While several University staff members were enjoying winter break, some faculty and administrators were hard at work addressing crucial issues concerning the University’s recently unionized faculty.
The negotiating is hardly over.
The latest topic of debate — the Board of Trustees unanimously approving several amendments to the University’s Academic Charter at its December meeting — was taken to a Dec. 29 meeting between the BGSU Faculty Association and the University Administration.
The charter was amended to prevent role conflict between already existing faculty organizations, like the Faculty Senate and the Faculty Union, University President Carol Cartwright said in a statement to faculty members Dec. 10.
“The amendments … will provide the framework we need to move forward and successfully serve our students and our stakeholders,” Cartwright said in the e-mail. “These changes will pave the way for collective bargaining, without the interference or disruption of a conflicting process for the resolution of collective bargaining subjects.”
FA members disagreed and called the amendments — specifically the elimination of faculty grievance procedures with no replacement process — an “attack on shared governance” in a Dec. 17 statement to its members.
“This revision was approved by the Board of Trustees without any consultation or even previous notification of the faculty,” the FA said in an e-mail. “The Academic Charter can be interpreted or changed at will and whim by the Board … Be assured that the BGSU-FA is committed to defending faculty voice at BGSU through all of the means available to us.”
The revised academic charter can be found on the provost’s website, with changes marked in red.
According to a joint statement from both parties, the Dec. 29 meeting was “productive and cordial” and led to progress on procedures for a new collective bargaining agreement.
The meeting also reinstated the charter’s original grievance procedures until the FA ratifies a collective bargaining contract, most likely in 2012, FA President David Jackson said.
“This eliminates the gap so grievances will be in place next year,” he said. “We have put together some meetings with several ad hoc committees to write bargaining proposals and begin formally negotiating, and are also working with the administration on a timeline before contract negotiations start.”
General counsel Sean FitzGerald said he was also satisfied with the meeting’s results.
“It set a good tone going forward and we accomplished what we wanted to,” he said. “What we should take away from all of this is that the faculty has been left with the leadership position in the area where they have expertise — the academic function of the University. Where they won’t have the greater role will be for things like grievances, wages and hours, because the union will.”
Some Faculty Senate members addressed the charter amendments with concern at the Faculty Senate meeting Tuesday.
The charter amendments greatly affect the Senate, said Chair Kris Blair, by eliminating three Senate standing committees: the Faculty Welfare Committee, the Faculty Senate Budget Committee and the Faculty Personnel and Conciliation Committee.
“The Board did amend the charter and the Faculty Senate was not involved in the conversation at all, though we had been consistently asking since the results of collective bargaining the ways in which the charter would change,” she said. “Faculty Senate aligns itself with USG and GSS in expressing our collective concern about the impact of these changes on our ability to participate in advancing the mission of the University.”
Further, more detailed discussion of the charter amendments was postponed. Questions concerning the charter will be addressed at the Faculty Senate’s 2:30 meeting Feb. 1 by Cartwright and Provost Ken Borland.
