Comments on: University faculty union director describes breakdown of contract negotiations

By: AprilinParis

AprilinParis — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 05:49:20 +0000

Belated posting (1/12/10), but nothing on UH recently:

Amidst a budget crisis so severe that faculty pay is being reduced and countless other cuts have been made, over winter break in the athletic facilities, the men’s intramural locker room linoleum tile floor was polished to look like glass. Not that it looked at all bad before. Who knows what that cost or why the crews were not instead fixing the leaky roof in my building, but I guess it was a priority.

And then today, I discovered the new additions to the intramural gym facility of two large wall-mounted LCD TV’s. One is broadcasting CNN, the other ESPN. What, each one maybe $1,200, plus mounting hardware $200, plus overhead, administrative time on the procurement, and installation labor, so all together $4,000? How does that equate to the 6.7% cuts on a single full-time faculty member’s salary? (Don’t forget the monthly charge from now to forever for the cable subscription.)

Well, if UH students classrooms are overcrowded and falling down, at least the students will get CNN, ESPN (and all the accompanying advertising) to “educate” them when working out at the gym.

Or more simply, I guess it was a priority.

By: Ulu

Ulu — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 23:07:42 +0000

Remember that with the evergreen clause, the union doesn’t have to do anything but sit on the present contract, unless a new contract is equal to or better than the present one. If the university/aka Lingle tries to break the contract, they would have a tough time in court as it is a perfectly good contract and courts traditionally don’t break contracts (think precedent) just because one party suddenly realizes it has signed a bad deal five years before. The Lingle administration would need a really really good lawyer.

By: Orchids

Orchids — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:41:26 +0000

Amoeba’s comment about the public relations battle is important. But I don’t agree that it’s lost, but certainly public education, K-12 and Higher, is behind in the 8th inning. But that’s fitting in a state where nearly all of the leaders’ families futures are trusted to private education. Public education is for the rest.

I’m with Charles as to the importance of this for the state’s future.

Two additional elements out there in addition to what’s in UHPA’s report.

One, as you’ve been doing a great job to point out but the public isn’t getting elsewhere, is that our fiscal crisis is not “sudden” (see e.g. The Advertiser’s editorial last week), but the natural consequence of political decisions in the past decade to reduce taxes on those who could easily have been paying them. (Maybe that’s too politically hot for UHPA to touch?)

The second is that UHPA substantially contributed to its weakness in negotiating the last contract with graduated pay raises back-ended. This created clearly foreseeable and certainly foreseen results. A, that only the last two years’ of sizable 9 and 11 increases sit in the public perception. B, that the retirement pipeline shut down as any reasonably self-interested senior faculty member would put off their retirement until 3 years after the 11% raise so as to maximize their pension benefits.

Both of those chickens are coming home to roost.

Maybe the best hope is that as contract negotiations are stalled the clock will tick and both of those negative impacts from the last contract will become less consequential.