NEGOTIATIONS UPDATES
Contract Negotiations
Update to UNHLU Membership
Negotiation Session #7
Tuesday May 24, 2022
Dear Colleagues:
We’ve just completed two full-day bargaining sessions with the administration’s team, our last scheduled meetings of the semester. While our conversations were not always easy, we have moved toward the goal of an attainable contract in substantive ways. We talked through many thorny subjects and found some common ground that can serve as a foundation for a strong Collective Bargaining Agreement. We feel we were able to preserve our previous gains, and made inroads on issues vital to our membership. The details of much of this still need to be ironed out, and our next step will be to reach out to the UNHLU Executive Committee for consultation.
Seeing that we’re at the end of our semester, and summer looms on the near horizon, we wanted to remind the LU membership that your negotiation team will not be running at full speed during the “beachy” months. One of our team will be shepherding a group of students on a study abroad trip, and those of us not traveling on university business will be largely attending to our respective to-do lists. We will, however, be mindful of both our negotiating work and our commitment to continuously pushing the process forward. You will hear from us at every major junction in our negotiations, but it is also a process ill-served by rushing too fast. The administration would be happiest if we’d hastily sign off on everything and get a contract finalized by the end of June, but we are going to make sure every “t” is crossed, and every “i” is dotted. In this race to the contract finish line, we intend to be a very diligent, steady, unflappable turtle.
We hope that your summers are full of relaxing moments that mitigate the difficult, stressful teaching environments you’ve been working under. Rest, rejuvenate, repeat.
In Solidarity, and with thanks for your continued trust and support,
Stephen Pimpare (lead negotiator)
Clark Knowles
Kelly Root
Sonic Woytonik
Contract Negotiations
Update to UNHLU Membership
Negotiation Session #6
Monday May 23, 2022
Dear Colleagues,
Today and tomorrow your negotiation team will participate in full-day bargaining sessions with the UNH administration. We head into these discussions knowing that we have done our research, have solid positions, and have made our cases for each of our proposals in clear and direct language.
As you know, our negotiations have not always gone smoothly. We’ve traversed the spectrum between hopeful, incredulous, frustrated, and angry. At all times, we’ve brought our membership’s best interests to the bargaining table. The university relies on lecturer faculty to do a great deal of heavy lifting in our academic community, and despite the wide array of challenges we’ve encountered with the administration’s positions and conduct, we are consistently inspired by our lecturer colleagues to work toward a stronger future. You deserve the best possible working environment in every regard. You deserve a contract that promotes a healthy and stable ecosystem for all lecturers, one that is considerate of our diverse membership, one that promotes long-term career goals. You deserve an administration that wants these things for you as well, and that is exactly what we will be fighting for as we attempt to elevate our positions.
To that point, we want to assure you that although we go into our sessions prepared to meet resistance, we are also choosing to forge ahead with an optimistic orientation. Recent developments in the administration’s posture -- including a conciliatory message from Chancellor James Dean regarding the Tenure Track contract and some movement just last week from the UNH contract administrator toward some of our positions -- suggest a transformed attitude toward bargaining, and, we hope, a path to a new contract for UNHLU-AAUP. Note that we are choosing to be optimistic. Of all the options available, optimism seems the most advantageous. But we also go to the table feeling confident of our positions, goals, methods, and proposals. In short: we’ll go in smiling, but we won’t back down from a fight.
Since we are meeting on Zoom, we cannot ask our membership to create an in-person cheering section, so we will just ask for your positive mental energy and boundless enthusiasm as we gird ourselves for these day-long sessions. As always, we will send an update later this week to keep you informed.
In solidarity,
Stephen Pimpare (lead negotiator)
Clark Knowles
Kelly Root
Sonic Woytonik
Update to UNHLU Membership
Negotiation Session #6
Monday May 23, 2022
Dear Colleagues,
Today and tomorrow your negotiation team will participate in full-day bargaining sessions with the UNH administration. We head into these discussions knowing that we have done our research, have solid positions, and have made our cases for each of our proposals in clear and direct language.
As you know, our negotiations have not always gone smoothly. We’ve traversed the spectrum between hopeful, incredulous, frustrated, and angry. At all times, we’ve brought our membership’s best interests to the bargaining table. The university relies on lecturer faculty to do a great deal of heavy lifting in our academic community, and despite the wide array of challenges we’ve encountered with the administration’s positions and conduct, we are consistently inspired by our lecturer colleagues to work toward a stronger future. You deserve the best possible working environment in every regard. You deserve a contract that promotes a healthy and stable ecosystem for all lecturers, one that is considerate of our diverse membership, one that promotes long-term career goals. You deserve an administration that wants these things for you as well, and that is exactly what we will be fighting for as we attempt to elevate our positions.
To that point, we want to assure you that although we go into our sessions prepared to meet resistance, we are also choosing to forge ahead with an optimistic orientation. Recent developments in the administration’s posture -- including a conciliatory message from Chancellor James Dean regarding the Tenure Track contract and some movement just last week from the UNH contract administrator toward some of our positions -- suggest a transformed attitude toward bargaining, and, we hope, a path to a new contract for UNHLU-AAUP. Note that we are choosing to be optimistic. Of all the options available, optimism seems the most advantageous. But we also go to the table feeling confident of our positions, goals, methods, and proposals. In short: we’ll go in smiling, but we won’t back down from a fight.
Since we are meeting on Zoom, we cannot ask our membership to create an in-person cheering section, so we will just ask for your positive mental energy and boundless enthusiasm as we gird ourselves for these day-long sessions. As always, we will send an update later this week to keep you informed.
In solidarity,
Stephen Pimpare (lead negotiator)
Clark Knowles
Kelly Root
Sonic Woytonik
Contract Negotiations
Update to UNHLU Membership
Negotiation Session #5
May 2, 2022
Dear Colleagues,
Last week we submitted counter proposals to the administration’s offers on Workload (Article 12 of our CBA) and Salary (Article 16), so our team has now put on the table all of our intended original proposals and has countered on all of the administration’s proposals that we can. Today they had questions for us, but no counter proposals of their own.
We were told last week to expect a response to our outstanding data request about parental leave. We got nothing. We were told two weeks ago to expect an amendment to the administration’s Benefits proposal (Article 18). We have been waiting on that too, which has held up our ability to propose a counter to it. We now await their counter proposals on a total of seven articles.
Despite our repeated pleas -- and their occasional promises -- they presented us with no new materials to review in advance of our meeting today, so we could make no substantial movement toward our goals. All of the balls are in their court, that is to say, but they have done essentially nothing to move them forward since our last session.
We cannot know whether this is incompetence on the part of John Wallin, their Contract Administrator, or an intentional strategy to prolong the negotiating process and wear us down, a point we made in real time this morning in just those words, much to his apparent displeasure. But it is not always possible to be both honest and polite. Even though we have now come to expect it, it’s exasperating to encounter this behavior, and we think it important to communicate that to them and, of course, to you all. Still, we will not allow it to deter us from fighting for the fair contract we deserve, even if this process is not as expeditious as it could be.
Provost Jones has repeatedly said in Faculty Senate meetings that his goal is swift resolution of faculty contracts; but given that our tenure-line and law school colleagues are two or more years into their bargaining, if the Provost, the President-Chancellor, or Board of Trustees actually wanted to end these interminable negotiations, surely they would be exerting pressure on their negotiating team to make substantive progress.
Today was our last negotiation before the two full-day sessions we have slated for May 23 and 24. Meanwhile, the bargaining team is scheduled to meet later this week with the UNHLU-AAUP Executive Committee to offer them a more in-depth overview of negotiations so far and to get their advice about how to approach the final sessions to maximize our success.
As always, let us know if you have any questions or comments as we keep pushing forward!
Stephen Pimpare (lead negotiator)
Clark Knowles
Kelly Root
Sonic Woytonik
Update to UNHLU Membership
Negotiation Session #5
May 2, 2022
Dear Colleagues,
Last week we submitted counter proposals to the administration’s offers on Workload (Article 12 of our CBA) and Salary (Article 16), so our team has now put on the table all of our intended original proposals and has countered on all of the administration’s proposals that we can. Today they had questions for us, but no counter proposals of their own.
We were told last week to expect a response to our outstanding data request about parental leave. We got nothing. We were told two weeks ago to expect an amendment to the administration’s Benefits proposal (Article 18). We have been waiting on that too, which has held up our ability to propose a counter to it. We now await their counter proposals on a total of seven articles.
Despite our repeated pleas -- and their occasional promises -- they presented us with no new materials to review in advance of our meeting today, so we could make no substantial movement toward our goals. All of the balls are in their court, that is to say, but they have done essentially nothing to move them forward since our last session.
We cannot know whether this is incompetence on the part of John Wallin, their Contract Administrator, or an intentional strategy to prolong the negotiating process and wear us down, a point we made in real time this morning in just those words, much to his apparent displeasure. But it is not always possible to be both honest and polite. Even though we have now come to expect it, it’s exasperating to encounter this behavior, and we think it important to communicate that to them and, of course, to you all. Still, we will not allow it to deter us from fighting for the fair contract we deserve, even if this process is not as expeditious as it could be.
Provost Jones has repeatedly said in Faculty Senate meetings that his goal is swift resolution of faculty contracts; but given that our tenure-line and law school colleagues are two or more years into their bargaining, if the Provost, the President-Chancellor, or Board of Trustees actually wanted to end these interminable negotiations, surely they would be exerting pressure on their negotiating team to make substantive progress.
Today was our last negotiation before the two full-day sessions we have slated for May 23 and 24. Meanwhile, the bargaining team is scheduled to meet later this week with the UNHLU-AAUP Executive Committee to offer them a more in-depth overview of negotiations so far and to get their advice about how to approach the final sessions to maximize our success.
As always, let us know if you have any questions or comments as we keep pushing forward!
Stephen Pimpare (lead negotiator)
Clark Knowles
Kelly Root
Sonic Woytonik
Contract Negotiations
Update to UNHLU Membership
Negotiation Session #4
April 18, 2022
Dear Colleagues,
Just imagine that you are presented with proposals that would:
- Increase the costs of your health care with higher co-pays, higher deductibles, and a higher out-of-pocket maximum, while at the same time asking you to bear a higher share of the overall premium burden year after year after year;
- Radically reduce your retirement benefits over the life of your employment;
- Bump up your salary just a bit, but not enough to keep pace with inflation even in a normal period; and
- Do all this while disproportionately heaping disadvantage upon our Members with children.
This is the essence of what we were offered at this morning’s bargaining session. No imagination needed.
Adding insult to these intended injuries, the administration’s consultants – brought in to make the case as to why we should bear the burden of USNH’s projected future financial challenges – offered poorly framed, occasionally factually inaccurate, selectively-sourced or uncited claims which, when pressed, they could not always justify, qualify, or quantify. We are life-long experts in collecting data and evaluating arguments. We teach our students to seek evidence to justify their claims. These consultants would not have fared well in our classrooms.
We were joined by a consultant of our own, who offered their expertise to help us see the ways in which these proposals aligned with practice in comparable institutions. Some of the administration’s claims were, as our consultant put it, “Bullshit.”
The administration’s set of proposals is a cost-shifting exercise that will be familiar to those of you paying attention to our tenure-line colleagues's years-long efforts to settle a new contract. It’s anti-family too, as their health insurance proposals create disincentives for preventive and primary care and impose dramatically higher costs on Members with children, which is always bad but especially short-sighted in an ongoing pandemic. We wondered out loud if their goal was to push our Members onto plans offered by a partner’s employer, if available, or to encourage us to opt for the cheaper and weaker HSA plan.
So much for President Dean’s strategic priorities to “Embrace New Hampshire” and “Expand Academic Excellence.” We appear to have work still to do to help him understand that faculty working conditions are student learning conditions.
Or perhaps his priorities are just rhetoric after all?
We know from our Member survey that keeping hard-won health care, salary, and retirement benefits are vital issues for you. We also know how hard we have all worked for our students and the institution over the past years and our hope that that work would be recognized. We will continue to keep your expectations front-and-center, and work to ensure that we are all not worse off at the end of this process -- which seems to be the administration's explicit goal.
As of today, all initial proposed changes to our CBA from our team and from the administration are on the table. This is an accomplishment, although it doesn't always feel like one. Through the process so far we have learned sobering lessons about our value, or lack thereof, to UNH.
Our next steps are to work through counter proposals in preparation for our next bargaining session on May 2. We are also keeping our eye on the timeline for the Fact Finder’s Report on the UNH-AAUP Tenure Track negotiations -- due in the next few weeks -- because we expect that document to shape not only the administration’s response to TT bargaining, but to impact their approach to us as well.
As ever, reach out to any of us with questions or comments -- and remember that we remain stronger together.
Stephen Pimpare (lead negotiator)
Clark Knowles
Kelly Root
Sonic Woytonik
Contract Negotiations
Update to UNHLU Membership
Negotiation Session #3
April 4, 2022
Dear Colleagues,
We spent a much of today’s bargaining session reviewing our new proposal regarding Parental Leave, which we shared with the Administration ten days ago, continuing in our efforts to submit proposals far enough in advance that their team has time to review and consider them carefully.
We structured that proposal around a few basic principles that, we hope, will better serve our members who are bringing children into their families. The discussion was productive, and we await the Administration's response as they think through what we offered.
Afterwards, the Administration reviewed their new proposals on Workload and Summer & J-Term compensation. Because we did not receive these proposals in time to review and discuss them amongst ourselves, we asked clarifying questions, and here too we had a productive discussion.
Our next session, scheduled for April 18, will be devoted to negotiation over the Administration’s proposals regarding changes to our health insurance and retirement benefits. We will be joined at that meeting by a subject matter expert we have retained to help us evaluate those proposals.
Because the potential financial impact of these proposed benefits changes would be considerable, we are holding off on responding to their proposals regarding salary since we need to consider health insurance, retirement contributions, AY salary, and Summer & J-term salary together. Further, we still have outstanding requests for the data that will help us appraise the Administration's position.
As we have heard from you and communicated to the Administration in our Opening Statement, we have all worked extraordinarily hard for our students and the university over the past two years (and longer, of course!), and we cannot accept any suite of proposals that has the net effect of making us worse off financially. We hope the Administration would consider this a reasonable expectation.
Meanwhile, we are finalizing our other proposals with an eye toward meeting our commitment to have all initial ones introduced on or before April 18.
We are still pushing aggressively forward and remain hopeful that we can come to a resolution before our current contract expires (or shortly thereafter). Do remember, however, that should that not be possible, our current contract provisions will remain in place until the ratification of a new one.
As always, reach out with any questions or concerns. And remember that we are stronger together!
Stephen Pimpare (lead negotiator)
Clark Knowles
Kelly Root
Sonic Woytonik
Update to UNHLU Membership
Negotiation Session #3
April 4, 2022
Dear Colleagues,
We spent a much of today’s bargaining session reviewing our new proposal regarding Parental Leave, which we shared with the Administration ten days ago, continuing in our efforts to submit proposals far enough in advance that their team has time to review and consider them carefully.
We structured that proposal around a few basic principles that, we hope, will better serve our members who are bringing children into their families. The discussion was productive, and we await the Administration's response as they think through what we offered.
Afterwards, the Administration reviewed their new proposals on Workload and Summer & J-Term compensation. Because we did not receive these proposals in time to review and discuss them amongst ourselves, we asked clarifying questions, and here too we had a productive discussion.
Our next session, scheduled for April 18, will be devoted to negotiation over the Administration’s proposals regarding changes to our health insurance and retirement benefits. We will be joined at that meeting by a subject matter expert we have retained to help us evaluate those proposals.
Because the potential financial impact of these proposed benefits changes would be considerable, we are holding off on responding to their proposals regarding salary since we need to consider health insurance, retirement contributions, AY salary, and Summer & J-term salary together. Further, we still have outstanding requests for the data that will help us appraise the Administration's position.
As we have heard from you and communicated to the Administration in our Opening Statement, we have all worked extraordinarily hard for our students and the university over the past two years (and longer, of course!), and we cannot accept any suite of proposals that has the net effect of making us worse off financially. We hope the Administration would consider this a reasonable expectation.
Meanwhile, we are finalizing our other proposals with an eye toward meeting our commitment to have all initial ones introduced on or before April 18.
We are still pushing aggressively forward and remain hopeful that we can come to a resolution before our current contract expires (or shortly thereafter). Do remember, however, that should that not be possible, our current contract provisions will remain in place until the ratification of a new one.
As always, reach out with any questions or concerns. And remember that we are stronger together!
Stephen Pimpare (lead negotiator)
Clark Knowles
Kelly Root
Sonic Woytonik
Contract Negotiations
Update to UNHLU Membership
Negotiation Session #2
March 21, 2022
Dear Colleagues,
As you saw from our Update after our first bargaining session two weeks ago, we laid out a goal of coming to a resolution on a new contract before the end of our current one. We were pleased that the Administration said that they, too, were eager to come to a quick agreement. Their actions, alas, have already raised concerns about the speed with which the administration is proceeding and their responsiveness and follow-through.
Despite our request that proposals be submitted in advance of a bargaining session so that we have time to think through them, we only received their proposals regarding Salary, Health Insurance, and Retirement Benefits via email at the exact moment our morning session was scheduled to get underway today. So, we listened to the administration’s presentation but couldn’t really engage on the substance since we hadn't had any time to consider them.
While we cannot know motives, slowing down the process is a classic employer bargaining tactic meant to sow discord among union members and to wear down negotiating teams; this behavior would be also consistent with our experience during our last contract negotiation and consistent with what we have heard from our colleagues in the tenure track and law school unions at UNH, and our colleagues at Plymouth and Keene.
But we can only control how we approach negotiations, not how the administration presents its case nor the timeliness with which their proposals are presented to us.
So, here are a few highlights of what’s next and what we are doing to try to keep the process moving forward:
As always, reach out to the Bargaining Team with any comments, questions, suggestions, or concerns. We also accept baked goods ;)
Best,
Stephen Pimpare (lead negotiator)
Clark Knowles
Kelly Root
Sonic Woytonik
Update to UNHLU Membership
Negotiation Session #2
March 21, 2022
Dear Colleagues,
As you saw from our Update after our first bargaining session two weeks ago, we laid out a goal of coming to a resolution on a new contract before the end of our current one. We were pleased that the Administration said that they, too, were eager to come to a quick agreement. Their actions, alas, have already raised concerns about the speed with which the administration is proceeding and their responsiveness and follow-through.
Despite our request that proposals be submitted in advance of a bargaining session so that we have time to think through them, we only received their proposals regarding Salary, Health Insurance, and Retirement Benefits via email at the exact moment our morning session was scheduled to get underway today. So, we listened to the administration’s presentation but couldn’t really engage on the substance since we hadn't had any time to consider them.
While we cannot know motives, slowing down the process is a classic employer bargaining tactic meant to sow discord among union members and to wear down negotiating teams; this behavior would be also consistent with our experience during our last contract negotiation and consistent with what we have heard from our colleagues in the tenure track and law school unions at UNH, and our colleagues at Plymouth and Keene.
But we can only control how we approach negotiations, not how the administration presents its case nor the timeliness with which their proposals are presented to us.
So, here are a few highlights of what’s next and what we are doing to try to keep the process moving forward:
- We have begun to review the Administration’s proposals on Salary, Health Benefits, and Retirement contributions and will this week set ourselves a deadline for submitting a counter-proposal to them.
- We have contracted with a consultant with expertise in the area, who will help us evaluate the financial impact of their proposed changes to our health insurance plans and contribution rates.
- Today we sent out a message to some lecturers from different Colleges and Departments to hear about their Workload (See Section 12 of our CBA) challenges regarding Laboratory Courses. If you want to share your thoughts on this, please do send a note to Clark Knowles (or reach out to him for a brief phone call). We will turn your responses into our own proposal on this issue. Your responses in advance of our planning meetings this coming Friday or next Monday would be most helpful to keep us on track.
- We have committed to forwarding to the Administration a proposal on changes to Parental Leave policies (Section 19 and further explained in this video) by the end of this week.
- We are also drafting a handful of other proposals that we will present first and deliver to them as quickly as we can refine the language.
As always, reach out to the Bargaining Team with any comments, questions, suggestions, or concerns. We also accept baked goods ;)
Best,
Stephen Pimpare (lead negotiator)
Clark Knowles
Kelly Root
Sonic Woytonik
Successor Contract Negotiations
UNHLU-AAUP Opening Statement
Negotiation Session #1
March 7, 2022
Good morning. I’m Stephen Pimpare, Principal Lecturer of US Politics & Public Policy, and I am joined today by Clark Knowles, Principal Lecturer of English; Kelly Root, Lecturer of Accounting; and Sonic Woytonic, Lecturer of History. Although I am not, each of my colleagues here is also a UNH alum.
It's a pleasure to begin negotiations at a moment when the entire university family has shown such resilience and solidarity during an unprecedented global emergency, exhibiting resolve and tenacity in response to threats to our livelihood, our health, and our communities. While it has been a challenging time in the life of UNH and, of course, beyond it, there is also much to celebrate.
Let’s start with the positive:
As I noted, there have been challenges, too, and many of them are ongoing:
You do not need to take only our word for this. Note this language from the February 17, 2022 Enterprise Risk Management Report prepared for the USNH Board of Trustees, and I quote:
As John and Kathy are aware, in the last round we tried to find a way to increase job security for our members with rolling and other kinds of alternative contracts. To be clear, our members still want more job security and desire a path toward the kind of stability that tenure offers, but we suspect now is not the time to try again at finding a mutually agreeable way to achieve significant change in that regard. Those are harder and more complicated conversations that we have concluded are probably better left to a time when we all have a bit more bandwidth.
Given all of this and more, we enter this round of negotiations with modest goals and a fervent hope that we will all be able to come to resolution before the expiration of our current contract on June 30. A timely resolution can be seen as a victory for both parties at the table.
By our preliminary count, there are perhaps 17 (out of 27) Sections of our CBA that we would be content to leave as is this round. Beyond that, we will propose some modest changes to non-financial aspects of the contract; many of those will solve problems we both want fixed or will merely clarify and clean up ambiguous language. And we’ll want to talk about some continuing struggles with workload, especially as it affects faculty who teach labs and, as we suggested above, to our leave policies. We may have differing views on the best solution to some of these issues, but even on the thornier ones we think there’s an agreeable middle ground to be found.
Regarding matters with financial implications, we suspect that we have a pretty good sense of what USNH and UNH goals are regarding our health care and our retirement funds; we know this from negotiations that have been recently concluded or are ongoing with other units, as well as from public discussions and documents of the USNH Board of Trustees.
We enter these discussions genuinely open to conversations around those issues, but any change that increases our members’ costs must be offset elsewhere. And precisely because of the pandemic, our health and longer-term stability are even more on people’s minds. As I noted earlier, lecturer faculty have emphasized to us that they have moved heaven and earth for our students and the University under extraordinarily adverse circumstances -- and, especially early on in the pandemic, at potential risk to our own health and that of our families -- and it seems appropriate that there be some material acknowledgement of that. Our dedicated labor surely should not result in us being poorer and less secure.
We hope the university will agree that it is fitting and proper to recognize the dedication of our members to our shared mission in service to our students, the state, and even those beyond.
We look forward to digging in and moving toward a swift resolution.
Successor Contract Negotiations
UNHLU-AAUP Opening Statement
Negotiation Session #1
March 7, 2022
Good morning. I’m Stephen Pimpare, Principal Lecturer of US Politics & Public Policy, and I am joined today by Clark Knowles, Principal Lecturer of English; Kelly Root, Lecturer of Accounting; and Sonic Woytonic, Lecturer of History. Although I am not, each of my colleagues here is also a UNH alum.
It's a pleasure to begin negotiations at a moment when the entire university family has shown such resilience and solidarity during an unprecedented global emergency, exhibiting resolve and tenacity in response to threats to our livelihood, our health, and our communities. While it has been a challenging time in the life of UNH and, of course, beyond it, there is also much to celebrate.
Let’s start with the positive:
- We note the relative financial health of UNH and USNH despite the pandemic and other headwinds, and we will take some credit for that unexpected economic stability and for our ability to retain students and to keep on course with President Dean's Strategic Priorities.
- We are proud of the work we have done over the past two years of the Pandemic. This was out of some necessity, to be sure, but is also a reflection of our dedication to our students and our commitment to the mission of the University. We are exhausted, but proud of the hard work we have done.
- The work that we lecturers have done in the classroom as teaching faculty has made it possible for other faculty to do the work that will help us maintain our status as a Carnegie R1 institution, which is among UNH’s key priorities.
- We are especially pleased with the open lines of communications between UNHLU leadership and the President and Provost’s offices (coupled with their regular communication with the tenure-track Union and Faculty Senate), which have moved us toward even more robust practices of shared governance and, we hope everyone agrees, have helped make UNH a better institution that better serves our students, the State, and our broader communities. This collaboration, which is not always easy, is surely a key part of why UNH has weathered the Covid storm better than many other universities.
- We also draw attention to the low number of grievances filed over the past two years. In working toward healthy relationships between lecturers, department chairs, and college deans, our shared commitment to our CBA has helped us all anticipate conflict and offered paths toward resolution. Potential grievances became opportunities to better understand workload, the process of performance review, the role of student evaluations, and the many pandemic-specific health and safety concerns. Collaboration and communication have allowed us all to collegially solve problems before they require more formal contestation.
As I noted, there have been challenges, too, and many of them are ongoing:
- To state the obvious, the pandemic has presented and continues to present difficulties.
- There have been particular struggles faced by members with caregiving responsibilities and the availability, reliability, or affordability of childcare (this points to some limitations in current leave policies, among other things).
- We have had to radically alter our teaching practices and learn new pedagogies and technologies; all while being attentive to dramatically degraded student mental health and the persistent strains associated with keeping them on track toward timely degree completion. All of this has been undertaken while we have confronted our own personal and family struggles.
- We have done this additional uncompensated labor often while simultaneously absorbing costs associated with these shifts: our members have, for examples, upgraded their home internet accounts, incurred higher electricity and heating costs from working from home, acquired new home office furniture, computer equipment, printers and toner, and paper. . . some while jury-rigging portions of their homes to function as makeshift workspaces
- We simultaneously wrestle with spikes in the cost of living and the deeper, longer-term pains from the NH housing market and skyrocketing rental and ownership costs
- The simultaneous reorganization of multiple “back-end” systems at UNH has had enormously disruptive effects, and given us all significant “rollout fatigue” to accompany our “pandemic fatigue”
- The Covid Enhanced Retirement Plan -- CERP -- has added to that disruption, as the loss of (many more than expected) staff and faculty members alike throughout the university has added yet more to our workload
- On top of all that, the merger with Granite State College has added even more to workloads, while piling on new stresses and anxieties.
You do not need to take only our word for this. Note this language from the February 17, 2022 Enterprise Risk Management Report prepared for the USNH Board of Trustees, and I quote:
- Employee morale may be low due to ongoing overload of cost containment, multiple restructuring efforts, Covid, CERP and potential merger messaging.
- Current labor negotiations length may strain relations.
- Flat employee compensation jeopardizes talent retention.
As John and Kathy are aware, in the last round we tried to find a way to increase job security for our members with rolling and other kinds of alternative contracts. To be clear, our members still want more job security and desire a path toward the kind of stability that tenure offers, but we suspect now is not the time to try again at finding a mutually agreeable way to achieve significant change in that regard. Those are harder and more complicated conversations that we have concluded are probably better left to a time when we all have a bit more bandwidth.
Given all of this and more, we enter this round of negotiations with modest goals and a fervent hope that we will all be able to come to resolution before the expiration of our current contract on June 30. A timely resolution can be seen as a victory for both parties at the table.
By our preliminary count, there are perhaps 17 (out of 27) Sections of our CBA that we would be content to leave as is this round. Beyond that, we will propose some modest changes to non-financial aspects of the contract; many of those will solve problems we both want fixed or will merely clarify and clean up ambiguous language. And we’ll want to talk about some continuing struggles with workload, especially as it affects faculty who teach labs and, as we suggested above, to our leave policies. We may have differing views on the best solution to some of these issues, but even on the thornier ones we think there’s an agreeable middle ground to be found.
Regarding matters with financial implications, we suspect that we have a pretty good sense of what USNH and UNH goals are regarding our health care and our retirement funds; we know this from negotiations that have been recently concluded or are ongoing with other units, as well as from public discussions and documents of the USNH Board of Trustees.
We enter these discussions genuinely open to conversations around those issues, but any change that increases our members’ costs must be offset elsewhere. And precisely because of the pandemic, our health and longer-term stability are even more on people’s minds. As I noted earlier, lecturer faculty have emphasized to us that they have moved heaven and earth for our students and the University under extraordinarily adverse circumstances -- and, especially early on in the pandemic, at potential risk to our own health and that of our families -- and it seems appropriate that there be some material acknowledgement of that. Our dedicated labor surely should not result in us being poorer and less secure.
We hope the university will agree that it is fitting and proper to recognize the dedication of our members to our shared mission in service to our students, the state, and even those beyond.
We look forward to digging in and moving toward a swift resolution.