As we head into the holidays, your Bargaining Committee has been hard at work formulating initial proposals for our first Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA). For now, we’ve been focusing on the legalistic machinery of the CBA, but we’ll turn to pressing issues soon so, if you haven’t already, please complete the bargaining survey! (The link is at the bottom of this email.) We also elected Jen Goeckeler-Fried as the Chair and Mark Brown as the Secretary of the Bargaining Committee.

After many weeks of delay, the administration’s team has sent us their availability, and we have been able to finalize dates for bargaining sessions on January 10 and 21, and February 7 and 26. The administration has taken the position that we should only meet twice per month, insisting that they need 15 days between sessions in order to be prepared for them. We disagree, and we have made clear that we are willing to meet much more often than that. We will continue to push the administration to maintain a reasonable pace in negotiations.

Some progress has been made with the various interim issues enumerated in our previous update, though the administration has been slow to respond to the pressing staff issues that affect promotions, teaching assignments, retention increases, and related topics. The administration is using these pressing issues to try to win wording that would limit the power of our Union, with no transparency in their process, until we ratify our CBA. The Bargaining Committee is working quickly to resolve these issues (a few of us are even being directly affected by these delays), while still protecting the interests of our fellow affected staff colleagues.

In the meantime, we wish all of you and your families a wonderful holiday season!

In solidarity,

SUP Bargaining Committee

Kearsten Adams (Academic Advising, UPG)
Shawn Alfonso Wells (Pitt Global Experiences, UCIS)
Mark Brown, Secretary (Cell Biology, SOM)
Lydia Chmill (Disability Resources & Services, OTC)
Emily Daller (University Child Development Center, OHR)
Kelly Gilliam (Philanthropic & Alumni Engagement)
Jen Goeckeler-Fried, Chair (Biological Sciences, DSAS)
Jay Hornack (Law)
Adriana Maguiña-Ugarte (Anthropology, DSAS)
Dawn Miller (Academic Affairs, UPJ)
Michelle Utz-Kiley (Epidemiology, SPH)