On November 12 and 20, 2024, ULFA hosted its fifth and sixth Bargaining Town Halls in this round of negotiations toward a new Academic Staff Collective Agreement (ASCA). Both town halls began with a brief update on the overall progress of bargaining to date and a reminder of the membership-approved ULFA bargaining mandate, which can be summarized as fair compensation and fair working conditions.
These town halls focused on proposals tabled by the ULFA and Board negotiating teams on evaluation and evaluation-based salary increments. The ULFA team’s proposals for Article 23 (Evaluation Procedures) and Article 24 (Increments for Members) largely retain current processes and provisions. Proposed changes include harmonizing career progress and merit for Instructors and Academic Assistants with existing provisions for Faculty Members and Professional Librarians, placing a 5-page soft cap on the length of the Professional Activities Report (PAR), moving to a 4-year evaluation cycle for members who are not subject to an annual review, and introducing a new promotion increment.
The Board team’s proposals for Article 23 (renamed Performance Evaluation) and Article 24 (renamed Merit Awards) represent significant departures from current processes and provisions. Proposed changes that differ appreciably from the proposals tabled by the ULFA team include maintaining the 2-year evaluation cycle, determining only career progress increments based on Dean evaluations of members’ PARs, replacing the 7-point numeric performance rating scale with a 3-point word scale (satisfactory, below satisfactory, unsatisfactory), converting merit to a biennial by-application award adjudicated by two university-wide merit committees that will evaluate merit applications according to criteria determined by GFC, standardizing the merit award at $3,000 (awarded only in biennial evaluation years), and adding the merit award amount to base salary only for members who have not yet reached the salary cap or the maximum number of Academic Career Years for their rank.
A summary of the progress of articles opened in this round of bargaining is available here. Dates for the remaining bargaining sessions scheduled for Fall 2024 are: November 26 and December 3, 4, 12, 13, 19 and 20.
