AAUP Newsletter
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS
ADELPHI UNIVERSITY CHAPTER
January, 2008 • Volume 30. Issue 1
In This Issue:
Message from the President
EEOC Update
Compression
Luncheon and Discussion for Untenured Faculty
AAUP Newsletter - Exclusively Online
Message From The President
By Deborah Cooperstein
Our current contract expires in little more than a year and a half (August, 2009). We know that for many of you this will be your first contract negotiation. We want the contract to meet the needs of all faculty members and in order to accomplish this we need to know what you want in the next contract. This semester we will be distributing surveys and visiting with departments and faculty in order to get your input. We hope that you will share your ideas with us and remember that you don’t have to wait for us to reach out to you. If you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to contact us. Also, our steering committee meets every other week and you can always attend a meeting, if you wish.
Please keep in mind that we will be most successful if we are truly unified. Remember that we were successful in negotiating the workload reduction from 21 to 18 hours because the faculty was unified behind this goal. Instead of thinking as faculty of one department or another, instead of thinking as tenured faculty or untenured faculty we must think of ourselves and function as the faculty of Adelphi University. Standing together we can accomplish much of what we want but anything less and we do ourselves a great disservice.
In addition to issues of wages and benefits, our contract supports the principles of shared governance and the AAUP works to protect those rights. But once again, we need your active participation and constant vigilance to be sure that these principles are respected and adhered to by the administration.
We encourage you to begin thinking about what you would like in the next contract and to share your ideas with us.
EEOC Update
Many of you have called with questions regarding the EEOC’s case against the University, particularly after the President sent out his December 4 memo stating that the University had made a motion “asserting that the faculty union is a necessary and indispensable party to the litigation." While we are not sure exactly what the University is trying to accomplish, we can state with certainly that their premise that the AAUP has “joint responsibility [in] establishing faculty compensation” is without merit.
Some of you have also asked why the
university has chosen to take this position rather
than litigate over the merits of their case. While we
have no idea why they would choose to proceed in this
way we can opine that it is just another legal
maneuver, designed to obfuscate from the substantive
issues in this case. Remember the administration is
using the same law firm that defended the
Diamondopoulus administration and they used similar
tactics in that instance. We do not think that the
EEOC would have filed this lawsuit if they did not
have a strong case. Furthermore, the administration
continues to state that they believe their
compensation practices are “legitimate and
non-discriminatory." We look forward to the day they
actually do something, anything to try to prove this.
Obviously they presented their case to the EEOC and
the EEOC did not agree with the administration’s
position or they would not have filed suit. In the
meantime, the administration is still spending a great
deal of money and time fighting this lawsuit instead
of investing that money in the University and that is
just wrong.
Compression
As some of you may already be aware, at the end of last semester the Provost sent out letters to 58 faculty members informing them that they had been “approved” for a compression increase under the Individual Assessment Adjustment ($400,000 Fund) language of our contract. The increases which will be retroactively applied to the base salaries for 2007-08 range from $19 to $7,327 for a total of $97,740 in increases. Thus, coupled with the 33 credits of release time allocated from this same fund, the administration has so far spent $134,007 of this year’s $400,000.
We have asked the Provost to provide us with the methodology that was used to determine the allocation of the compression increases. Compression increases should be objective so by sharing this information with the faculty the administration would be providing valuable information and, at the same time, keeping the process transparent to all.
While we are very pleased that some of the money has been spent we wonder why there has been no money awarded in the area of merit—clearly there are faculty who have earned merit increases. We will keep you informed about any further information related to the $400,000 fund.
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AAUP presents a Lunch and Discussion for Untenured Faculty
Monday, February 4, 2008, 1:00PM—2:30PM, U.C. 211-212
Come for a discussion of issues concerning untenured faculty. Come to hear how others have experiences similar to your own. Come for the free lunch! This seminar is open to all but since we are serving lunch we ask that you r.s.v.p to: Cathy Cleaver at ext. 3295
AAUP Goes High-Tech
For the first time ever we are sending out our AAUP Newsletter exclusively in electronic format. You can read the Newsletter from your computer or you can print the pdf document if you wish. Aside from the obvious “green” benefits, we save a great deal of time and money sending it out this way and it allows us to communicate more frequently and quickly if necessary. It also allows us to use our website more extensively as an informational tool. Please let us know if you have any suggestions for our Newsletter or if you have any difficulty accessing it.
Along the same lines, in the next few months, we will be sending out an online survey regarding issues for the next round of contract negotiations. We are currently investigating various software products to see which one meets our needs best. Please be sure to respond to this survey when you receive it. This is an important first step in getting the best possible faculty contract.
Got a Question?
If you have a question about your rights or your benefits, please call us. We are here to help you and we will do everything possible to resolve issues before they become serious problems. Please call Cathy Cleaver in the AAUP Office (ext. 3295) or email: aaupoffice@yahoo.com.