Portland State University professors set timetable for strike
Top issues are low
pay, job insecurity,
and lack of respect
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
Portland State University professors
have had enough. In 10 months of fruit-
less bargaining and 40 hours of media-
tion, university administrators haven’t
addressed their complaints of low
salaries and minimal job security.
So on Feb. 24, the PSU chapter of
the American Association of University
Professors (PSU-AAUP) filed a formal
declaration of impasse with the state
Employment Relations Board. The two
sides submitted final offers March 3.
That triggered a 30-day state-mandated
cooling off period, at which point union
members could strike or the administra-
tion could impose its terms on them.
PSU-AAUP Executive Director Phil
Lesch said a strike is likely at this point,
given how far apart the two sides are.
In a show of strength that the union
called its “best hope for avoiding a
strike,” faculty members picketed and
rallied at the university Feb. 27. They
were joined by hundreds of students or-
ganized by the PSU Student Union. In
the month leading up to the rally, at least
626 students had pledged via text mes-
sage to attend, even if it meant walking
out of classes to do so. Judging from the
size of the crowd, most of them kept the
pledge.
At the rally and picket, chants criti-
cized administrative bloat, and called
for tuition dollars to go toward “instruc-
tion, not construction.” Picket signs
blasted the obscenity of the public uni-
versity president’s salary. PSU Presi-
dent Wim Wiewel gets $512,786 a year
in compensation and lives rent-free in a
university mansion.
“This fight is bigger than PSU,” PSU
economics professor Mary King told
rally-goers. “It’s the fight for public ed-
ucation in this country.”
Faculty “tenure” used to be the norm
at universities. In the name of academic
freedom, professors once tenured could
not be terminated except for gross neg-
ligence. But more and more, American
universities are shifting classroom in-
struction to part-time and temporary in-
structors who often lack health insur-
ance or retirement benefits. PSU-AAUP
is actually the most privileged group at
PSU, because it represents full-time
year-round faculty; a sister union affili-
ated with American Federation of
Teachers (AFT) represents their
coworkers who are “adjunct” faculty,
part-time term-to-term instructors.
Lesch said of the 1,270 faculty
members in the PSU-AAUP bargaining
unit, only about 300 are tenured full
professors and thus can consider them-
selves permanent employees with job
security. About 250 more are tenure-
track assistant professors on one-year
contracts. Lesch described tenure track
as a grueling probationary period last-
ing six years. Another 420 are fixed-
term faculty “instructors” who are not
on a path to tenure. Most instructors
earn about $37,000 a year, while tenure-
track faculty earn $50,000 to $60,000 a
year. Tenured professors have a starting
salary of $62,000.
“We end up losing most of our
tenured faculty members when they get
tenure,” Lesch said, “because at
$62,000 a year that’s less than half what
they can earn most anywhere else in the
country.”
AAUP activist David Osborn said
some of the union’s top demands are
stability and equity. Stability means
to building an administrative empire.
People are frustrated with that.”
As for respect, PSU administrators
aren’t showing it. The administration
scheduled two events to coincide with
the student-faculty rally: a “party” for
students featuring free lunch and bowl-
ing to celebrate the 25,000th “like” on
the PSU Facebook page, and a lunch for
fixed-term faculty with the administra-
tion’s chief negotiator, university vice
president Carol Mack, to talk about “ca-
reer strategies.”
AAUP members’ next plan is to take
their protest to the PSU Board of
Trustees, which meets March 12 1-5
p.m. at PSU's University Place Hotel.
Hundreds of PSU students turned out Feb. 27, joining their professors in
calling on the university administration to reach a fair contract settlement
with the campus chapter of American Association of University Professors.
professors would be regular full-time
employees, not seasonal workers laid
off according to administration whims.
Osborn, for example, has a master’s de-
gree from the London School of Eco-
nomics and has been teaching at PSU
for four years. Yet Osborn said he gets
laid off every June, and doesn’t learn
until a few weeks before fall term
whether he’s been hired back to teach
classes.
By equity, they mean they want to
catch up to faculty salaries at peer uni-
versities.
AAUP executive director Lesch says
PSU’s wage increase offer — 1 percent
a year for two years — would have
salaries dipping further behind. And
faculty would lose buying power to in-
flation, which is has been about 2 per-
cent in recent years. AAUP is propos-
ing two 5 percent raises.
But behind the union-management
dispute is also a struggle for respect and
over who controls the university.
“Administrators think that the stu-
dents and faculty exist for their benefit,”
Lesch said. “They’re really committed
Barbara Roberts to
keynote retirees’ club
convention March 8
Former governor Barbara Roberts
and progressive radio talk show host
Carl Wolfson will be guest speakers at
the Oregon Alliance for Retired Amer-
icans 2014 state convention Saturday,
March 8.
The daylong convention will be held
at the Madison Grill banquet room,
1125 SE Madison, Portland. It starts at
10 a.m. Registration is $10, which in-
cludes lunch.
For more information, call 503-675-
7764.
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MARCH 7, 2014