Dear Colleagues,

the Faculty Federation sent the 2020-2023 CBA (the contract) to HR and the Provost’s Office last summer, and the Administration has completed their proof-reading of the document for typographical and formatting errors.  This document includes all of the language changes and additions that were ratified by the membership in March 2023 and, for the changes creating the ranks of teaching and clinical professor and implementing these changes, in June 2022 and October 2022 respectively.  In addition to this new language, a significant number of “house keeping” edits were made to the document; these edits were done to ensure consistency in the terminology throughout the CBA and do not affect working conditions in any way.

 In summary, the following changes have been made to the previous contract:

• Improved recognition for the full-time teaching faculty and clinical faculty, with the change in titles to Teaching/Clinical Professor together with a realistic and shorter promotion pathway for promotion (now 6 years instead of 10).

• Adding a process for electing faculty to serve on the search & screen committee for the Dean of  the Honors College, modeled after the process for other Colleges but recognizing that as all faculty could teach courses in the Honor College, all faculty should be eligible to serve on the search & screen committee.

• Incorporating the 2018 Chairperson MOA in the new CBA. These changes also moved items relevant to the Chairs from other parts of the contract into a new Article describing faculty leadership.

• Recognizing the growing importance to the University of graduate programs, the role and responsibilities of the Graduate Program Directors have been codified as a part of the new Article describing faculty leadership. This new language also provides for compensation that reflects the complexity of the work being done.  This will address the huge disparities that currently exist in the compensation provided to GPDs.

• Modifying the contract renewal process for tenure-track faculty in order to simplify the process. This renames the 3-4 and 5-6 contract renewal reviews as probationary and pre-tenure respectively (reflecting what that are), moves the pre-tenure review to the Fall of the 4th year (from the Spring of the 3rd) , thus providing candidates with an extra summer to demonstrate that they are on-track to meet the expectations to be awarded tenure. It  also eliminates the confusion that has resulted from having this one personnel action being on a different schedule from all the rest. The new language also details how pre-tenure faculty can request their tenure clock be tolled and guarantees a 1-year terminal contract for an Assistant Professor denied renewal at either of the pre-tenure reviews — a provision that does not currently exist. There are also changes to the deadlines for each level of review to provide their recommendation to the next level — this has different dates for the probationary, pre-tenure and promotions reviews, provides time for the contractual requirement that the candidate have 7-days to add material before it is forwarded, and moves these deadlines away from major holiday periods and not on  public holidays. This should make the work of the FEC and academic councils somewhat easier.

• Including language around the retrenchment of tenured faculty that requires the University to go through multiple alternative steps (including creating a voluntary separation program, moving OCE courses to on-load and providing the faculty member with the opportunity to transfer to another department) before a tenure-track faculty member can be terminated.  It also includes changes to the order or retrenchment section that removes the existing, unlawful, language from 30+ years ago.

• Requiring that the stipends for OCE courses are the same as what PTLs receive for teaching a “day” course — increasing this from $4330 to (this semester) $6290 for long-serving PTLs and full-time faculty.  It also provides more reasonable prorated compensation for OCE classes when the course enrollment is below the minimum or above the maximum, rather than the half stipend that is currently offered.

• Changing the procedure for out-of-cycle pay increase requests that restores faculty primacy in the process as is the case for all other personnel actions.

• Creating an entirely new grievance procedure that requires the Administration to engage with the Faculty Federation and address the issue at hand from the beginning of the process.

• Adding lay-off and recall provisions for the Professional Technicians and Librarians which provides for  1-year’s notice or 60% of salary in lieu of.

• Including new language regarding how the teaching assignments for PTLs shall be made that better describes how this should be done. This is to ensure, where possible, that BPTLs shall get the 6 units (2 courses) needed to preserve their benefited status.  All of this is with the usual provisos of teaching need and qualifications.

 In Solidarity!