called, it will be a first – APSCUF has never gone on strike since the organization began representing faculty in 1973.
“As the faculty and coaches responsible for providing a quality education, we place students at the center of our decisions,” Mash said in the release.
“But the changes the State System wants to make to our contract would make it nearly impossible for our members to deliver that quality. We are fully prepared to stand up for our current students, our future students, for all our alumni, and ourselves.”
APSCUF says PASSHE’s proposal would increase teaching assignments by graduate students and adjunct (temporary, non-tenure, often part-time) professors.
It would also increase adjunct professors’ workload equivalent to a 20 percent reduction in salary and would increase the workload for those who teach laboratory classes, APSCUF said.
A release from PASSHE says its proposal “seeks to modernize a number of areas of the long-serving collective bargaining agreement with APSCUF to better reflect the demand of higher education today.”
The PASSHE proposal includes provisions addressing temporary faculty, paid sabbatical leave and online learning.
“It also seeks to update the faculty healthcare plan to mirror the plan used by other System employees,” PASSHE said in its release.
University administrators, health center nurses, and campus police and security officers saw the health care changes go into effect at the beginning of the year.
APSCUF officials have said the health care plan is one of the sticking points, since it increases premiums, deductibles and co-pays.
PASSHE has agreed to grant the built-in automatic step pay increases, Mash has said. Negotiations over salary increases beyond that haven’t started yet.
Both sides submitted proposals June 10. APSCUF’s proposal is seven pages long, and includes provisions to protect adjunct faculty, and to adjust sick leave, work load and evaluation policies among other issues.
PASSHE’s proposal is 146 pages and includes detailed and sometimes massive changes to 25 of 46 articles and five appendices in the collective bargaining agreement.
The two sessions in June were taken up by reviewing what the proposals said.
The next negotiating session is set for July 19.
Fall semester classes resume Aug. 29 at Clarion University.