Dear Colleagues,

Contract negotiations between the Administration and the faculty, librarian & professional technician unit continue.  Unfortunately, there is no holiday cheer around our salary increases this year.

There have been, to date, fifteen bargaining sessions since the initial session in March. The Administration was available to meet with the Federation’s negotiating team on just five occasions over the summer during which time they did not provide any response to the Federation’s proposals until the fifth meeting, held at the end of August, and these responses were to just a few of the Federation’s proposals and included none of our financial proposals. 

The Administration did finally provide responses to the Federation’s financial proposals on October 9, just a week before a supplemental funding bill to close out the 2025 fiscal year was introduced at the State House for consideration. Upon learning of this, the Administration proposed to the Federation an agreement that included items that the Federation had not accepted at the bargaining table.  In response, the Federation offered a salary-increase-only MOA (as was done in 2023) that used just the Governor’s parameters, with an agreement to continue negotiating on all other matters at the bargaining table. VC of Human Resources Deb Majewski’s response to this was, “the Administration is not interested in pursuing a salary-increase only proposal”.

While we have reached tentative agreements with the Administration on many items (including some proposals from the Federation and some from the Administration), we are still negotiating a small number of items including certain proposals from the Administration that both the ESU and Federation bargaining teams believe the Administration very much wants. While the details of negotiations cannot be discussed, in broad strokes one of these is a proposal to outsource to a third-party the administration of FMLA requests, the second is a proposal concerning limits on certain earned contractual benefits including sick leave. The Faculty and ESU negotiating teams have serious reservations about both these proposals, believing that they would have significant negative impacts for faculty and staff.

Bargaining for a successor CBA continues, with the goal of finalizing negotiations and reaching a tentative agreement early next year. Once we have a tentative agreement, this will be distributed, in full, to the membership for review and a special meeting held to answer any questions that members may have followed by a vote by the membership conducted online, using Qualtrics, on whether to ratify the agreement. If it is ratified, then it goes to the President’s Office, the Governor and (finally) the State House where it will be included in a funding bill sometime next year. Our contract was not a part of the October supplemental bill and the House and Senate are in recess until January.

We hope that exams and grading are quickly finished and you can enjoy the winter break.

In Solidarity!