My “day job” has kept me especially busy lately, so it just wasn’t in the cards for me to try to attend any of the fact finding hearings yesterday. But I wonder if anyone out there in EMUtalk-land did, and I wonder if any of you would-be reporters would like to report? And also, there are hearings again today (Wednesday, February 21) in room 330 of the Student Center, another chance to go and hear the hearings.
Mind you, I’m not looking for cheerleading from the AAUP– not that that isn’t important, because it is. It’s just inevitably biased. BTW, you can find links to still more slides here; no narrative on the web yet about the hearings from the union folks, other than a sort of summary the slides. And obviously, I’m not looking for cheerleading from the administration either– I have no idea where they are posting stuff about these talks.
Rather, I’m just of looking for some impressions. What are these talks “like”?
Bunsis said that the talks are liable to conclude today, 2/21 (I thought these things were going on into March, actually), so today might be your last chance. It’d be tight with other things on my schedule, but I might try to swing by this morning for a look.
Anyway, if anyone out there has impression based on eye-witnessing, post ‘em here.
Two Updates:
- The EMU administration stuff on Fact Finding is here.
- One of my colleagues pointed to an interesting statement/press release on some of the recent statements from Loppnow on Fact Finding here. Just to quote the last three sentences: “The University has always intended to give the Fact Finder’s recommendations serious consideration in an effort to arrive at an agreement. I know we all share the hope that this process will help us reach a mutually agreeable solution to our contract difficulties. I believe both the administration and the union are committed to this end and to moving forward in a more positive manner.” This strikes me as being closer to embracing the FF process than some other recent statements (as discussed here), but not exactly the full “we’ll take what the Fact Finder gives us” kind of statement that the union wants.
Fixed link for administration fact-finding materials.
I can’t answer your plea, steve, because I couldn’t go due to being swamped under a 20′ rise in paper levels, probably due to global warming ; – )
However, what I find really interesting in the AAUP evidence is that if the administration *spent* on faculty what they *budgeted* on faculty, we’d be done with this. Where that excess $3M goes, I don’t know.
I will acknowledge, though, that accounting and budgeting are arcane arts, probably involving waving dead chickens around burning candles.
I spent an hour watching the Fact Finding hearing today. The union side was discussing health care costs, rebutting the management claims that, I gather, were presented yesterday. Howrd Bunsis and Jim Carroll from physics were very effective at presenting info via slides and speech.
The AAUP slides consisted of data drawn from some health care studies done in 2006; Bunsis presented charts showing that the management presentation the other day was based on older versions of the same annual studies, using 2005 data. Howard presented data from both — and guess what? The newer data indicate lower costs for health care. How could management have missed those newer data? (Don’t we teach our students to find the most recent and best data? Can’t management do that too? Or am I too cynical in thinking they used the older studies because health care costs nationwide were going up faster in 2005 than in 2006? These administrators would flunk nearly any basic research class, from what I can see.)
A remarkable set of data showed that at Central, health care costs have gone down, and the faculty were thus charged less for health care, getting, in effect, a raise.
The AAUP argued that employers benefit with reduced costs when employees have more than one option. (It’s not a bad theory — one that Adam Smith wrote about in 1776: competition affects price and supply. I recommend that the Welch hall crowd take some economics and history classes and study this radical idea from the Scottish Enlightenment!) The AAUP also showed data supporting this contention that competition affects the costs of employer provided health care. Very interesting stuff, but contrary to the EMU drive to put all employees on the same monopolistic plan.
Then the management health consultant spoke. He had no slides, no real data, but tried to poke holes in what the union had said; rebutting the rebuttal, I guess. He spent a lot of time on the fact that in prior contracts faculty who’d switched from an HMO to the PPO plan got a $1000 increase to their base pay. His point on this was obscure to me, but he dwelled on it at length. The logic seemed to be that, since in years past some faculty had gotten a $1000 increase to base, we could not afford to pay health care premiums now. Those who have only joined the EMU faculty in the last 3 years, well, you’d have to pay the health care premiums even without this $1000 to base that the consultant seemed to think justifies it.
That logic seemed to me to ignore the fact that a sudden rise in health care costs for faculty is real blow. A blow of a 2% costs for a faculty member who makes $50,000 a year.
As for what the hearings were like — well, i was only there an hour. All the chairs for observers were behind the management side, or blocking the table with coffee and water, so I sat behind management. This was somewhat funny, me backing up Mr. Dual and Conflicting Roles, Interim Dean/Chief Negotiator Hoft, and “Mean Jim Green”, the management lawyer.
Kerner, the fact finder, struck me as very attentive and detail oriented, asking questions now and then, and clearly following along in his printed copies of the AAUP exhibits as they were orally presented. The management team all had laptops there, but weren’t using them, or even, it seemed taking notes.
Meanwhile, back in my College, Arts and Sciences, numerous issues go unattended to for the lack of a Dean who does his job. A dean’s job is not to argue for limiting compensation for his faculty but instead to argue for adequate resources to provide quality education for our students. A dean’s job is to retain faculty, not create incentives for them to leave the university. We have no dean in the College of Arts and Sciences.
All of my PrayHarrold classrooms this term are unbearably hot. Hot enough to make students sick, and angry. Our students deserve better than this. They deserve a dean who demands improvements…and the overheating can be fixed by means short of a major overhaul of the building. But we have no dean. We have no provost. We have no president. We have instead a team of managers who don’t understand the purpose of the university, or how priceless and irreplaceable good will is in any community.
I had heard rumor that the spectator seating arrangement was both odd and problematic in the way that Mark is describing.
Alas, I’ve been trying desperately to get caught up on my day job, meeting with students, etc., so I was in Bombadill’s doing these things. Good food and coffee, free wireless access, and I find it much easier to have appointments with students at a place that is pleasant and where it is easier to park.
(A tangent here: one of the odd things about my line of work– or maybe this is just the way that I work– is that I am much more likely to actually get things done if I am not in my Pray-Harrold office. This is why I tend to do most of my work not in the office, which I think is true with a lot of college professors and which, unfortunately, makes us vulnerable to the classic “what? this person only works five hours a week!” attack from people who assume that the only place and time where one “works” is something one does only in the officially designated office. But I digress.)
Anyway, someone who shall remain nameless and who is associated with the administration came in and chatted with me briefly. This person had also been a part of some of the fact finding sessions and had very positive things to say about the fact finder, the process, etc. This person did wish that we (meaning both the union and the administration) could agree to work from the same set of numbers, but I guess that’s what the fact finder is for in the first place, really. And both this person and I agreed that this fact finding session can potentially go a long way toward setting up the “ground rules” for future contract negotiations.
So we’ll see.
Oh, this person also says they are an EMUtalk.org reader. : )
I don’t understand what the problem would be in introducing health care options for the faculty? As Mark pointed out, this creates competition which creates cheaper prices.
Simply allowing health care options would in turn introduce dental care options, eye care options, and so on. Dental care deals tend to spawn from the HMO you choose such as “Golden Dental Plans” associated with HAP for example.
I’m not sure I like Golden Dental Plans though.
Management wants to reduce health care choices, and to increase the costs of health care for faculty. Why? The economics do not support their claims that it is cost-cutting. It’s really about control….and about the lawyers and consultants that management relies on for contract talks having lots of hours to bill for.
Why am i certain that it’s not about costs? Well, EMU eliminated the lowest cost HMO from our contract a couple of years ago, and if costs are really the deciding factor, you don’t eliminate the lowest cost provider.