Faculty collective bargaining and Time Warner Cable contract expiration were among the top issues discussed yesterday at the Undergraduate Student Government weekly meeting.
Guest speaker David Jackson, the faculty association president, explained how the University’s faculty are wanting to have an election to vote on collective bargaining; which is simply that the faculty will become unionized.
“We here at Bowling Green State University made a decision last summer when I was elected president of the organization to pursue collective bargaining to attempt to become a union that negotiates contracts on behalf of the professors,” said Jackson.
Jackson said 30 percent of the 815 faculty members on campus must sign a card saying they want an election to unionize. However, Jackson said the BGSUFA did not feel that 30 percent was enough, because they wanted a significant majority of the faculty and are now very close to 60 percent in favor of an election.
“We are certain of the fact that the Bowling Green State University faculty want an election on collective bargaining,” Jackson said.
One of the main reasons the BGSUFA is encouraging collective bargaining is so the faculty will be able to potentially have higher salaries.
“Right now there is a crisis among the faculty at BGSU that’s been generated for a number of years,” Jackson said. “For at least 12 or 13 years, BGSU has been near the bottom in terms of salary for professors in the state of Ohio. The three and a half percent tuition increase was not to increase faculty salaries, so there is no inherent relationship between higher tuition and higher faculty pay.”
In addition to the discussion of faculty collective bargaining, President Sundeep Mutgi gave an update regarding the up-and-coming shuttle fee.
“An update, as far as the shuttle fee goes, we have our full committee,” said Mutgi.
Mutgi said the committee will get together to talk about complaints, as well as figure out what graduate students should pay.
The University’s contract with Time Warner Cable was also an important issue brought up by Off-Campus Senator Scott Bilbrey.
“The contract with Time Warner Cable ends in August 2011,” Bilbrey said. “This is going to affect BG in that this is the cable service that is provided on campus.”
Bilbrey said Channel 6, which is provided by Time Warner Cable and the channel BG24 uses, will no longer be available once the contract expires.
“If we lose the contract with Time Warner Cable, we lose the station that BG24 uses, as well as other academic resources,” said Bilbrey. “ITS is looking into alternatives to renewing the contract with Time Warner Cable. The attention as of right now, is finding a new cable outlet, such as AT&T or Buckeye Cable, or for BGSU to create their own cable outlet.”
However, Bilbrey said even if the University goes through a new cable outlet or creates its own, “we will lose Channel 6 and the academic portion of the broadcast.”
Bilbrey said the University feels like it is important to continue this academic broadcast outlet because it is an important teaching tool as well as a good way to reach out to the community.
