I was in the AAUP office on Friday for a five hour meeting meeting of the fact-finding team (when Howard says they're hard working, he's not kidding). During the meeting, Howard took a phone call from the administration and told them we would meet in early January to discuss their proposal, but we would not bring a counter-offer. Before the end of meeting, President Fallon emails everyone the "AAUP communicated a willingness to resume negotiations." I think this is spin in place of substantive leadership, but let's discuss what's going on.
If we're talking, there must be a return to negotiations, right? Not really.
During the summer negotiations, the teams met on a regular schedule - twice a week for three hours a shot. (Toward the end, we wanted more meetings, and they cancelled some, as you might recall.) In the final days of August and into Septemeber, the teams would meet 8, 10, 12 or more hours at a stretch exchanging proposals; the final night, we went almost 24 hours (here's my account of that [1]). These days consisted of repeated exchanges of propsals. After we received an offer from them, we would put together a counter. As we waited for their counter, we would sit and think about our response to what was coming. When the national AAUP President Cary Nelson was here, he wrote [2] about the arrangement we had, projecting spreadsheets of offers onto a screen and discussing them. We spent many hours discussing and debating what to adjust next - across the board percentage, salary differential, TIAA-CREF, health care, and for each of those in what year? When they returned with a counter, we could see where they moved, how much (usually, how little), and then generate another offer.
My point isn't to induce bad flashbacks, but to outline what "negotiations" look like. Let's compare that with what is going on now.
We met once about some technical aspects of health care that Howard reported on here [2]. Over the summer, we repeatedly asked for health care data, especially as it related to the 3/4 of a million dollars they kept claiming they wanted from us in year 1. About 5am that last day, we saw Hartmut's spreadsheet and asked him to send it to us, which he finally did. The meeting was to clarify some points related to that, but not present a new position; we didn't discuss the level of premiums or anything like that.
After the first fact-finding meeting, the administration calls to say they have an offer to present - confidentially. We went to receive the offer and ask questions, not stay around to present a counter-proposal. Howard emailed faculty to indicate the movement was insubstantial, and subsequent decisions by the Executive Committee and Bargaining Council directed the negotiating team to continue with fact-finding, discuss their offer but not make a counter-proposal. The phone call Howard took during the fact-finding meeting was to tell them we would talk about our objections, but we're not giving a formal or informal counter-offer (unspoken: it's not worth responding to).
During the last week, they made their talking points into a formal offer (not better, just formal). You know if it was a good offer, they'd relase it far and wide to put pressure on us, but they haven't. (Maybe we'll get one of those 'they turned down a 16% increase [2]' soon, but be skeptical). So, we're meeting in January to tell them points like: a 'signing bonus' that does not go to base salary is a cheap way of tying to buy a contract and not in best long-term interets of faculty - try getting serious about retroactive pay. And, backloading a long contract that isn't close to long term inflation is not attractive. [UPDATE: I was wrong - they did release it, but see our analysis of the offer [2]]
So, is that a "willingness to resume negotiations"? It's certainly more than there has been, and I hope it starts to establish some shared understandings about a general framework for a contract. But the real problem is tthat so far the Powers That Be haven't authorized enough money to give us a decent settlement.
Imagine you've been talking to a used car salesman for some time and he made a big deal about "redoubling" his efforts to get you a good deal. What he comes back with is superficially but not substantively different when it's all written out. You don't believe the salesman's boss will allow him to sell at the price you think is fair. That's where we're at - the used car salesman who can't cut a fair deal is making a lo of excited noises about how we're going back to the showroom to tell him his car is overpriced, it's not in great condition, the financing terms are unfavorable and you're looking for other ways (fact-finding) to get a fair deal.
-Paul
[look for one more post before Christmas about the fact-finding hearing on the 19th]