Bargaining Session 9 | September 22, 2022
Part-time faculty have now presented the entirety of their contract proposals, so the university has no more excuses for delaying negotiations. Despite the university’s handoff of negotiations to an outside law firm, the bargaining team is hopeful a new contract can be finalized before the current contract expires on November 13th.
In case you missed it, the university hired a corporate law firm, signaling they would rather spend thousands of dollars on outside counsel than give part-time faculty equitable pay.
All part-time faculty contract proposals are in.
In bargaining session #9, the part-time faculty bargaining team presented these remaining proposals:
Article 29 - Medical & Dental Benefits
Article 9 - Faculty Rights & Responsibilities
New Article - Intellectual Property
New Article - Pedagogical Principles & Student Success
Article 18 - Paid Academic Leave
The New School’s lead negotiator, Jennifer Penley, has consistently asserted that her team cannot negotiate until they’ve received all of the part-time faculty bargaining team’s proposals. This is an unusual bargaining practice (but not an unusual delay tactic) and does not reflect how the New School has bargained previous contracts with part-time faculty. Now that the university has received all of the bargaining team’s proposed changes to the current contract, they can no longer use this excuse to delay negotiations.
The university wants to slow the pace of bargaining even further.
Penley asserted that the university’s team would like to propose a new structure for how we meet going forward, suggesting their desire to meet less frequently, which would further delay a new contract for part-time faculty. When asked when the bargaining team could expect to see the university’s proposal, Penley was unable to respond.
The university wants to do anything they can to slow down negotiations of a fair contract with part-time faculty. It’s clear they would rather spend their time bargaining over a premature contract extension than offer real responses to the 30 proposals we’ve presented, including a full response to our compensation proposal — not the incomplete response they gave by offering part-time faculty an insulting pandemic bonus.
The university is handing off negotiations to outside counsel.
At the end of the bargaining session, Penley let the bargaining team know that she will be taking a step back from negotiations. Genaira Tyce from Akerman, LLP will be taking the helm. While negotiating with corporate lawyers is not uncommon in higher education, it is unusual that the university’s lead negotiator is abandoning negotiations several months in.
Jennifer’s phrasing implied that she will no longer be the lead negotiator because she needs to get back to other work. This is insulting because the part-time faculty bargaining team is composed solely of volunteer faculty who have put in hundreds of hours of work on this contract and they have other work to do too. University administrators, who are paid for their time at the table, have tried to drag this process out every step of the way.
The bargaining team is hopeful that this shift in leadership will allow negotiations to resume at the pace and productivity level necessary for finalizing a new contract by November 13th.
Your presence at the bargaining table is essential!
Numbers matter in negotiations. Keep showing up to the weekly virtual bargaining sessions - all part-time faculty members are invited to attend.