Differential teaching loads

At least two college deans on campus are pushing chairs to assign extra teaching to faculty who haven't produced any research over some period of time. This raises all sorts of issues re the FA contract, tenure and promotion, and merit procedures (even if we have no merit for the next few years, more teaching now will mean less research production later). But I wanted to start a thread for faculty to comment on this push on its merits. Would you like to empower your chair to assign additional teaching to faculty she or he determines are non-productive in research? 

Are Faculty Strikes Effective?

If the FA were really guilty of groupthink and I were taking on the role of "mindguard," I would probably hide this recent bit of somewhat depressing news from Inside Higher Education.  But I am not, because despite what our critics say, FA members are pretty open to critique and different points of view.  I'll offer a few comments after the break, but mostly I think this one gets to go forward to comments. 

Bargaining report: workload

I promised a report on the progress of bargaining, as I've heard it at the FA general membership meeting on Thursday, 10/13 (and of course supplemented with what I now from other sources). I'm going to break this report up into a number of chunks (which may also help focus comments). 

I'll only briefly characterize the overall impression I have of the 64k question: How's it going? Since the strike authorization vote, there has been been a change in atmosphere and attitude but rather little substantial progress. Rather than simply saying that they had "no interest" in our proposals, the board team has now been interested in more clearly figuring out just where the two sides disagree. Meetings have also become much more frequent. Hours before the Chancellor's announcement a few weeks ago that her team was willing to meet 24/7 (and her false charge that the FA was responsible for the failure to meet over the summer--when meetings did in fact take place), the administration team did indeed offer many more times for meetings, and lengthy meetings are now occurring on most business days.  On Monday, the teams will meet twice, and the FA team expects new language from the board team on a number of different issues.

I have been impressed, though many of you will not consider me an impartial observer, with the flexibility and creativity of the FA team (in addition to their more obvious persistence). On several crucial issues we have offered a number of different approaches in an effort to meet our interests. This is how Interest Based Bargaining is supposed to work. The sides don't stake out conflicting proposals and bang heads until they meet some place in the middle. Rather, each side attempts to creatively come up with proposals that allow them to meet their interest without undermining essential interests of the other side. This sort of flexibility is particularly clear on the first issue I'll consider below the break, workload.

For a bit on how negotiations with GA United are going, check out their latest bargaining update.

Negotiations resume

Randy Auxier can correct me here if I'm wrong, as I'm mainly summarizing his report (together with his fellow bargaining team member Daren Callahan) at the FA meeting tonight (Tuesday). The FA bargaining team met this morning with their administrative counterparts for the first time since the administration's imposition of terms. The FA proposed a discussion of workload issues. I'm no expert on this topic, but such concerns are particularly pressing in CASA, where the disconnect between contact hours and credit hours has generated all sorts of problems not readily reducible to the 12 credit hour per semester rule. The administration suggested distance learning, and the FA team agreed--as one of the issues here is indeed how to manage workload and compensation issues. The discussion (more on it after the break) was positive in tone and content, as, at least on the level of general principles, little appears to separate the administration from the FA on this issue.

This is, Randy emphasized, precisely the sort of positive conversation that could have taken place months ago, had the administration team not been focused solely on seeking FA agreement to the four furlough days and, failing that, on getting to impasse. Distance education and workload were among the major items the two sides have never really had the chance to discuss earlier.