To: OSU Colleagues,
From: Edward Feser, Provost and Executive Vice President
Dear OSU Colleagues,
As you likely are aware, OSU is engaged in negotiations with UAOSU to establish the university’s first collective bargaining agreement with its academic faculty.
The university continues to bargain in good faith with UAOSU and we look forward to reaching a fair and sustainable agreement that recognizes the outstanding contributions, dedication, and hard work of our academic faculty.
This week, OSU announced a university-wide FY20 faculty salary increase program to take effect in January 2020. The timing of this announcement was made similar to the past several years, and only after completing budgeting for FY20; ascertaining actual fall term enrollment numbers and tuition revenues; implementing expenditure reductions university-wide; and taking stock of other revenue sources. Eligibility rules and implementation of the program remain the same as in previous years.
Earlier this week and through the bargaining process, we offered UAOSU the option of implementing this salary increase program for FY20 for faculty represented by the union, thereby enabling the faculty union and OSU to continue to work to achieve an overall collective bargaining agreement and focus negotiations on salary increases for FY21 and beyond. Yesterday, UAOSU declined that offer and indicated that the union would continue to bargain for FY20 salary increases. This means that only eligible professional faculty and academic faculty not represented by UAOSU will be provided the announced salary increase program.
Meanwhile, UAOSU has presented the university with economic proposals, including salary and benefit-related, that would increase OSU’s expenditures by more than $35 million annually. To put this request in context, the union’s salary proposal alone is nearly a three-fold increase over the compensation program OSU announced this week. To fund all of the union’s economic proposals, it would require about a 10% increase in student tuition or more than a 20% increase in state funding. This is before addressing any costs for other employee groups, inflation, or capital renewal needs. Clearly, it will take us time to find common ground on these economic proposals. That is why we proposed moving forward with an FY20 salary increase program and continuing our bargaining for increases for FY21 and beyond.
We will provide the university community regular updates on faculty bargaining while we continue to bargain in good faith to reach a fair and sustainable agreement. As well, you may follow the progress of bargaining on our faculty union bargaining website.
Sincerely,
Edward Fesser
Provost and Executive Vice President