The cat's still sick. I'm in Sacramento, without my love, for a CFA meeting whose primary purpose is to discuss the doomed state budget and its impact on the doomed CSU and our doomed lecturer colleagues/constituents in this doomed state which is doomed. The Penguins are losing to the freaking Tampa Bay Lightning, and Sidney Crosby left the game with an injury in the first period.
I shall now crawl to the working dinner in a condition of utter abjection. Thank you for listening.
Showing posts with label collective bargaining. Show all posts
Showing posts with label collective bargaining. Show all posts
Friday, January 18, 2008
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
how to get a job in higher ed
There are, I suppose, lurkers reading this blog, and I suppose some of them have certain ideas about the nature of faculty work. Here's some interesting interviews conducted by Marc Bousquet, author of How the University Works.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
life continues . . . aaup summer institute . . .
Despite my recent demise in the new Harry Potter book, ordinary life resumed today after I got home from the AAUP Summer Institute last night. I'm normalizing as well as possible. My brain is cloudy.
The Institute was a mixed bag. There were a few minor but significant details that seemed to have been left unattended, or for reasons unknown impossible to achieve. University of Nevada at Reno has a wifi network on campus, but not in the dorms, where attendees mainly stayed. Instead, the AAUP's information said the dorms had ethernet connections, which was true, but for most people the connections weren't working (although mine was, by some fluke). The wifi connection on campus required a password-protected account, which we weren't provided. Apparently there was wireless connection in the basement of one dorm building. Other similar technical problems perfused, but the programs themselves seemed to go off without too many hitches.
I did the contract bargaining workshop, and I left with mixed feelings about that too. The presenters/facilitators took rather a long time talking about bargaining techniques, and I would rather have had time devoted to practice and to reflection on that practice. Instead, after 4 hours of lecturing to us about how to bargain, we broke into 3 pairs (management vs. labor) to negotiate on the basis of a scenario they cooked up for us, putting a lot of pressure on us with a scoring rubric to complete agreements, but not giving us much time to think about the process itself - which would seem to me to be the chief benefit of the role-play.
Of the three pairs, only ours completed the agreements on 6 out of 6 areas, and so we won the high score. I get the feeling that the others ended up stuck in a very competitive mode, and ended up not reaching compromises. Our two sides, although we bargained hard, tried to make the other side accept a deal, rather than stick to our guns. I think that was partly because both sides got something they wanted, and partly because both sides wanted badly to convince the other to agree. (In the lecture portion, the presenters told us about traditional vs. "interest-based" bargaining. Traditional bargaining is starting with positions, and compromising to reach middle ground. Interest-based is starting with expressing what each sides interests are and trying to problem-solve to help both sides achieve as much of their interests as they could. Our approach strikes me as neither of these. Our aim was to persuade the other side to take the deal, so it was sort of motivation-based. The whole time I was contemplating the labor side's psychological state of mind and set of priorities, trying to read their minds and push them and pull them to agree.)
It reminded me a little of what a professor of mine at UNC-Charlotte once called a "refrigerator" class. You get out of class, get home, open the fridge, pull out a beer - and then realize what the hell that class was all about. I can't yet quite put down in words what I have learned, but the above is close. The point is to find ways to press toward agreement, however you have to do that. (At one point our side decided to act as though we believed our budgets were about to be cut. I think that pushed the labor side to agree to a smaller raise, and as it turns out, their secret information was that our budgets were going to be cut. They may have been motivated by that information, or they may have been motivated by our posture that we knew the same thing. In my view, it doesn't matter which worked. I think that's my point.)
So anyway, Lauren got up late on Saturday, bussed over to Border's for her copy of the last HP book, and read is yesterday. We've started reading it aloud today. Five chapters later, here I am, not yet killed off in the book, and so, having blogged, ready to play guitars and then cook beef properly to get the memory of bad prime rib on the Lake Tahoe dinner cruise out of my head. (In all seriousness, this is getting to be sort of annoying: I'm routinely disappointed in any beef cooked by anyone else but me. You can't even get rare meat anywhere anymore!)
The Institute was a mixed bag. There were a few minor but significant details that seemed to have been left unattended, or for reasons unknown impossible to achieve. University of Nevada at Reno has a wifi network on campus, but not in the dorms, where attendees mainly stayed. Instead, the AAUP's information said the dorms had ethernet connections, which was true, but for most people the connections weren't working (although mine was, by some fluke). The wifi connection on campus required a password-protected account, which we weren't provided. Apparently there was wireless connection in the basement of one dorm building. Other similar technical problems perfused, but the programs themselves seemed to go off without too many hitches.
I did the contract bargaining workshop, and I left with mixed feelings about that too. The presenters/facilitators took rather a long time talking about bargaining techniques, and I would rather have had time devoted to practice and to reflection on that practice. Instead, after 4 hours of lecturing to us about how to bargain, we broke into 3 pairs (management vs. labor) to negotiate on the basis of a scenario they cooked up for us, putting a lot of pressure on us with a scoring rubric to complete agreements, but not giving us much time to think about the process itself - which would seem to me to be the chief benefit of the role-play.
Of the three pairs, only ours completed the agreements on 6 out of 6 areas, and so we won the high score. I get the feeling that the others ended up stuck in a very competitive mode, and ended up not reaching compromises. Our two sides, although we bargained hard, tried to make the other side accept a deal, rather than stick to our guns. I think that was partly because both sides got something they wanted, and partly because both sides wanted badly to convince the other to agree. (In the lecture portion, the presenters told us about traditional vs. "interest-based" bargaining. Traditional bargaining is starting with positions, and compromising to reach middle ground. Interest-based is starting with expressing what each sides interests are and trying to problem-solve to help both sides achieve as much of their interests as they could. Our approach strikes me as neither of these. Our aim was to persuade the other side to take the deal, so it was sort of motivation-based. The whole time I was contemplating the labor side's psychological state of mind and set of priorities, trying to read their minds and push them and pull them to agree.)
It reminded me a little of what a professor of mine at UNC-Charlotte once called a "refrigerator" class. You get out of class, get home, open the fridge, pull out a beer - and then realize what the hell that class was all about. I can't yet quite put down in words what I have learned, but the above is close. The point is to find ways to press toward agreement, however you have to do that. (At one point our side decided to act as though we believed our budgets were about to be cut. I think that pushed the labor side to agree to a smaller raise, and as it turns out, their secret information was that our budgets were going to be cut. They may have been motivated by that information, or they may have been motivated by our posture that we knew the same thing. In my view, it doesn't matter which worked. I think that's my point.)
So anyway, Lauren got up late on Saturday, bussed over to Border's for her copy of the last HP book, and read is yesterday. We've started reading it aloud today. Five chapters later, here I am, not yet killed off in the book, and so, having blogged, ready to play guitars and then cook beef properly to get the memory of bad prime rib on the Lake Tahoe dinner cruise out of my head. (In all seriousness, this is getting to be sort of annoying: I'm routinely disappointed in any beef cooked by anyone else but me. You can't even get rare meat anywhere anymore!)
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
tentative agreement
CFA announced today that it reached a tentative agreement with CSU on a new contract. More on that later. It's latish, I'm still recovering from the road trip to Arizona and back, and I've got a lot of pent-up job-action-related energies, anxieties, and so forth that I suddenly don't know what to do with. So I'm going to take a chance on relaxation and sleep.
The CFA website reference page for the tentative agreement info, I've just noticed, is called "settlement.html." I wrote a tune by that name, that I haven't written a lyric for yet, but which I think will include the line "set everything on fire and split the ashes," or words to that effect. The song, it should be noted (no pun intended) has nothing to do with collective bargaining. It should also be noted that the lyric line I've just quoted has nothing to do with the terms of the tentative agreement.
The agreement looks, on the whole, like a CFA slam dunk. But much more. And more on that, too, later. (Think: musings on the power of collective action.)
The CFA website reference page for the tentative agreement info, I've just noticed, is called "settlement.html." I wrote a tune by that name, that I haven't written a lyric for yet, but which I think will include the line "set everything on fire and split the ashes," or words to that effect. The song, it should be noted (no pun intended) has nothing to do with collective bargaining. It should also be noted that the lyric line I've just quoted has nothing to do with the terms of the tentative agreement.
The agreement looks, on the whole, like a CFA slam dunk. But much more. And more on that, too, later. (Think: musings on the power of collective action.)
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
predilections
I have four somewhat strange predilections relevant this morning.
One is for mopey alternative music. I tend lately to rely on the very unevenly reliable All Music Guide to connect with music I haven't knowingly heard before. Following links from a band I like, say, Wilco, I end up finding bands somebody responsible for content on AMG thinks is "similar" or "influenced by," follow those links, and follow the links from there, until I end up with somebody really quite unlike the original band in most respects, say, [smog]. It's a game we could call Six Degrees of Michael Stipe if we were in a particularly jaunty mood, which, this morning, we're not.
Anyway, I found Grogshow through this method. I love me some Grogshow, I do. And through Grogshow to Winterpills, who are also pretty cool.
This music is not only a basic element to the soundtrack of my misspent youth, but also still musically potent to me, inasmuch as what I'm playing these days is often like acoustic 12-string folkized mopey alternative. I think so, at least. Finally, a label for my stuff!
Two is for conflict, especially of the fighting-the-good-fight variety. The CSU agreed to use the Fact-Finders Report as a "template" for 10 further days of bargaining to try to reach agreement with CFA on a new contract. Now, what could they do in 10 days that they couldn't have done in the last 23 months is not clear. And the Fact Finders Report includes not only the statement by the neutral third-party fact finder, but also CFA and CSU representatives. So agreeing to use the report as a template could mean that CSU is willing to continue to make their same tired baseless arguments as to why the $1.2 billion reserve they've built up can't be diminished by $100 million over 4 years to reach a settlement on faculty salaries.
This is a conflict I can feel really good about, because I have tremendous faith that CFA is right and CSU is wrong. In that respect, this conflict is rather like how I feel when the Pittsburgh Penguins play the Philadelphia Flyers. Whatever else I may or may not know about the world, I can say with certainty that the Flyers are wrong.
Which brings us to the third predilection, which is for playoff hockey. The NHL playoffs begin in two weeks, and for the first time since 2001, my beloved Penguins are going to be in them. They clinched last night by beating the Washington Capitals 4-3. Since January, no team has been better than the Pens, and their best players remain a core group that are all 24 or younger, which suggests that they're going to be at least this good for a long time.
The fourth? Extremely long road trips.
One is for mopey alternative music. I tend lately to rely on the very unevenly reliable All Music Guide to connect with music I haven't knowingly heard before. Following links from a band I like, say, Wilco, I end up finding bands somebody responsible for content on AMG thinks is "similar" or "influenced by," follow those links, and follow the links from there, until I end up with somebody really quite unlike the original band in most respects, say, [smog]. It's a game we could call Six Degrees of Michael Stipe if we were in a particularly jaunty mood, which, this morning, we're not.
Anyway, I found Grogshow through this method. I love me some Grogshow, I do. And through Grogshow to Winterpills, who are also pretty cool.
This music is not only a basic element to the soundtrack of my misspent youth, but also still musically potent to me, inasmuch as what I'm playing these days is often like acoustic 12-string folkized mopey alternative. I think so, at least. Finally, a label for my stuff!
Two is for conflict, especially of the fighting-the-good-fight variety. The CSU agreed to use the Fact-Finders Report as a "template" for 10 further days of bargaining to try to reach agreement with CFA on a new contract. Now, what could they do in 10 days that they couldn't have done in the last 23 months is not clear. And the Fact Finders Report includes not only the statement by the neutral third-party fact finder, but also CFA and CSU representatives. So agreeing to use the report as a template could mean that CSU is willing to continue to make their same tired baseless arguments as to why the $1.2 billion reserve they've built up can't be diminished by $100 million over 4 years to reach a settlement on faculty salaries.
This is a conflict I can feel really good about, because I have tremendous faith that CFA is right and CSU is wrong. In that respect, this conflict is rather like how I feel when the Pittsburgh Penguins play the Philadelphia Flyers. Whatever else I may or may not know about the world, I can say with certainty that the Flyers are wrong.
Which brings us to the third predilection, which is for playoff hockey. The NHL playoffs begin in two weeks, and for the first time since 2001, my beloved Penguins are going to be in them. They clinched last night by beating the Washington Capitals 4-3. Since January, no team has been better than the Pens, and their best players remain a core group that are all 24 or younger, which suggests that they're going to be at least this good for a long time.
The fourth? Extremely long road trips.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
strike vote resuits!
CFA announced today that 94% of members voted to approve job action in our ongoing fight for a fair contract.
It can't be easy being one of those CSU administrators or trustees who continues to assert that only a small faction of faculty are upset about the CSU's contract offer, or that students won't be adversely affected by yet another fee increase, or that the CSU is on firm footing, but is underfunded, but has an excellent bond rating because of reserve funds equalling more than one third of the $2.5 billion annual budget, yet doesn't have enough money to spend $100 million over four years to fund faculty salary increases. At some point, the sheer number of contradictions you assert and try to think are true must get overwhelming. This is beyond a question of guilty conscience now. I am seriously concerned about the continued mental health of these administrators and trustees. Something's gotta give somewhere, don't it?
Proceed with caution in Long Beach, folks. Psychotic breaks are not pretty.
It can't be easy being one of those CSU administrators or trustees who continues to assert that only a small faction of faculty are upset about the CSU's contract offer, or that students won't be adversely affected by yet another fee increase, or that the CSU is on firm footing, but is underfunded, but has an excellent bond rating because of reserve funds equalling more than one third of the $2.5 billion annual budget, yet doesn't have enough money to spend $100 million over four years to fund faculty salary increases. At some point, the sheer number of contradictions you assert and try to think are true must get overwhelming. This is beyond a question of guilty conscience now. I am seriously concerned about the continued mental health of these administrators and trustees. Something's gotta give somewhere, don't it?
Proceed with caution in Long Beach, folks. Psychotic breaks are not pretty.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
merit
One of the issues under dispute between the CSU and the CFA is so-called "merit pay." It's a nice example of the whole dispute, and of the whole of the difficulties in the CSU-CFA relationship.
It begins with the language we use to describe it. "Merit pay" sounds innocuous at worst. It probably sounds like a way to encourage and reward good work. If you oppose a "merit pay" program, the very words make it sound as if you're against the idea of rewarding good work.
Among the many problems with what CFA prefers to call "discretionary pay" is that "merit" is not satisfactorily defined. What makes a good faculty member? What specific marks or characteristics would describe faculty "merit"? My view is that faculty work can be meritorious in many different ways, and that defining it in any set of terms narrow enough to work contractually would leave out a great deal of the meritorious work faculty do. (Not that the CSU proposal bothers to define "merit." Indeed, one reason CFA is so deeply opposed to it is that CSU won't set out the criteria contractually. It raises probably valid suspicion that what counts as "merit" is what some administrator decides is merit - hence our term, "discretionary pay.")
One of the main objections CFA has with "merit pay" programs proposed by CSU has been that there is no real recourse if a faculty member doesn't receive the additional pay. If you believe you're more meritorious than someone else, but that person gets the pay increase and you don't, perhaps you can appeal to the President of the campus, but that's the person who awarded the raise in the first place. The chances the President will reverse himself or herself and give you the raise approximate zero.
Another problem is that the previous "merit pay" programs have been disasters, both in terms of the impact on faculty salaries and morale, and as programs to administer. The CSU has agreed with CFA that previous discretionary pay programs have been unworkable. Once a faculty member's base salary is changed by adding discretionary pay, that faculty person is no longer on the regular pay scale, and all the calculations painstakingly made to produce predictability in faculty pay across the 23 campus system goes kablooey. There's 23,000 faculty in the CSU, and discretionary pay makes it impossible to keep track of how much they ought to be paid. (And of course, another one of the reasons cited for the unworkability of "merit pay" is that merit isn't defined. As Chico says of Harpo in Duck Soup, "he gets mad because he can't read.")
There's a myth of meritocracy in corporate models of labor and capital, and it makes no sense to believe it. Executives, whether because of their role or because of some genetic proclivity, value compliance and fealty. If given discretion to pay some people more than others, executives who have the opportunity to reward faculty with more pay will use that discretion to reward characteristics they value.
The oddest thing to me about all this is that what's truly meritorious, in the sense of what a person has earned, would seem to be what a person achieves through work. In other words, work is what is meritorious. I think that's a reason labor unions make sense to me: collective bargaining implicitly recognizes that work is what should be paid, and so people doing similar work should get similar pay.
It begins with the language we use to describe it. "Merit pay" sounds innocuous at worst. It probably sounds like a way to encourage and reward good work. If you oppose a "merit pay" program, the very words make it sound as if you're against the idea of rewarding good work.
Among the many problems with what CFA prefers to call "discretionary pay" is that "merit" is not satisfactorily defined. What makes a good faculty member? What specific marks or characteristics would describe faculty "merit"? My view is that faculty work can be meritorious in many different ways, and that defining it in any set of terms narrow enough to work contractually would leave out a great deal of the meritorious work faculty do. (Not that the CSU proposal bothers to define "merit." Indeed, one reason CFA is so deeply opposed to it is that CSU won't set out the criteria contractually. It raises probably valid suspicion that what counts as "merit" is what some administrator decides is merit - hence our term, "discretionary pay.")
One of the main objections CFA has with "merit pay" programs proposed by CSU has been that there is no real recourse if a faculty member doesn't receive the additional pay. If you believe you're more meritorious than someone else, but that person gets the pay increase and you don't, perhaps you can appeal to the President of the campus, but that's the person who awarded the raise in the first place. The chances the President will reverse himself or herself and give you the raise approximate zero.
Another problem is that the previous "merit pay" programs have been disasters, both in terms of the impact on faculty salaries and morale, and as programs to administer. The CSU has agreed with CFA that previous discretionary pay programs have been unworkable. Once a faculty member's base salary is changed by adding discretionary pay, that faculty person is no longer on the regular pay scale, and all the calculations painstakingly made to produce predictability in faculty pay across the 23 campus system goes kablooey. There's 23,000 faculty in the CSU, and discretionary pay makes it impossible to keep track of how much they ought to be paid. (And of course, another one of the reasons cited for the unworkability of "merit pay" is that merit isn't defined. As Chico says of Harpo in Duck Soup, "he gets mad because he can't read.")
There's a myth of meritocracy in corporate models of labor and capital, and it makes no sense to believe it. Executives, whether because of their role or because of some genetic proclivity, value compliance and fealty. If given discretion to pay some people more than others, executives who have the opportunity to reward faculty with more pay will use that discretion to reward characteristics they value.
The oddest thing to me about all this is that what's truly meritorious, in the sense of what a person has earned, would seem to be what a person achieves through work. In other words, work is what is meritorious. I think that's a reason labor unions make sense to me: collective bargaining implicitly recognizes that work is what should be paid, and so people doing similar work should get similar pay.
Friday, March 02, 2007
been busy; strike vote next week
A couple weeks go by, and it's like a couple weeks go by!
On one level, it doesn't seem like a lot has happened. We went to San Diego, I gave my Schutz talk, and we came home. It's been a regular week this week, meaning I've been at a couple meetings, done some organizing work, taught, and so on. I'm starting work on the big perception project that I hope will turn into something nifty for the Merleau-Ponty Circle conference. In any case, it's something I've been meaning to do.
Last night, however, what I really needed to do was to record some good demo versions of the new tunes, so that those can start building into actual songs. A couple of the tunes seem done to me. The one has a verse part, a chorus part, a bridge, and a second bridge/coda. It needs no new bits. The others might, but I haven't had much time or energy to play with them, which makes me feel bad. (My priorities in life do not give me pause. They just frequently leave less time than I'd like for playing guitar.)
So I set about to record some tracks last night after dinner, which seemed a perfectly fine thing to do. Lauren sat in the Room of Requirement with me, sewing and spilling wine all over her desk, which seemed a perfectly fine thing to do. Little did we know.
I record using a pre-amp plugged into the USB port of my laptop, with either a mic or a line from the amplifier plugged into the pre-amp. It's a simple setup and it gives decent results. So there I sat, making a couple takes each of the new tunes. I was pleased enough with the results. I listened to one of them on my iPod on the walk to school this morning, and it sounds just fine (its current working gag title is "Exorcise for your Health").
Meanwhile, the CFA strike vote is set for next week on our campus and a number of others. For some reason I don't know, the votes are being staggered, with about half next week and the other half the week after that. I don't know if the neutral fact finder's report has been filed, and if it was I wouldn't know anything about it, since it's kept under wraps for 10 days after it arrives. Last time, the fact finder's report agreed in every important respect with the CFA's positions on the issues.
On one level, it doesn't seem like a lot has happened. We went to San Diego, I gave my Schutz talk, and we came home. It's been a regular week this week, meaning I've been at a couple meetings, done some organizing work, taught, and so on. I'm starting work on the big perception project that I hope will turn into something nifty for the Merleau-Ponty Circle conference. In any case, it's something I've been meaning to do.
Last night, however, what I really needed to do was to record some good demo versions of the new tunes, so that those can start building into actual songs. A couple of the tunes seem done to me. The one has a verse part, a chorus part, a bridge, and a second bridge/coda. It needs no new bits. The others might, but I haven't had much time or energy to play with them, which makes me feel bad. (My priorities in life do not give me pause. They just frequently leave less time than I'd like for playing guitar.)
So I set about to record some tracks last night after dinner, which seemed a perfectly fine thing to do. Lauren sat in the Room of Requirement with me, sewing and spilling wine all over her desk, which seemed a perfectly fine thing to do. Little did we know.
I record using a pre-amp plugged into the USB port of my laptop, with either a mic or a line from the amplifier plugged into the pre-amp. It's a simple setup and it gives decent results. So there I sat, making a couple takes each of the new tunes. I was pleased enough with the results. I listened to one of them on my iPod on the walk to school this morning, and it sounds just fine (its current working gag title is "Exorcise for your Health").
Meanwhile, the CFA strike vote is set for next week on our campus and a number of others. For some reason I don't know, the votes are being staggered, with about half next week and the other half the week after that. I don't know if the neutral fact finder's report has been filed, and if it was I wouldn't know anything about it, since it's kept under wraps for 10 days after it arrives. Last time, the fact finder's report agreed in every important respect with the CFA's positions on the issues.
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