State university contract talks off until January
A scheduled negotiating session between the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education and the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties (APSCUF)was canceled Wednesday, with the next session set for Jan. 4.
APSCUF members at the 14 state-owned universities have been working without a contract for the past two years.
According to PASSHE spokesman Kenn Marshall, the two sides agreed to cancel Wednesday’s session. Marshall did not give a reason. According to an APSCUF statement, the union said an email from PASSHE indicated that the session Wednesday would be brief.
“Apparently, PASSHE is not yet prepared to make a counter proposal,” the APSCUF release stated.
Michael Slavin, the local APSCUF president at California University of Pennsylvania, said he was excited last week when university coaches under APSCUF were given a new contract, but that excitement faded when PASSHE wasn’t ready to present a new offer to the union.
“It’s getting nowhere,” Slavin said. “We keep getting the same answers: you need to cut retirement and you need to cut your temporaries. They are attacking our weakest members,” Slavin said.
Slavin said PASSHE officials agreed to treat full-time temporary faculty the same as regular faculty members, but part-time temporary faculty would fall into a different category, with lower wages. Slavin said the fear is that if the union agrees to that difference, all temporary faculty will be made part time.
“We know what a strike will do to our students. It’s the last thing we want to do,” Slavin said. “It’s almost to the point where they want to push us to strike.”
Marshall said the state has agreed to additional negotiating sessions.
“We’re committed to reaching a settlement, but we have to be aware that whatever we do will have an impact on the students,” Marshall said.
According to the PASSHE news release, students pay 73 percent of the costs of operating the state university system, so every additional dollar given out in salary or benefits adds another 73 cents to student expenses.
Marshall said the contract offered to APSCUF is similar in salary and benefits to the contracts given to the other seven unions representing employees at the state universities.
“We are looking at cost savings that are appropriate for each union that offset the salary increases,” Marshall said.
The APSCUF membership has authorized a strike, and PASSHE has already rejected taking the contract to binding arbitration.
The union is now poised to strike if that action is approved by 10 of the 14 local union presidents. Cal U and the other 13 state-owned universities are instructing students to report to their regularly scheduled classes in the event a strike interferes with the start of the spring semester at the end of January.
Slavin said that even with more than 100 managers, Cal U couldn’t possibly cover the 1,500 course offerings in a semester.
“If we strike the university, they’re going to have to shut down and you’ll have all of those students who won’t be in classes and it will be a mess.”
Marshall said contingency plans are in place.
“We haven’t experienced a strike before. We don’t know how many faculty would continue to teach even if a strike is called,” Marshall said.
Marshall said that so far he hasn’t received word from any of the state-owned universities of a serious drop in enrollment for the spring semester because of fears of a strike.
“I’ve been here 15 years now and this is the fourth time we’ve gone through this,” Marshall said.
In 2007, when the last contract was being negotiated, APSCUF actually set a date for the strike, but a settlement was reached before the date arrived, Marshall said.