URI Faculty Set To Ratify First Contract
After two years in collective bargaining negotiations, the University of Rhode Island’s part time faculty staff have unionized and created a tentative contract that is set to be officially ratified next week.
The URI Part-Time Faculty United (PTFU)’s Negotiation Committee agreed upon a preliminary set of terms with the Rhode Island Board of Governors-who ratified the group’s first contract on December 6, 2010 chief negotiator for PTFU, Dorothy F. Donnelly, said.
"I fully expect the part-time faculty will ratify it," Donnelly said.
The agreement will offer faculty a host of new opportunities and rights that they were not granted before the unionization, Donnelly said.
"Before this contract, they had no protection," she said.
Prior to the rights granted to them in the proposed contract, part-time faculty members could be fired without any explanation, Donnelly said. The new contract includes a "just cause" stipulation for employment termination.
Another problems that part-time faculty faced was being at the discretion of their department chairs-the "favorites" of the department being chosen above other faculty members, she said.
The university claims that they are unaware of course assigning practices "that don’t follow our process," Vice Provost for Academic Financial and Academic Personnel, Clifford Katz, said. However, Donnelly said it was a problem the part-time faculty felt was worthy of adding to their new list of demands.
The new contract calls for a retroactive "time-in service system," which will measure each part-time staff member’s seniority, beginning from the 1996 fall semester on. There is also a new system put in place for faculty to file grievances against perceived favoritism and discrimination.
"[Before] it was always individuals trying to resolve their own problems by themselves," Donnelly said.
Another major part of the negotiations is an increase in salary, which Donnelly said is "very small." She said the part time faculty has not seen a wage change in the past 15 years. For some part-time faculty, such as PTFU member Dan Novak, who has taught with both the School of Education and with the Alan Shawn Feinstein College of Continuing Education, puts adjunct professors in a place of "real financial vulnerability."
The new contracts will institute a gradual pay increase based on a system of three levels that increase by approximately $100 per level, capping at $3,861. This pay increase is also set to be retroactive as of this past July, meaning that part-time faculty members, will be able to receive salary increases of $350 for each course they are teaching this fall. In a letter to its members the PTFU says this salary reimbursement will bring Kingston part-time faculty members on par with wages offered at the Providence campus.
While Katz said that the part-time faculty’s unionization is "looked on favorably by the university, [as] they play a role at the institution in assisting us with delivering the curriculum," the pay increase is an issue of contention.
"Their proposals or requests do not fit with the economic times right now," Katz said. The university administration is still trying to determine how much the new wage increases will cost URI, Katz said.
When this issue came up during contract discussions, Donnelly said the negotiation team brought up the numbers with the administration-how many part time faculty members work at the university and how much they’re saving URI.
Donnelly estimates that 40 percent of the faculty as a whole is adjunct faculty, numbering more than 450 at the Providence and Kingston campuses combined. The PTFU estimates that 29 percent of all undergraduate courses at URI are taught by adjunct faculty, which, by Donnelly’s estimates, equates to approximately 1,600 course sections every semester. That contingency would be even more costly for the university to replace with full-time staff members, she said.
By the university’s own admission during contract negotiations, Donnelly said, 183 full-time faculty members would have to be hired to fill the spots filled in by part-time faculty—an expense the university would have to foot the bill for.
However, Katz said that, the numbers of part-time faculty members and their course loads are significantly different.
"What [Donnelly’s] referring to are individuals, but most of our individual per course instructors only teach one course, while our other [full-time] faculty teach a lot more courses," Katz said. "So you can’t use the head count as a percentage of the curriculum that they help deliver. [Part-time faculty] have about 20 to 25 percent of our curriculum."
In regards to the current economic situation of both the nation and the university itself, Donnelly said that PTFU was willing to negotiate with issues such as a larger pay increase and their health care benefits, which they did not receive in contract talks and "[they] fully acknowledge would be difficult at this time.
"We didn’t get those and we decided we’d settle the contract without those because of the economy being in bad shape," Donnelly said.
While the issue of health care may come up in future contract negotiations, Katz noted that other universities do not provide health benefits to part-time faculty members.
The issue of unionization has been a sticking point between the university and the part-time faculty for several years. Though Katz said, "the university administration negotiated in good faith throughout the entire negotiation process," Donnelly said the process did not go as smoothly.
"They never treated the part-time faculty with any respect at all, and that’s even true of the new administration," she said. "[Provost] DeHayes has said publicly that he wants to get rid of part-time faculty. [He said that] two years ago at a meeting of the College of Arts and Science Department Chairs."
Provost Donald DeHayes, who was reached via e-mail while abroad, after the Cigar’s print edition went to press at 3:30 a.m., denies the allegations. He said these claims are "absolutely not correct," and that he "never said anything remotely like that."
"Our part-time faculty play an important and valued role in the university and I am pleased the agreement has been settled," DeHayes said.
Beyond the highly debated issues of wage increases and health benefits, the contract’s main goal is "not monetary," Donnelly said. Rather, it provides rights and privileges for the part-time staff.
For example, the contract proposes an academic freedom clause, which protects faculty against administrators having control over what is said in the classroom.
"The academic freedom clause entitles you, the administration would have to prove you said something that was unacceptable," Donnelley said. "It prevents people in positions of authority to casually or haphazardly say to someone ‘you shouldn’t be doing that.’"
For Novak, it is this type of opportunity and freedom that makes the new contract such a "great and massive achievement.
"You can see this as an enormous opportunity if we retain the recognition of the work of part-time faculty as an asset to the university instead of a drag or a financial liability, I think this opens the door to a tremendous set of opportunities," Novak said.
Not only do part-time faculty have the opportunity and incentive to explore their passions and their ideas, but it also widens the breadth of knowledge for students to tap into, he explained. As such, the university can match students’ interests and skills with part-time professors, who bring outside interests and experiences to the table.
"In taking contingent faculty more seriously, you take students more seriously," Novak said.
Furthermore, he said it offers an opportunity for the university to question its model of teaching and think of the education system in an inventive way.
"Let’s use this as a pole vault to jump into other issues," he said. "Go beyond the platitudes about college…[We can] reframe this group of people from a liability to an asset."
For Donnelly, a full-time faculty member who was asked to help on the PTFU because of her "great deal" of experience with the full-time faculty union, the contract offers the chance for the university to embrace the adjunct community.
"There’s been a lot of talk at URI in recent years about how we are a community," Donnelly said. "Well, the part-time faculty have never been a part of that community, they’re never invited in. We’re hoping that with a contract that it solidifies the part-time faculty as a member of the teaching community at URI."