Blog Archive
March 12, 1990. The first day after Spring Break. UB-AAUP President Alfred Gerteiny receives a call at 7:30 am from the Provost’s office, summoning him to a meeting at Bryant Hall. He is told to bring the union executive committee with him. The officers of Faculty Council are also summoned. No agenda stated.
The meeting convenes at 10 am in the Bryant Hall Conference Room. Present: UB President Janet D. Greenwood, Provost Edwin G. Eigel, Trustee Chairman Nicholas A. Panuzio, Profs. Gerteiny, Crowley, Calhoon, Baumgartner, Hardenberg, Ehmer, Thomas.
The Greenwood administration announces its intention to restructure the entire institution and eliminate 50 faculty positions (more than one quarter of the bargaining unit). These layoffs are to take place under Article 10.1A of the faculty contract, which allows for termination of tenured professors for reasons of “financial exigency,” and will be effective immediately, without notice or severance pay. Deans in consultation with department chairs will identify which professors should be let go. The University’s six colleges will be reduced to five, and offices consolidated. The restructuring and personnel reduction are to be accomplished within two weeks, with a new fall course schedule available to students by the first week of April. $3 million must be saved from the faculty budget next fiscal year. Without immediate action, says President Greenwood, the budget deficit will increase to $5.6 million and tuition will have to be raised by $3000.
An information packet is circulated. The plan is a set of bullet points on a couple of typewritten pages, lacking detail, coherence, or any description of the impact it is expected to have on the institution. The outline states the need to increase the student/faculty ratio from 12:1 to 18:1, and to “improve race, sex, and age balances” among the faculty to conform to accreditors’ expectations. Nowhere in writing are the words “financial exigency.”
Bryant Hall is the first stop in a round of “information meetings” as Greenwood, Eigel, and Panuzio visit the dormitories and announce the plan to students. A letter to students from President Greenwood is circulated, describing the planned layoffs as “the only way that we can protect the University as you know it without raising your tuition an additional $3000 a year.” It also states the layoffs are permitted under a provision of the UB-AAUP contract that allows for such action on the basis of “financial necessity.” A similar letter is circulated to the campus community.
Ironically, on the same day, the union’s March 12 Newsletter appears. The issue is dedicated to opening a new dialogue of conciliation and cooperation between the faculty and the administration, and offers ideas from various campus constituencies for solving the enrollment decline and financial crisis.
March 13, 1990. Bridgeport Post. Banner headline reads: UB DECLARES FISCAL CRISIS. “University of Bridgeport administrators declared a financial crisis Monday and announced a series of steps–including the layoff of about 50 faculty members–designed to bring the school into the black next year.” Board Chairman Nicholas Panuzio says the Board decided last week to declare “financial exigency” which can permit the school to layoff tenured faculty in time of fiscal crisis. Paul Timpanelli, President of the Bridgeport Regional Business Council, gives UB “credit for coming to grips with the problem…They’re facing tough decisions, and some people will get hurt. But in the long term the university will be better off.” Faculty union President Alfred Gerteiny says the union may seek a court injunction to stop the layoffs.
(3/13/90)President Gerteiny writes to President Greenwood, expressing “shock and dismay” over the announced restructuring and layoffs. “…these suicidal and Draconian measures were unaccompanied by any plan which even suggests a hope that the University can survive such drastic action. Indeed, the precipitous announcement of huge cuts in the teaching staff, in the absence of any evidence that you have an academic plan to continue to meet the educational mission of the University, and the needs of its students, suggests clearly to me that the University’s management has been turned over to outside, non-academic interests who have little understanding of, or interest in, the needs of its students. We implore you to reconsider your position and retract these statements before additional, irreparable injury occurs.” Gerteiny insists that exigency must be bona fide, and proven to the satisfaction of a union-appointed financial expert. He also raises the issue of notice and severance pay: “Your statements seem to indicate that the University intends to effect layoffs of 50 faculty with no notice or severance pay…but perhaps we misunderstood you. We request an immediate response (within 24 hours) regarding your intentions in this respect.”
(3/13/90) Letter to President Greenwood from Jordan Kurland, Associate General Secretary of the National AAUP. Kurland explains the AAUP position on “financial exigency”: that termination of tenure is a last resort even in financial emergencies; that termination of faculty in one area cannot be accompanied by hiring in another area; that the burden of proving exigency rests on the administration; that each terminated professor has the right to an adjudicated hearing to challenge the “validity of educational judgements” that led to that professor being chosen for termination. He also points out that the AAUP’s Recommended Institutional Regulations call for at least one year of notice and a year of severance to follow. He attaches a copy of the AAUP 1940 Statement and its interpretive comments and regulations.
(3/13/90) A flier inserted into the March 12 UB-AAUP Newsletter. President Gerteiny tells the membership “We urge the CPCs and the faculty to remain cool and abstain from participating in this Jonestown-type massacre until and unless financial exigency has been demonstrably bona fide.”
March 14, 1990. Letter from President Greenwood to President Gerteiny: “We agree with the urgency of your examination of the books and records of the University so that you may understand the bona fides of our financial exigency. This material is now in the office of the Vice President for Administration and Finance. We request you to put your expert in touch with his office at the earliest possible moment.” Greenwood also notes “While disagreeing with your interpretation of the notice and severance provisions of the contract, we are sensitive to the concerns of your membership about the arrangement for a layoff. We believe that this subject should also be the topic of serious discussions.”
3/14/90: The deans begin the process of compiling information and recommendations from department chairs to determine who is to be kept or let go. Dean Lance Blackshaw of the College of Science and Engineering sends out a list of criteria, including: what areas of faculty expertise are needed, and to what extent?; What excess areas of faculty expertise exist in your department?; What is the level of competence of the faculty? He requests that faculty be ranked in the following groups: Indispensable, Marginally Qualified, and Unqualified. “We are entering a period where faculty and staff will be required to work extraordinarily hard, put in long hours, maintain academic integrity and be sensitive to student needs. These factors must be considered when evaluating a faculty member’s ability to make a positive contribution.”
3/14/90: Bridgeport Post Headline: UB STUDENTS FEAR IMPACT OF LAYOFFS. Students express concern that the cuts will hurt their academic programs. “Many were disgruntled about an administration whose decisions they cannot understand … A faculty member said that the College of Arts and Humanities will be cut from 73 to 52 faculty members; that the College of Business and Public Management will be cut from 30 and a half to 23; that the College of Health and Human Services will be cut from 41 and a half to 35; that the College of Science and Engineering will be cut from 40 to 27…But some students seemed a bit jaded about the prospect of more cuts at their school. ‘Personally, as long as I don’t pay the extra $3000, I think it’s their problem, let them handle it,” said Alex Zachos, who is graduating with a business major in December.”
March 15, 1990. UB-AAUP circulates an EXIGENCY UPDATE to the membership: • “The UB administration has still not made a formal announcement of financial exigency. Orally and in the press reports it is being called that, however.” • The union’s attorney, Robert Goldstein, agrees that any terminations for financial exigency are covered by Article 10.6 of the contract, which requires a year’s notice and a year’s severance pay. • Profs. Crowley and Costello have met with UB VP for Finance Beecher and obtained some financial data and requested more. • The flier advises that “CPCs (College Personnel Committees) and others asked to recommend faculty members for termination should withhold any compliance with this request until the union Executive Committee has ascertained that a condition of financial exigency has been demonstrated…THE TERMINATION PROCESS AS OUTLINED BY THE ADMINISTRATION, I.E., PEREMPTORY NOTICE AND LACK OF COMPENSATION, IS A SERIOUS VIOLATION OF THE COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AGREEMENT. THOSE TERMINATED MAY HAVE SUBSTANTIAL CLAIMS FOR DAMAGES AGAINST THOSE INVOLVED IN THE PROCESS.”
3/15/90: UB Board Chairman Nicholas Panuzio asks for a meeting with UB-AAUP President Gerteiny. Panuzio expresses surprise at the union’s conciliatory tone in the latest Newsletter, and the positive proposals for collaborative efforts; he urges cooperation in the restructuring. The meeting is friendly but fruitless.
March 16, 1990. The faculty union engages financial expert Richard Weber to examine the University’s financial records.
(See The Weber Report in the Reference page.)
March 17, 1990. The faculty union engages Connecticut labor lawyer Tom Meiklejohn to work in tandem with UB-AAUP’s New York-based attorney, Robert Goldstein (http://lapm.org/tom-meiklejohn). As the process for naming faculty to be terminated goes forward, the need to stop it becomes more urgent. The lawyers’ efforts are focused on obtaining an injunction, based on their contention that the collective bargaining agreement’s Article 10.6 (requiring notice and severance pay) applies to Article 10.1 (termination for “financial exigency”) and that the 1940 Statement was never intended by AAUP as a device for mass firings of tenured professors.
March 18, 1990. Bridgeport Post: UB LAYOFFS SEEN CUTING DEEPLY INTO PROGRAMS. Jordan Kurland, associate general secretary of AAUP, says UB’s proposed layoffs might be among the largest percentage cuts made among colleges nationwide. The fiscal crisis that the 50 layoffs are supposed to solve comes at a time when such problems are less frequent. “During the last few years, there’s been less and less of this–and we’re expecting still less as we go into the ’90s.” Kurland says. “I can think of just a few instances when the numbers were large but they were huge universities, so the proportions were smaller…This is a momentous action for the institution. You are going to see grave damage to elements of the academic program. This isn’t trimming some fat. It cuts very, very deeply into the operation. How this is going to affect student recruitment is a very serious question.”
The Greenwood administration argues that UB is facing problems experienced by universities and colleges nationwide: rising tuition, declining financial aid, increasing costs and deferred maintenance. They point to other universities, such as Princeton and Stanford, where cutbacks are taking place. But Kurland said cutbacks at those universities are of a different magnitude. At Princeton, for example, the sociology program is being eliminated. But that is not a sign of serious financial strife. “That’s a different planet from the University of Bridgeport. They’re not breaking any tenure commitments at Princeton or Stanford.” Greenwood refuses to comment for this article.
The article notes that although faculty are supposed to help make recommendations by March 23 on where the cuts should come from, some are refusing to participate.
March 19, 1990. In a Memo to Provost Eigel, UB-AAUP Grievance Officer Hans Van Der Giessen files a formal grievance on the administration’s declaration of financial exigency and plan to terminate 50 faculty. Grounds for the grievance are:
that financial exigency has not been demonstrated as bona fide;
that the administration failed to follow the procedure required for such action under the 1940 Statement;
that Article 10.6A requires terminated faculty to receive notice of termination on or before May 1 prior to the terminal year, to be followed by a full year’s compensation in the nature of severance pay;
that the administration intends to layoff faculty effective June 30, 1990 without the requisite notice or severance;
that the guidelines the administration presented for selecting faculty for termination by reason of their age violates Article 6 and the 1940 Statement.
“In view of the urgency of this matter, we request that the Administration process this grievance in an expedited manner and agree to expedited arbitration if the matter is not resolved in the grievance process.”
March 20, 1990. Fairfield County Advocate reports on UB’s restructuring plan: DEEP AND PAINFUL.
“UB is currently operating with the aid of a $12 million bailout package from a consortium of area banks.* According to UB sources, its deficit for the current 1989-90 fiscal year…is $1.8 million. Declining enrollments are the problem. The campus, built for 10,000 students has 5,300, of which only 1,800 are full-time undergraduates. And according to Michael Beecher, UB’s vice president of administration and finance, application statistics show a further enrollment decline next year.”
“We hope the faculty will be cooperative,” said Greenwood. “We’re all here to serve the students and provide quality education for them.” She cited, and passed out articles stating that universities around the country were suffering from economic hardships. “It’s a national issue.”…Greenwood said that if these cuts are not made tuition and board costs would rise $3000 at the school next year. Panuzio said there will still be a “less than 10 percent” increase with the cuts.”
Greenwood insists no academic programs will be cut; there will be “cross-teaching” within departments.
Alfred Gerteiny calls the administration’s proposal “preposterous” and “egregious…They’re asking the faculty to take part in its own decaptitation and to have a plan in front of them within 10 or 11 days.”
“Ironically, Greenwood and Panuzio were careful at last week’s press conference to not make the situation look dire. Greenwood said UB “is in compliance” with the bank repayment schedule. Panuzio added that the school is “not in dire straits,” but financial problems would overwhelm them by 1991 if steps are not taken now.”
* See Bank Bailout in the Reference page.
March 21, 1990. Provost Edwin Eigel responds to Hans van der Giessen’s March 19 grievance and request for expedited arbitration. “…the University is willing to forgo the Step I conference and begin the discussion process with a Step II meeting” (scheduled for Thursday March 29). Eigel notes that the request for expedited arbitration is “premature.”
3/21/90: The faculty union files suit in U.S. District Court in Bridgeport to stop the UB administration’s restructuring plan. The suit does not call for an immediate injunction, but argues that any action taken on the layoffs will cause “immediate and irreparable harm.” The union has filed a grievance with the administration (March 19) with a request for expedited arbitration. The union asks the administration to stop its reorganization voluntarily until differences over the layoffs can be worked out in arbitration. Otherwise, the union may ask for an immediate injunction order Friday (March 23) forcing the administration to do so.
3/21/90: Alfred Gerteiny writes to Provost Eigel as a follow-up to a personal discussion: “Pursuant to our recent discussion, our understanding is that the University will suspend all activities in implementation of President Greenwood’s announcement of March 12, 1990 until further notice, in return for which the UB-AAUP will not seek injunctive relief to stay such proceedings.” The University may recommence the restructuring plan at any time, provided that the University and UB-AAUP agree to expedited arbitration of the grievance, and no action will be taken until the arbitration is concluded. “We cannot suspend our judicial proceedings until you confirm your agreement to suspend your activities on the foregoing basis.”
3/21/90: Memo to President Greenwood and Provost Eigel from William Calhoon, Secretary of Faculty Council: The following motion was passed unanimously by Faculty Council at its special meeting of March 20, 1990:
“To protect the academic integrity of the programs at the university, Faculty Council urges the Administration to enter immediately into serious, substantive talks with the AAUP leadership to find alternative ways of addressing the financial crisis.”
March 22, 1990. Bridgeport Post: UB PROFESSORS SUE OVER LAYOFFS. UB-AAUP filed suit yesterday in U.S. District Court in Bridgeport to stop the announced layoffs of faculty until the union’s grievance on the issue goes to arbitration…The union claims any action taken on the layoffs before the arbitration is settled would cause “immediate and irreparable harm”…”If a reduced schedule of classes is implemented before the arbitration is settled, its result would be ‘futile’ because there would be no classes for the reinstated professors to teach.”
The article mentions John Sabanosh as a lawyer representing UB during the reorganization. Sabanosh is from the Bridgeport firm of Durant, Sabanosh, Nichols & Houston, known to local labor organizers as a union-busting law firm.
March 23, 1990. In a memo to Vice President Beecher (3/21/90) Faculty Council requests a financial rationale for the academic restructuring of the university. “Council is interested in what savings would result from the restructuring proposal on March 12th…In the interest of following the President’s schedule, Faculty Council requests these materials by Friday, March 23rd.” (The materials do not appear.)
3/23/90: At Fairfield University, the Faculty Welfare Committee votes overwhelmingly to become a member chapter of AAUP and CBC (Collective Bargaining Congress). The faculty and administration have already concluded five months of negotiations, and will soon ratify a collective bargaining agreement. The contract has been negotiated by the FWC without formal certification by the National Labor Relations Board. Mark C. Blum, Associate Director for Organizing in the CBC office, says: “This shows what a faculty can achieve even without a certified union, if it commits to developing a broad-based activist chapter.” The two-year contract is enforceable by third-party binding arbitration.
March 24, 1990. According to the administration’s timetable, the deans have collected information from department chairs and submitted their recommendations to the Provost (March 23). The deans’ reports include the number of faculty to be cut, names of those to be given notices of termination, and an explanation of how these cuts lead to the administration’s required outcomes. These goals include:
fewer departments, increased faculty flexibility in teaching across disciplines, accreditations maintained, fewer courses (“leaner” schedules), “enhanced balances in race, sex, age, etc.”, and a significantly reduced academic budget.
The Provost will consult with the President, and then notify deans and faculty members of those to be given notice of termination, effective June 30, 1990.
UB-AAUP continues to call for department chairs to give the union copies of their deans’ directives, along with a statement of how the cuts would impact and “cause irreparable damage to your programs, department, retention, the college, the University.” They are asked to hand-carry these documents to the union office. “They are needed NOW!”
March 25, 1990. As restructuring moves ahead, students are encouraged to participate in the reorganization of Student Life as their part in shaping the school’s future. “It’s a great new opportunity for making the university what the students want it to be,” says President Greenwood. The student newspaper supports Greenwood’s intention not only to “cut financial deadwood but more importantly to put the control of the university environment firmly in the hands of students.” (The Scribe 3/15/90). As a result of the Student Life division overhaul, The Scribe says, “The important thing to remember…is that the cause may have been financial but the method aims for student benefit. You can expect campus social life to start expanding rapidly…For once change is on the students’ side. Let’s make this one work.” There is little to no concern expressed by the paper about plans to drastically reduce faculty, increase class sizes, truncate course offerings and raise tuition.
March 26, 1990. A New York Times article (3/14/90 but reprinted widely) reports on a national trend in universities reducing faculty teaching loads. : “With a faculty shortage expected in the mid-1990’s, many colleges and universities are discovering that the best way to attract and keep able professors is not so much with money as with light teaching loads. Unfortunately, the decline in teaching loads coincides with a rise in public concern about the quality of undergraduate education. Somewhere there’s going to be a collision…When faculty members teach less often, students pay the price, in the form of larger classes, less flexibility in course selection and higher tuitions that result from the need to hire more faculty.”
(3/26/90) Ironically, the University of Bridgeport is taking the opposite approach–increasing teaching loads and reducing the number of faculty–to arrive at the same result: larger classes, less course availability and higher tuition. The Times article and UB’s response to a budget crisis are sides of the same coin: reduced time in the classroom cheats students of the education they pay for, but increased teaching loads reduce time for scholarship. One way or another, both impact the academic quality of the institution, and neither puts educational goals ahead of financial priorities.
March 27, 1990. At a hearing in New Haven before Judge Jose Cabranes, UB-AAUP asks for a temporary restraining order to stop the University’s “restructuring.” The union’s lawyers argue that irreparable harm would result from implementing the administration’s plan because if an arbitrator found in the faculty’s favor, they would have no remedy; once the restructuring was complete, there would be no courses for them to teach in the fall.
The University’s attorney argues that professors are “no different than auto mechanics” and that the layoffs would not harm them professionally. He goes on to make the stunning assertion that if an arbitrator should decide that the faculty had been entitled to a year’s notice and severance pay, the University would simply pay them for the lost fall semester, then reinstate them in the spring–a point that seems to undermine the school’s claim of financial exigency.
Judge Cabranes adjourns the hearing until April 10 to give the parties time to hone their arguments, warning the University not to proceed with the restructuring plan in the meantime. It is a restraining order in effect, if not formally.
March 28, 1990. UB-AAUP President Alfred Gerteiny reports on yesterday’s hearing before Judge Jose Cabranes in an UPDATE to the membership: OUR DAY IN COURT: Pardonnez-leur, Car ils ne savent point ce qu’ils font!
“[The administration attorney] argued that there was no need to issue a restraining order pending settlement of an outstanding grievance through arbitration, because, should the arbitrator determine that AAUP was right on the matter of a year’s notice and a year’s severance pay, as per Article 10.6, the University would readily compensate the laid-off faculty members, even though there would be nothing for them to do next fall!
“This, they argued, would be tantamount to a semester’s sabbatical with full pay. These faculty would then be rescheduled to teach next Spring as usual.
“It did not seem to occur to the Administration that its argument for laying off 50 faculty members in the first place rested on financial exigency and therefore on the imminent collapse of the institution should they not immediately and summarily terminate without due notice and severance pay.
“We could not, even if we tried, invoke a better argument that the whole issue of ‘financial exigency’ at the University is contrived!
“In the end, Judge Cabranes adjourned the hearing until April 10th at 4:30 p.m., when he expects to hear more cogent argumentations…but he warned the Administration not to proceed in the implementation of their policy enunciated on March 12 under ‘financial exigency.’…This, in fact, amounted to a temporary restraining order, albeit one that does not require a label.
“On Thursday, March 29, a Step Two grievance hearing with full regalia and attorneys will be held. Hopefully some resolution of the differences between AAUP and Administration will be arrived at that will respect both the spirit and the letter of our collective bargaining agreement…In the meantime, the parties are gearing up for the April 10 date with Judge Cabranes.
“What a spectacle! Could not all that harmful hullabaloo been prevented through collegial cooperation and respect for the contract?”
March 29, 1990. A Step 2 grievance hearing is held on the issues of “financial exigency”, notice and severance pay, and age discrimination in the selection of faculty to be terminated. Present: (Admin:) Provost Eigel, Vice President Beecher, Atty. G. Mihalakos and J. Sabanosh; (Union:) Van der Giessen, A. Gerteiny, J. Crowley, D. Sethi, and Atty. R. Goldstein.
Grievance Officer Hans van der Giessen reports: “On March 27 the parties had been in Federal Court where the UB/AAUP had requested a Temporary Restraining Order and filed a motion for a preliminary injunction to prevent the administration from terminating members of the faculty on March 29. The result of this hearing was for Judge Cabranes to request that the parties make every effort to resolve as many issues as possible through the grievance process and that the administration stay its announced intentions until this had been done. A date for a new hearing was set for April 10. It was under these compelling judicial instructions that the Step 2 grievance conference took place.” Attorneys dominate the conference, which lasts from 11 am to 3:30 pm.
The administration’s positions are: that “exigency” is real, and the books have been opened to verify the case; that the University needs permanent savings of $3 million from the faculty budget or it will run out of operating funds in October. It has chosen to effect this saving by terminating some 50 faculty members, but is open to any other suggestions that will accomplish the same end. It cites as an example a 20-25% cut in the faculty payroll. Also, the administration contends that Article 10.6A (a year’s notice and year’s severance pay) does not apply to cases of “financial exigency.”
The union position is that Article 10.6A does apply, since there is no qualification expressed in the contract clause. The union also takes the position that there will be no discussion of financial exigency until the administration agrees to abide by the terms of the collective bargaining agreement.
“After several hours of discussion it became clear that an impasse had been reached…We therefore formally requested an expedited arbitration to resolve the disputed meaning and applicability of Article 10.6A.” The administration refuses this request, insisting that their position on Article 10.6A could only be appreciated in the context of all the issues raised in the grievance, and that an expedited arbitration on 10.6A would not give them a fair hearing. The conference is adjourned. The administration agrees to give a written response to the grievance within ten calendar days.
(3/29/90) The Scribe: Scribe editors complain that the student paper’s computers had been stolen last semester and still have not been replaced, making it a challenge to get the paper out every week. In protest, the editors sent a joint letter of resignation to the administration and advisors. In response, the Dean of Student Life asked for their keys. (He later apologized and assured the students that the publications board will allow purchase of new computers after the end of the fiscal year (August). The editors wonder why they are not allowed to touch the $14,000 in their budget this year.
(3/29/90) The Scribe: An op-ed piece by Prof. Dick Allen (The Real University on Long Island Sound) calls on all campus constituents –faculty, administration, trustees, and student leaders to go on a mandatory retreat, to meet eight hours a day or 24 hours if necessary, (the doors locked so no one can get out) “until we all emerge with an agreement about UB’s future that we can take pride in, announcing that we’ve healed our problems, we have agreed to put into immediate action imaginative and exciting and well-publicized plans, and that the faculty can get back to thinking mainly about what it does superbly at UB: teaching.”
March 30, 1990. The UB administration’s plan for restructuring and mass layoffs of faculty has now been hobbled by the union’s request for an injunction, which resulted in a court hearing postponed to April 10 and a judge’s order not to proceed in the meantime. The March 12 timetable for termination notices to faculty (March 29) and a revised fall class schedule available to students by April 4 is no longer feasible.
The administration meanwhile refuses to have the question of notice and severance pay decided separately by expedited arbitration. The grievance process grinds ahead on all the issues combined: notice/severance, financial exigency, and age discrimination.
The next contractual deadline is May 1, when letters of termination or non-renewal of appointments must be sent to faculty in order to comply with the one year’s notice rule.
March 31, 1990. Friday paychecks to the faculty in North Hall do not arrive at their customary hour, 3:00 pm. Professors who decide to investigate by going across campus to the payroll office in Rennell Hall find the doors locked before the usual closing time, 4:00 pm.
Prof. Jerry Allen calls it a “comedy of errors” in his complaint to administration: “I can’t believe there was some premeditated efforts to slow down the process of giving out faculty pay checks, but the situation was certainly more exacerbating than necessary.”
April 1, 1990. An article by Scott Shuger in Washington Monthly (“The Academic Side-Step”) describes a trend in academe: university administrations defending morally (and legally) questionable activities with the Principle of Academic Freedom (PAF).
“The original purpose of PAF was to ensure that professors would not be fired because of the views they held. But today’s generation of college executives has been quite imaginative in widening PAF’s application.” Shuger cites, as examples, “price-fixing” tuition and financial aid; investments in apartheid South Africa; resistance to government inquiries into bidding procedures and legal accusations of gender bias in denial of tenure–all cases in which universities denounced investigations into their policies as violations of academic freedom. As one state legislator put it, after the University of Vermont stood upon academic freedom when it refused to disclose its faculty salaries: “The university wants to be public when that best suits it but private when that best suits it.”
Freedom to hold an opinion is being conflated with freedom of action by the corporate university, especially as it engages in questionable business practices. To quote former University of Chicago president Robert Maynard Hutchins, “Here the university abandons the task of intellectual leadership and mirrors, symbolizes, and justifies the great reversal of ends and means which is the underlying disorder of our society.”
What kind of mind, Shuger asks, could live amidst all of the values at work on a college campus and be oblivious to them? “Only the corporate mind now dominating our campuses. In short, we are well on our way to ‘edu-business’…[which] promises to do every bit as much for the university as agri-business did for the family farm.”
April 2, 1990. “Recommended Faculty Reductions.” The administration compiles a list of faculty and their salaries, along with deans’ and provost’s recommendations for professors to be terminated. (This list is kept secret, and administrators deny it exists.)
April 3, 1990. Early registration for the fall semester is set to begin, but there is no revised course schedule because the University’s “restructuring” has been indefinitely delayed.
April 4, 1990. Peterson’s Guide to Colleges 1990 lists UB as having the highest tuition and fees among its nearest private competitors: Fairfield University, Quinnipiac, Sacred Heart, University of Hartford, University of New Haven.
April 5, 1990. The University claims it already has hundreds of students signed up for its new Chiropractic College, although it is not yet licensed, funded, staffed, or scheduled to open. The Chiropractic College will replace The School of Nursing, which the administration decided to eliminate last fall, phasing out its programs and eliminating its tenured faculty over the next two years.
April 6, 1990. The administration responds to the union’s March 19 grievance. In a memo to Grievance Officer Hans Van Der Geissen, University attorney George Mihalakos (as Acting Personnel Director) writes:
“1. Insofar as your Grievance claims the Administration’s declaration of financial exigency was not “demonstrably bona fide,” the Administration gave the Union copies of the financial documents detailing the financial condition of the University and the Administration has offered to provide you with additional relevant documentation on request and to answer any questions the Union has concerning such documents. Clearly, the declaration of financial exigency is demonstrably bona fide.
2. In declaring financial exigency, the Administration did not violate the procedures set forth in the 1940 Statement.
3. Relative to your claim regarding 10.6(A), the Administration disagrees with the Union regarding the applicability of this provision to the situation at hand.
4. Concerning your claim that the manner of layoff discriminates against faculty on the basis [of] age, the Administration developed procedures which would comply with the 1940 Statement and the collective bargaining agreement in cases of layoff due to financial exigency and has involved the faculty to the extent required by such documents in selecting faculty for layoff. Any action taken by the Administration relative to layoffs has been taken solely on the basis of educational and operational considerations and the respective qualifications of faculty members.
In view of the foregoing, the Administration hereby denies the grievance.”
April 7, 1990. The semester begins to draw to a close as the grievance and the lawsuit wait for further action. No fall course schedule is available. The union and its attorneys confer on the administration’s denial of the Step Two grievance, for which the next and final step is arbitration.
April 8, 1990. The union’s financial consultant, Prof. Richard Weber, submits his preliminary report on “financial exigency” to Prof. Crowley.
The prologue gives the AAUP definition of financial exigency: “an imminent financial crisis which threatens the survival of the institution as a whole and which cannot be alleviated by less drastic means,” and that “all feasible alternatives to termination of appointments has been pursued.”
Based on this definition, Weber says, “I am unconvinced that UB has satisfied this national standard at the present time.”
His reasons include:
• fund balances continued to grow as recently as records are available.
• disparities and contradictions in the University’s projections of deficits and enrollment (especially differences in what the administration told the banks and what they told the union.)
• there is no definite pattern in UB’s enrollment (which fluctuates widely year to year) to provide a reliable forecast of what will happen next year.
• restructured debt (to a higher rate with a shorter payback period), including the recent bank loan with its “quite restrictive covenants and operating benchmarks,” have put a severe strain on UB’s operating funds.
• construction projects, like the new addition to the Law School, have drawn on current funds, adding to the deficit.
• early retirements have also put a strain on the budget in the short term, but will begin to save the school money in the near future.
• cuts demanded from the faculty line (18%) are more than three times the cuts demanded from administrative budgets (5%); meanwhile, instructional costs have increased at an annual rate of 7% while administrative costs have risen 11.6%.
Weber says the school has assets in endowments, pledges, and restricted funds which could be used in accordance with their restrictions. “…about $8 million are available to cover any deficits while UB is restructuring its debt and reducing its non-salary expenditures. ”
“Depending on which of their forecasts one accepts, deficits would disappear and become surpluses, as in the loan application, or get worse as in their submission for these hearings. Given the deficit projections, they are not now in a position in which such deficits would “threaten the survival of the institution. Finally, aside from severe forced faculty reductions there are a number of obvious measures…which could alleviate the projected deficits without putting severe strain on the institution.”
April 9, 1990. The union leadership finds the preliminary Weber Report on financial exigency perplexing as it meets to decide next steps. Meanwhile, the attorneys prepare for tomorrow’s court hearing with Judge Cabranes.
April 10, 1990. The long-awaited court hearing with Judge Cabranes is postponed to the following week, extending the de facto injunction on the University’s restructuring plan.
April 11, 1990. The union Negotiating Team schedules meetings for faculty members to come and voice their issues and concerns about upcoming contract negotiations.
Meanwhile, communications between the attorneys on both sides of the grievance issue become more hostile and nonproductive.
April 12, 1990.
Memo from UB-AAUP President Alfred Gerteiny to Provost Edwin Eigel:
The AAUP Executive Committee is distressed at the legalism and complicated exchanges between our respective attorneys. Furhermore, UB-AAUP rejects the apparent maneuvres seeking to lead it into a concession negotiation at the expense of its membership. The Committee does, however, wish me to assure you of UB-AAUP’s willingness to commence promptly good faith negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement and of its expectation that you do likewise.
The Committee has, consequently, directed me to seek to restore the “dialogue among scholars” that has been sorely missing so far. Accordingly, I am proposing the following concise memorandum of understanding to resolve the differences consequent to your March 12th declaration.
A. The Administration’s claim that a University-wide situation of demonstrably bona fide financial exigency exists will be fully investigated and verified by the AAUP and its outside consultant. Their conclusions will be made promptly to the UB community.
B. In any event, the Administration and UB-AAUP will cooperate to seek a sound financial basis to assure the University’s continued viability and growth.
C. The Administration withdraws its statement of intent to summarily dismiss faculty by reason of financial exigency.
D. The UB-AAUP will suspend its lawsuit, and the grievance now pending, regarding the Administration’s March 12th declaration.
Ed, it is indubitable that bickering in the ivory tower is unavoidable. Why, then, hire outsiders to do it for us? Let us reaffirm our commitment to the growth and survival of our University by uniting to resolve reasonably what is in fact a very simple matter.
April 13, 1990. With the court date postponed to April 20, the union continues to collect information from chairs on the “irreparable harm” that would ensue from restructuring; also, the request for information now includes any cases of students planning to transfer.
In an update to the membership, Alfred Gerteiny explains that “it has now been clarified that the budget deficit the administration claims as the basis for exigency is in their projected 1990-91 budget! (Recall last year’s staged end-of-spring-term crisis demands that the faculty give up a quarter of their TIAA-CREF payments in return for no assurances of any kind, or else the Bank Loan would not materialize and bankruptcy would ensue!)” He also notes that in Weber’s analysis, “so far it appears that the cries of imminent bankruptcy are somewhat overstated.”
April 14, 1990. UB-AAUP has notified the American Association of University Professors, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, and the Connecticut Labor Board of its intention to begin formal negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement.
April 15, 1990. The academic calendar requires, under normal circumstances, that personnel reviews are concluded and the Provost is making final recommendations to the President on faculty appointment renewals.
April 16, 1990. While the University presses on with its intention to decimate the faculty in the bargaining unit, the Law School remains untouched by the financial crisis. The school is expanding its facilities with money from the general fund, and its well-paid professors are safe from any threats of paycuts or layoffs. In fact, they are looking forward to salary increases.
Dean Terrence Benbow beams in a photo atop an article in the Connecticut Law Tribune “As UB Shrinks, Its Law School Builds.” He proclaims “proudly,” the massive expansion is “only Phase I–only the beginning.” The article points out that “the physical improvements are a symbol of the law school’s growth and strength, even at a time when the rest of the university is reeling financially.”
“In accordance with (American Bar Association) guidelines, the law school keeps about 85 percent of its revenues and turns 15 percent back to the university.”
Even as the quasi-independent law school drains money from the rest of the university to meet stringent accreditation demands, the article expresses apprehension that the administration will soon begin to see it as “a cash cow, and try to milk it for the benefit of other programs.”
“The University has underwritten the law school’s growth for 10 years,” President Greenwood is quoted as saying. But now she and Dean Terrence Benbow are negotiating a way for the university to start charging the school for indirect costs, like utilities and central services.
Attorney Michael Koskoff speculates that “There could be a temptation to dig more deeply into the law school’s pockets, ‘But I don’t think anyone’s going to let that get out of hand. …The university recognizes that the law school has to thrive for the university to get any benefit.'” He also believes that “in a worst-case scenario, the law school could survive the university’s collapse.”
April 17, 1990. Provost Edwin Eigel replies to Alfred Gerteiny’s memo of April 12, in which Gerteiny appealed for a collegial conversation between the two men, without interference by lawyers. (The tone of Eigel’s reply suggests it was written by the administration’s attorney):
“I have read and reread your proposal contained in your memo dated April 12, 1990. I have reviewed it in detail with our attorney. After all this analysis and discussion, I am still bothered by one fact: that is, your effort to establish preconditions to meaningful discussions with us over matters you are legally bound to discuss and should be eager to discuss.
“Our collective bargaining agreement will expire on August 31, 1990. Your Union and the University are legally bound to bargain in good faith over a successor. The University administration is ready, willing, and able to begin bargaining as soon as we can schedule a mutually agreeable date, which we believe should be prior to the end of April.
“This year, because of our financial situation, we have also invited your –indeed, urged you–to engage in in-depth discussions with us over how to achieve immediate, long-range reductions of about $3 million in the faculty budget, as well as over your suggestions for alternatives to such reductions, which would provide the University with viable means for maintaining a balanced operating budget on a long-term basis beginning next fiscal year.
“Over the past two years, we have attempted to engage in meaningful dialogue with you, without the presence of legal counsel, in order to resolve our budgetary problems. These attempts have not been successful. Because of the urgent and critical nature of the present situation, especially with regard to the 1990/91 budget, we believe that the presence of our attorney is necessary to help us avoid the delays and impasses of the past.
“It is clearly to your advantage and the advantage of those you represent to do all you can to engage in such discussions with us without conditions and without delay. Otherwise, your offer to “cooperate to seek a sound financial basis to assure the University’s continued viability and growth,” cannot be taken seriously.
“The appropriateness of your beginning such discussions with us promptly is so obvious that I cannot understand why you would have any hestitation in doing so, much less establish preconditions to doing so. In an effort to establish a less adversarial atmosphere, the administration has already published the regular class schedule on April 16 for early registration, rather than the revised one, and, without admitting an obligation to do so, has committed to applying the provisions of Section 10.6 of our collective bargaining agreement to any tenured faculty member issued notice of layoff during the term of that agreement based on our financial exigency.
“As we will, whether by your voluntary agreement or by requirement of law, soon be bargaining over a successor to the current collective bargaining agreement, we are not willing to commit now to any course of conduct subsequent to the expiration of the current agreement. Such future conduct by us – and by your union – will be discussed and determined in the bargaining process or governed by operation of law and, therefore, need not represent impediments to our immediate ability to give our full attention to current issues. The University administration is maintaining an open mind relative to all issues appropriate for bargaining.
“As I stated above, we have modified our positions on Section 10.6 and publication of a revised schedule in an attempt to clear the way for the meaningful discussions we both know are in our mutual best interests and the interest of the University community. In this same spirit, we have asked you to agree to postpone to August 1 the May 1 layoff notification deadlines in the collective bargaining agreemnt in hopes that, if the forthcoming negotiations results in a mutually acceptable alternative to layoffs as a solution to our financial problems, we could avoid identifying publicly some or all of those faculty members who might otherwise be selected for layoff. That decision is still in your hands, but I remind you that May 1 is rapidly approaching and we may soon be forced to act.
“The University’s modification of position and your agreement to extend the May 1 dedline to August 1, as well as your suspension of your lawsuit and your March 19 grievance, should provide us with sufficient opportunity to address the real issues that face us, without nagging distraction that the notice deadline and pending litigation represent.
“I ask you to give careful consideration to what I have said in this memo. Perhaps it is time to avoid “bickering” and step down from the “ivory tower” to begin meaningful discussions on these hard issues as soon as possible in an atmosphere as free of adversarial proceedings and deadlines as we can possibly make it.
I look forward to your prompt and positive reply.”
April 18, 1990. Financial consultant Richard Weber continues to collect information from UB Vice President Beecher, including enrollment projections, Admissions reports, and sections of the July 1989 loan agreement pertaining to deficit/surplus targets. Also included are financial projections for the new Chiropractic College, which projects net surpluses into 1994.
In the midst of “financial exigency,” the University is starting a new college (Chiropractic, to replace the Nursing College) with new faculty, administration and facilities, which it expects to open in Spring 1991.
April 19, 1990.
(4/19/90): The postponed court hearing is scheduled for tomorrow, April 20.
(4/19/90): Memo to Provost Eigel from UB-AAUP President Alfred Gerteiny:
“I am in receipt of your kind memo of April 17th, for which I thank you, but which nevertheless continues to exacerbate the apparent tug-of-war that stands in the way of meaningful negotiations. Frankly, I did not expect it. What I am looking for is a simple, clear and unequivocal memorandum of understanding that both the Administration and the AAUP are ready and willing to commence, as soon as feasible, good faith negotiations over a successor to the collective bargaining agreement extant without any preconditions at all from either side.
“In the meantime, we should allow the AAUP committee and its outside consultant now studying whether or not a University-wide situation of financial exigency exists, to persevere in its work, with a view to assuring continued institutional growth and viability.
“As for the matter of the applicability or non-applicability of Article 10.6 in a situation of financial exigency, and given contradictory statements to the AAUP and the Faculty Council, we wish to proceed to expeditious arbitration unless the Administration withdraws its statement of intent to summarily dismiss faculty by reason of financial exigency.
“Should a broad understanding be reached on the above, the AAUP will eagerly suspend its now pending lawsuit.”
(4/19/90): AAUP Update to the Membership:
Gerteiny writes that AAUP and Administration are “close, but not close enough to an understanding.” “…I have resumed direct, personal correspondence with Provost Eigel and asked him, apparently without success, to reciprocate. Indeed, although his memos are now signed by Eigel, they seem to be dictated by one of his ghosts. In brief, the Administration is seeking to maneuvre us into a disadvantageous negotiating position by imposing a requirement ‘to engage in in-depth discussion…over how to achieve immediate, long-range reductions of about $3 million in the faculty budget…’ While we earnestly seek to achieve a sound balance in the University’s operating budget, we reject the concept that such should be accomplished solely at the expense of the faculty budget…While it is evident to the community that the financial health of the University has further deteriorated over the past two years, it is at best innocent to believe that the recovery could be obtained through the proposed radical ablation of the faculty ranks.
“Furthermore, the Law School is exempt from the ostensibly needed overall sacrifice. In fact, “financial exigency” must be University-wide, not selective in scope. …Nor could financial exigency be a convincing declaration when an institution demonstrates a steady growth in assets and owns unused real estate abandoned to the ravages of nature….Nor could financial exigency exist ‘in an effort to achieve a long-term reduction in the faculty beginning in fiscal year 1990-91.’
Gerteiny reports that the administration has agreed to apply Article 10.6 to any tenured faculty member laid off during the term of the current contract. “I have objected to the restriction and proposed instead … to submit the issue to expeditious arbitration unless of course the Administration withdraws its statement of intent to summarily dismiss faculty by reason of financial exigency.”
April 20, 1990. A meeting yesterday by Faculty Council results in a vote to send a letter to the Board of Trustees, describing the Administration as incompetent to deal with the school’s problems and appealing for the Board’s intervention. The letter is leaked to the press, resulting in an article today in the Connecticut Post:
(4/20/90) UB FACULTY UNIT FLAYS GREENWOOD TEAM (by Carole Burns). “The University of Bridgeport’s faculty council is calling the administration of President Greenwood incompetent and unable to handle the school’s wide-ranging problems. In a letter addressed to individual members of the Board of Trustees, the council also asked the board to ‘take the necessary action to establish a competent administrative team.’ The council’s action comes more than five weeks after the university announced plans to lay off about 50 tenured faculty as part of a reorganization intended to solve the school’s financial crisis.
“But the faculty council claims the administration’s March announcement has instead endangered the university’s fiscal and academic future. Student transfers, for example, are up and deposits for new students are down, the letter claims. The school’s accreditation is also in jeopardy, the council says.”
The article notes that only 3 of the council’s 20 members voted against sending the letter. Faculty Council President Margot Hardenbergh refuses comment, saying the letter was intended to be a private communication. Board Chairman Nicholas Panuzio says the school’s problems would not be solved by university leaders criticizing one another: “It’s only going to be solved by people taking a realistic view of what needs to be done at the university and sitting down and discussing what has to be done…I, for my part, am not going to be part of anything unless it is a discussion of what we can do to make the university better for the real people we serve, the students.”
The faculty council, however, claims in its letter that its efforts to help solve the university’s financial troubles have met with little cooperation from the administration. It is a charge that the faculty’s union, which is now suing the university over the proposed layoffs, has made as well. Greenwood’s office has no comment.
(4/20/90) The court hearing on the union’s lawsuit scheduled for today is postponed again, to April 24.
April 21, 1990. Financial Vice President Beecher announces a new procedure (effective April 23) for purchasing anything at the University.
“Any proposed expenditure must be pre-authorized by use of a purchase order,to be approved by the department chair or supervisor, forwarded to the appropriate dean’s office for approval, then to the division vice president,and then to the accounting office for budget approval prior to commitment and/or order.
“Check requests for payments of goods or services purchased without the purchase order and proper approvals will not be honored. This seems to be the only procedure wherein we can control our costs and not overspend our budgets.”
“…Any commitment of the University funds that is made without following this procedure will not be paid and the individual violating such a procedure will be held personally liable for the expenditure. In addition, if the University is held liable for expenditures, the individual incurring such shall be subject to disciplinary action.”
April 22, 1990. An article in the New York Times reports on the increasing number of graduate students across the country attempting to unionize, against determined resistance from universities:
“The union movement may have been in decline for years, but graduate teaching assistants seem to be running counter to the trend. The assistants are forcing major universities that employ them for many undergraduate courses to face complaints about being overworked and underpaid.
…”Decisions that affect graduate students are made unilaterally by administrators,” said Ralph Leck, organizer for the Associated Graduate Students Employees – U.C.I. ”We have no real power, unlike other graduate students in Eastern Europe.”
“At the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 25 teaching assistants gave classes on Thursday in the hallways of the Whitmore administration building on the first day of a three-day campaign for a union election. The group, which voted last year to affiliate with District 65, said there would be a major protest on Tuesday. … After initially refusing to recognize the group, Chancellor Joseph Duffey accepted a recommendation of the university trustees two weeks ago that he schedule an election on the students’ representation.
Ms. Heberle said Mr. Duffey had issued three unacceptable conditions. First, the Office of Employee Relations would decide whether both state-financed and Federally financed employees were eligible. Second, a majority of the student employees have to vote. And third, any organization representing the students, even one that is not a collective-bargaining unit, could be on the ballot.
”That’s not the way union elections are run anywhere,” an assistant in the English department, Seth Rothberg, said. ”If it took the majority of eligible voters to vote for one person, you wouldn’t have a President of the United States.”
April 23, 1990.
(4/23/90): The court hearing on the union’s lawsuit is scheduled for tomorrow, April 24.
(4/23/90): Memo from Provost Eigel to UB-AAUP President Gerteiny: “This is a simple, clear and unequivocal response to your memo to me dated April 19, 1990. The University administration continues to be ready and willing to commence good faith negotiations over a successor to the current collective bargaining agreement as soon as possible. We have no preconditions to the commencement of such negotiations, nor, as you know, have we ever had. As you should be aware, we are both required by law to begin such negotiations in sufficient time to enable us to reach agreement by the August 31, 1990 expiration date. We ask that such negotiations begin no later than the end of the month.
“…With regard to the applicability of Section 10.6 of our collective bargaining agreement, we will adhere to our earlier statements to the effect that, without admitting the applicability of Section 10.6 to layoffs of tenured faculty because of financial exigency, we will voluntarily apply the provisions of Section 10.6 to all tenured faculty members issued layoff notices during the term of the current agreement. Our bargaining for a successor agreement should determine the conditions and procedures for layoffs of tenured faculty under the successor agreement.
“Based on the compromises we have offered and implemented, we believe your lawsuit is moot, but you are free to pursue it or not, as you wish. To move ahead on these matters, I suggest that you and I meet informally this afternoon, April 23, at, say, 2:30 am. Please call me if such a meeting is agreeable.”
(4/23/90): Memo: Gerteiny to Eigel: “Thank you for your memo of April 23. As I indicated to you on the phone, we find it generally satisfactory, particularly in light of your verbal explications of what you understand to be the provisions of Article 10.6 which shall be observed (i.e., the May 1st deadline, the notice period and the year’s severance pay). We are, however, doing this without prejudice to our position that, should the present collective bargaining agreement remain without a successor agreement, the provisions of 10.6 shall continue to apply after August 31, 1990, by operation of law [emphasis added]. As I specified to you, we are ready to join you in submitting an immediate stipulation that, on the basis of your memo of April 23 and the present response to it, an agreement has been reached allowing the UB-AAUP to withdraw without prejudice the pending motions before Judge Cabranes.”
(4/23/90): Provost Eigel issues a statement to The University Community, in which he reiterates the circumstances that led to the March 12 “exigency”:
“1. Operating costs are increasing.
2. Student Enrollment (and, therefore, tuition income) is declining. This is a continuing phenomenon of the 1980’s affecting many colleges and universities.
3. Sound fiscal practices, as well as the terms and conditions of bank loans taken to insure the University’s financial security, require the University to have a balanced budget.”
Eigel describes cost-saving measures the University has already taken, but that “these measures are insufficient by themselves either to achieve a balanced budget in 1990/91 or to assure the much needed long-term financial stability. Some are only stop-gap measures. . . .The administration has reviewed these facts carefully and has determined that the faculty budget must be reduced by $3,000,000 beginning in 1990/91. …The administration has urged UB-AAUP to begin meaningful discussions immediately regarding the means by which the University plans to achieve the $3,000,000 reduction, and the UB/AAUP’s alternatives for achieving such a reduction.”
“As a gesture of good faith, the administration published and used for early registration a Fall 1990 schedule based on present faculty staffing, without any reductions. In addition, the administration has assured UB/AAUP in writing that any tenured faculty member issued a layoff during the term of the current collective agreement will be covered by the provisions of Section 10.6 of that agreement, which defines conditions of notice of layoff and severance pay. The University is willing, if UB/AAUP agrees, to postpone issuance of any notices of layoff, so that if discussions between the administration and UB/AAUP result in an agreement on alternative to layoffs, public identification of some or all of the faculty members who might otherwise be selected for layoff can be avoided.”
…”The administration believes that the University’s budget problems can be resolved through good-faith negotiations.”
April 24, 1990.
(4/24/90): Memo from Provost Eigel to UB-AAUP President Gerteiny:
“In response to your memo to me of April 23, 1990, the Administration stands by our position stated in my memo to you of April 23.
“By telling you that the Administration will voluntarily apply the provisions of Section 10.6 to all tenured faculty members issued layoff notices during the term of the current Agreement, we are in effect telling you that any such notices issued during the current agreement – for example, on or before May 1, 1990 – will designate the 1990-91 academic year as the terminal academic year and that tenured faculty laid off by reason of such notice will receive nine (9) months (one academic year) severance pay – no more; no less.
“As we told you several times during our meeting of March 29, 1990, the Administration does not want to layoff tenured faculty if it can find an acceptable alternative.
“By the same token, because we are taking this position voluntarily in order to facilitate the commencement of bargaining over our current and projected financial situation and the terms of a successor to the currrent collective bargaining agreement, we do so without prejudice and preserve our right to challenge the applicability of Section 10.6 to our current situation as well as the meaning of Section 10.6, if, indeed, it is applicable.
“We believe your current lawsuit is moot and expect you to withdraw it forthwith. Your failure to do so will be considered a contentious act which could subject you to application for sanctions under Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and Title 28 U.S.C. Section 1927.”
(4/24/90): Lawyers for both sides sign a letter of agreement:
“IT IS HEREBY STIPULATED AND AGREED, by and between the parties to this proceeding, that the pending motions for a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction against defendant, UNIVERSITY OF BRIDGEPORT, are hereby withdrawn, without prejudice and without costs, on the basis of defendant’s representation that it shall in all respects comply with the terms and provisions of Article 10.6 of the parties’ 1987-1990 Collective Bargaining Agreement with respect to any notices of lay off to tenured faculty it may issue during the term of such Agreement. IT IS FURTHER AGREED that the terms of this Stipulation shall not be construed as a concession or admission by either party regarding any other disputed issue.”
April 25, 1990.
(4/25/90): Memo from Provost Edwin Eigel to UB/AAUP President Alfred Gerteiny: The memo acknowledges an agreement to start contract negotiations on April 30, place to be decided. Also:
“Consistent with our earlier discussions, I am also requesting that the May 1, 1990 deadline for issuing layoff notices to faculty members be extended to August 1, 1990 so that in the event our discussions lead to alternatives to layoffs, we can avoid identifying publicly the names of faculty members who might otherwise have been issued such notices.”
(4/25/90): Provost Eigel issues a statement to the University Community announcing that the faculty union has withdrawn its request for a restraining order and temporary injunction. “We view these withdrawals as a commitment by UB/AAUP to come to the bargaining table rather than to the courtroom to address the University’s financial situation and the immediate need to reduce the faculty budget by $3 million on a long term basis effective 1990/91.”
April 26, 1990.
(4/26/90): Memo from UB/AAUP President Alfred Gerteiny to Provost Eigel:
“Thank you for your hand-carried memos of April 25 (12:30 pm, 3:30 pm, and 4:40 pm). As agreed, our respective bargaining committees will meet on Monday, April 30 at 2:30 pm in the Trustees’ Dining Room. This initial meeting, as usual, will be concerned with exchanging letters of credentials and discussing an agenda for the planned negotiations. The objective is to reach agreement for a successor contract and not to deal with the University’s financial situation, although obviously the two issues have some connections.
“In fact, it is premature, if not inappropriate, for the negotiating team to discuss the financial situation at this juncture, since an AAUP financial exigency committee is still studying its veracity. The settlement reached on April 24th is based on Article 10.6 in its integrality. I am disinclined to move the May 1st deadline at this point, although I am submitting the matter to the Executive Commitee and the membership for advice.
“Let me finally stress that I take offense at your implication that AAUP is unwilling to meet with you. I have indicated to you quite clearly that the shortness of time, the press of business (last week of class and preparation for exams for the following week) and the primary commitment of the faculty to its teaching and students precludes our being stampeded into hasty and unplanned meetings.
“I also want to seize this opportunity to ask you to be kind enough to remind Mr. Sabanosh that his bullying will get nowhere with us, and that Rule 11 of the Federal civil procedures and subsequent title and section cited do not mandate agreements where there are none.”
April 27, 1990:
Excerpts from an UB/AAUP UPDATE (4/26/90) circulated to the membership, dissecting Provost Eigel’s statement to the University Community (4/23/90), categorically:
“Provost Eigel’s memo of April 23, “Financial Stability,” would have been more realistically titled “UB Administration’s Position on Negotiating a New Contract.” It is a rehash of Administration positions announced since March 12 (Exigency Day) and it presents as fact many things the Administration would like us to believe, without explanation. We need to address the Provost’s assertions with hard questions.
“Declining enrollment is a continuing phenomenon of the ’80s. For years, the Administration has hidden behind “demographics” as the all-purpose explanation for its poor showing in recruitment. Articles have appeared in the New York Times and the Chronicle recently, exposing the demographics argument as a myth; colleges are not helpless in the face of demographic predictions, and we know that schools similar to UB have done much better with admissions and retention during these “bad times.”
“Sound fiscal practices and the Bank Loan require a balanced budget. We have as much respect for sound fiscal practices as the Provost. But apparently the University’s finances are a shambles. Why else would the President think we are “on track” one moment and “exigent” the next (or even both at the same time)? Control of the operating budget is an administrative responsibility which the Administration has been handling ineptly for the last three years; moreover, it is distressing that Provost Eigel presents it as something still to be hoped for–next year. Basically, the Administration got its Big Loan (at high interest) by making promises it could not keep, then vainly tried to keep them by means of a slash and burn frenzy. It is necessary now for the Administration to renegotiate the terms of its loan before we all become the victims of a budget balanced at any cost.
“Reductions in other expenses, including the elimination of about 130 non-faculty positions reduced the operating budget for 1989/90 by more than $4 million. Where exactly does the $4 million saved, according to the Provost, come from? There is a great difference between eliminating listed but unfilled positions and actually firing people. …Even counting the scores of “positions” eliminated last year, the Administration budget continues to increase faster than the instructional budget. Furthermore, we were told last year the cuts were part of a long range recovery plan; this year, we are told, they were only stop-gap measures and now we need even greater sacrifices. We also recall that most of the “administrative” positions cut were housekeepers and groundskeepers, some of whom have been reinstated by court order, since they were fired illegally in the first place.
“$3 million must be saved. Why must this or some other arbitrary sum come out of faculty salaries? We get no explanation in the memo, but the ostensible reason is that the Loan agreement stipulates that the Administration will rid itself of 60 “excess teaching personnel” by June 30, 1991. We have never seen the study whereby the Administration found these excess faculty, and the number contradicts our own program evaluation reviews. Furthermore, our confusion is aggravated by being told sometimes that bodies must go to reduce the student-faculty ratio, and at other times that it is only a “dollar figure” the Administration is looking for.
…LET’S REMEMBER, HOWEVER, THAT OUR CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS THIS YEAR ARE NOT MAINLY FOR THE PURPOSE OF HELPING THE ADMINISTRATION OUT OF THE FINANCIAL MESS LEFT FROM THE MILES ADMINISTRATION AND COMPOUNDED BY THE GREENWOOD ADMINISTRATION. OUR OBJECT IS A FAIR, COMPREHENSIVE, FORWARD-LOOKING CONTRACT THAT WILL CONTRIBUTE TO A BETTER FUTURE FOR ALL THE CONSTITUENTS OF UB.”
April 28, 1990:
Excerpts from a draft of a letter from UB/AAUP President Alfred Gerteiny to UB chairman Nicholas Panuzio.
Dear Nick: I am gratified indeed by your personal appeal of April 27; it suggests to me that a new era is perhaps dawning upon us, concretizing the term “community” and restoring to it its true meaning.
The Faculty, as you know, has attempted in vain for years to communicate with the Board over matters of obvious common interest; even the recent Faculty Council letter to the Board has vanished unfortunately in the solitude of the tenebrae. A history of missed opportunities, questionable wisdom, lack of vision, bureaucratic exclusivity, ignorance of the realities of higher education has conveyed to us the perception that we, the faculty, do not matter. The present administration has added to this tragic situation the further factors of lack of leadership and lack of stature.
There is no way to escape the fact that the last two administrations have been ineffectual if not incompetent in responding as intelligently as other institutions have to the societal, environmental and demographic factors of the last two decades. Instead of manipulating these to the full advantage of UB our administrators have been overwhelmed and defeated by them. And if by that I am not agreeing with your position that no one is to be blamed for the situation in which UB finds itself, I am doing it with a clear conscience.
… I appreciate, Nick, the sentimental note struck in your letter and I am touched by it. Yes, I too, with 24 years on the faculty and the proud status of being the parent of two graduates of UB, love the institution. I believe further that I have been working as President of AAUP to consecrate its excellence …in the community of universities. But as a member of that community I am more inclined toward rationality. Indeed, your problem has at last become our problem, threatening to destroy our careers, dismember our community and disrupt irreparably our livelihood and our families. And yes we must become involved but that involvement must transcend the passivity implied in simply responding narrowly and blindly to unreasonable requests. …Indeed we cannot be expected to focus exclusively to the task of trimming the already abysmally inadequate faculty budget without being actively involved in the reshaping of the whole University budget. And if that means co-management, then maybe the time has come for us to blaze a new trail in the relationship between management and professional labor in a University setting. Indubitably, to expect us to accept responsibility without authority is to minimize our intelligence and, should we comply with the request, we would indeed deserve your contempt…Exclusive consideration of a faculty budget reduction is out of the question.
… The negotiating process for a new CBA does not provide a suitable arena to discuss the budget. I know, and no doubt, you do too, that the negotiating process would rapidly become the object of contentious chaos should it be allowed to concern itself in budget trimming. It is not conceived for that purpose. This is a specialized task for a specially designed committee. …Should it be determined by our financial analysis that sacrifices are in order, the concept of rational proportionality should be observed and the concept of reciprocity should be applied.
…We must also explore urgently the question of debt refinancing if indeed the present indebtedness is a reason for our financial discomfiture. We did warn an eager president about obtaining a loan at all cost. In fact, the loan seemed the objective of her administration last year and a reason for pitiful self-congratulation in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
…Undersizing furthermore must be the result of an intense academic dialogue and planning. Academic planning should itself animate and define the budgetary process, as eloquently suggested in the NEASC report. These are some of the many possibilities we could explore.
Nick, the latest torrent of memoranda addressed by the administration to the AAUP and the University Community seem to have been nothing but an exercise in public relations or perhaps a means by which to rationalize a Yeshiva declaration. Should this be true it would constitute a fatal blow to our institution.
…Let us abandon public relations games and begin to cooperate for the sake of our institution and its future. This candid and honest response to your vibrant appeal has been conceived as a means to begin the much needed cooperation that we both wish and deserve.
Thank you for the trust shown in writing to me.
Sincerely yours,
Alfred
April 29, 1990:
The first contract negotiation session is scheduled for tomorrow (April 30). Typically, before contract negotiations begin, the faculty union members meet and take a “no contract, no work” vote.
On 4/26/90, a UB/AAUP Membership Meeting was held. A slate of At-Large Members of the Executive Committee were elected: J.M. Van der Droef, R. Bednarz, M. Grant, R. Baumgartner, R. Tino, D. Sethi, V. Betts, P. Costello.
At the same meeting, the members passed the following motion by an overwhelming majority (74 to 4):
“MOVED, that this Faculty will not return to work for the academic year 1990-91 unless a contract has been concluded between the AAUP and the Administration, and should a strike occur, this Faculty will not return to work unless all members of the bargaining unit are permitted to return to work.”
At the same meeting, the members rejected the Administration’s request to extend the May 1st deadline for layoff notification.
The same day (4/26/90), Grievance Officer Hans van der Giessen informs the Administration of the union’s intention to proceed to arbitration over the grievance filed on March 19 (re: the exigency declaration and the intent to layoff tenured faculty without notice or severance pay).
An article in the Post (4/27/90) reports on the union meeting: UB OFFICIALS CONSIDER STRIKE VOTE ROUTINE:
“The faculty’s vote comes a day after administrators asked the union to extend the date by which professors must be notified if they are laid off. The request––which would change that date from May 1 to August 1––followed the administration’s agreement to give professors a year’s notice and severance pay if they are laid off before August 31….But the faculty decided not to grant the request, since it was not included in the settlement reached Tuesday and it violates the faculty’s contract, [UB-AAUP President] Gerteiny said. Gerteiny added that the administration might try to use the threat of layoffs to make professors agree to givebacks in the upcoming contract.
“Tuesday’s settlement also meant that the union withdrew its requests in court to halt the administration’s plans to reorganize the university, which includes laying off about 50 faculty members. The lawsuit has not been withdrawn.”
April 30, 1990.
(4/30/90) The respective negotiating teams meet for their first bargaining session. The Administration does not provide a “letter of credentials,” a protocol which insures that members of the team are authorized to speak for their constituencies. The union presents its letter, and the meeting continues anyway. AAUP repeats its request for missing financial information, which was submitted earlier to VP Beecher. The union will not schedule a second meeting until the information is provided. No proposals are exchanged.
(4/30/90) Provost Edwin Eigel responds to the faculty union’s refusal to extend the contractual deadline for notification of layoffs.
To: Professor A. Gerteiny, President UB/AAUP
The University’s current and projected financial condition presents the University community with such a serious, immediate fiscal problem, that layoffs of tenured faculty pursuant to Article 10 of the current collective bargaining agreement do not represent a viable means of addressing that problem at this time. Accordingly, as UB/AAUP has declined to extend the May 1 notification deadline set forth in our collective bargaining agreement, we will not be issuing layoff notices to tenured faculty on or before May 1, except of course, to faculty whose programs had previously been eliminated.
As you have stated, the Article 10 layoff process would not provide financial relief for at least another two years. Moreover, in addition to meeting the expensive severance conditions during that two-year period, as required by Section 10.6, the University is faced with your Union’s threat of lengthy legal proceedings, which would only exacerbate the University’s financial difficulties.
The University needs help now: not two years from now.
The costs and time delays inherent in the severance pay requirements and your threatened legal proceedings remove an Article 10 layoff from the list of alternatives open to the University as it seeks revival of its financial health. Therefore, the need is now greater than ever for UB/AAUP to join with the University in meaningful efforts of resolving our financial difficulties.
Your negative reactions to our pleas for immediate discussions regarding our financial condition and your statement that your “objective is to reach agreement for a successor contract and not to deal with the University’s financial situation” are particularly disturbing. Moreover, your position that discussion of our financial situation “at this juncture” is “premature,” which you reaffirmed in our meeting today, leads us to conclude that your union is, once again, dragging its feet in an effort to engage in brinkmenship. You obviously fail to appreciate the urgency of our situation to the detriment, not only of the faculty, but of the University community as a whole.
We urge you to reconsider your position.
cc: Executive Committee; AAUP Negotiating Team; Chairman Panuzio; Vice President Beecher; Attorney Mihalakos; Professor Hardenbergh; Prof. Van der Giessen; Deans; Department Chairs; President Greenwood; Negotiating Committee. Copies are later sent to the entire University Community.
May 1, 1990.
(5/1/90): Memo to Provost Edwin Eigel from UB/AAUP President Alfred Gerteiny
Subject: Your Memo of April 30 re: Non-Layoff of Tenured Faculty
I am both encouraged and disappointed by your message of April 30 to me, attachments notwithstanding. Encouraged and indeed pleased by its substance relative to your decision at last not to truncate our faculty by unnecessary and destructive layoffs. Disappointed in that you seem to misunderstand the AAUP position on the matter of negotiations and to begrudge our duty to preserve the integrity of our programs and therefore the competitiveness of the University, as well as the sanctity of contracts and inviolability of tenure.
Nevertheless we want to bathe it in the best light, and accordingly we applaud it as somewhat courageous under the circumstances. Indeed your March 12 position created a typhoon in a demitasse that was unnecessarily destructive and pernicious.
At this point let me suggest that much has to be done to rectify the damage, not the least being a carefully constructed press release––unlike the negative pas-de-trois to which I am responding hereby––stressing that the rapprochement that is bound to ensue from your latest action is a new expression of the institutional solidarity that is required to pull the University away from confrontation and toward cooperation and reconstruction, and that we are now indeed anticipating, as a result, a return to prosperity and competitiveness. To let the situation simmer in the unhealthiness characterized by your latest memo is to miss a valuable opportunity.
I further believe that given the repeated, unfortunate statements and other communications threatening a $3000 tuition increase as an alternative to the layoffs, an immediate, concerted effort must be exerted by the Administration to assuage the anxieties of students and parents. Recruitment and retention, from what I can tell, have been dealt severe blows that are otherwise likely to be exacerbated to our collective detriment.
Finally, with respect to negotiations we believe that much unnecessary posturing and game-playing will continue to inhibit an expeditious and productive process. We urge you to assert your personal leadership in this context. Otherwise, we continue to believe that we should not confuse negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement with discussion of the university’s situation, but simply recognize that there is an obvious connection between them.
Please let me know your thoughts on the foregoing.
(5/1/90): Memo from Tom J to Alfred [Gerteiny]
Subject: Where to go from here
The union has done us all proud, and you deserve the credit. As to the immediate future. I suspect that the deficit is serious. It will get worse because fewer students are coming. So I would urge you to come up with a practical short-term (two years) plan for dealing with the crisis. 1/ a strategy for attracting students at once. 2/ a procedure for saving money which involves all elements of the community, including the administration and the law school. It’s no good relying on the present leadership. As we have said repeatedly, they are incompetent. So it’s up to us to co-manage and, having both contributed to the sacrifices and effected the turnaround, our will be the initiative and the moral kudos in 1992. To waste time trying to haul the “captain” off the bridge at this point is futile. We will, most likely all stand on a reef. Better to keep her up there, but on one side, and get the ship into port first. Don’t let them bluster. A version of the Kalogeras plan might be the starting point for 1/. A graduated pay deferral, or whatever, with a minimum cut-off figure, could be a way towards 2/.
Au revoir et mon appris le plus fort…
May 2, 1990.
To: Provost Eigel
From: Toby Moore, Chair, UB-AAUP Negotiating Committee
Subject: Request for Information
As we agreed at Monday’s negotiating session, our committee requests the following at your earliest convenience.
1. A list of all Administration and Faculty salaries, with rank, years in service, and fringes, including the Law School, for this year and last.
2. Consultant’s Reports:
a. Security
b. Higher Education Associates
c. Computer Center
d. Levitz Report
3. The NEASC final accreditation report.
4. All faculty and administrators who asked for and received early retirement.
5. The Enrollment Projection Model.
6. Administration benefits other than those listed in the IRS Form 990 (e.g., housing and cars for President Greenwood, lodging for Vice President Donatelli at the Hilton, etc.)
7. UB Motor Pool: all cars owned, rented, or leased, and repair/maintenance costs.
8. A list of all authorized University positions (including those authorized but frozen or unfilled) and salaries.
9. Copies of bids submitted to UB for:
a. security service
b. computer center
c. grounds maintenance
Thank you for your cooperation.
[This memo is not answered until June 12, and then nearly all of the requests are denied as “irrelevant to the goal of cutting $3 million from the faculty budget.” The Higher Education Associates report is eventually found to be the source of the claim that the faculty is “overstaffed,” but the union will not see a redacted copy of it until 1991, obtained through legal discovery. ]
May 3, 1990.
Provost Edwin Eigel (in the voice of Atty. John Sabanosh) responds to UB/AAUP President Alfred Gerteiny’s appeal (May 1) to the administration to retract its widely promulgated statement that tuition would have to increase $3000 next year if there were no mass faculty layoffs this semester.
After browbeating the union president once again to “begin meaningful negotiations” to cut the faculty budget, the Provost makes a surprising assertion:
“With regard to the fourth paragraph in your memo of May 1, you have seriously misrepresented statements about a “$3000 tuition increase.” In fact, the only times that figure had been mentioned were to illustrate the scope of our financial situation. It was never a “threat.” President Greenwood always stated that we would not, could not increase tuition that much. Furthermore, in my memo of April 23, 1990, to the University community, I stated that tuition would be increased for next year by approximately 9.5%, a far cry from $3000. A letter to parents and students confirming that rate of increase is going out this week.
“Finally, I note that present indications are that there is no more than normal attrition of students from the University at this point, based on the number of requests made for transcripts, and that student recruitment for next year has been progressing at the same rate, week after week, since last October –there has been no fall off since the “threat” of a $3000 tuition increase supposedly occurred, nor have prospective students raised questions regarding this matter.
“Your reckless remarks about the tuition increase and the rates of student retention and recruitment only underscore a goal to obfuscate the real issues rather than address them. Such remarks, given the wide distribution noted on your memo, damage the very student concerns you pretend to protect.
“I urge you to stop spreading such obviously erroneous information in an effort to discredit the Administration and to focus your energy and attention on the urgent business at hand.”
May 4, 1990.
From a draft of an essay by Prof. Gaylord Haas , written for the UB/AAUP Newsletter:
On Track to Where?
President Greenwood has declared UB to be “on track” a number of times in different contexts, but it is exceedingly difficult to determine which track or where any track leads. Rather like the nightmare of Grand Central commuters, many UB faculty, administrators, and probably students, feel that they are being directed first to one track and then to another with no train (in the form of concrete support and commitment) ever in sight, nor any believable reason for the drastic shifts.
The President declared several times that Long Range Plan II was a formula for disaster. However, not only has no new plan emerged, but the pattern of actions by President Greenwood’s administration has consistently been to impose the most constricting aspects of LRP I and II. We see a determination to make UB a much smaller institution of a limited number of career programs with little place for liberal education or for the traditional responsibility of a university for the advancement of knowledge. We see an expensive obsession with accreditations, mostly, it would seem, for their PR value since there is little interest in long-term administrative support even for the academic quality of favored programs.
…What about President Greenwood’s past acknowledgements of the importance of Nursing for minority students and, for that matter, for the benefit of a region suffering from a chronic shortage of nurses? …We see the impending termination of the Nursing programs….After years of slow strangulation and studied administrative non-support for the Nursing programs, it now seems likely to happen with these, among UB’s oldest, and, for a time, most prestigious programs.
Where are we going? What’s the plan, if any, besides the not-so veiled one of narrowing and drastic reduction in the LRPs (those formulas for disaster)?
Perhaps we should remember that in the 1985 NEASC accreditation report, the Board of Trustees affirmed its determination to carry out Long Range Plan II regardless of who would be president after Miles. Has President Greenwood’s earlier intentions regarding LRPII been overruled? If so, it begs the question, why haven’t we been told?
Finally, there is the oft-denied and then reasserted determination to reduce the faculty by 70 by 1991, even though administration members acknowledge that there is no study of the impact of this reduction on academic programs. If there is any rationality (or plan) to this, the implication is that the impact on programs doesn’t matter because the surviving mini-versity will have only a few programs anyway. And how is a much smaller UB–with fewer students, fewer programs, and the vaguest mission–going to pay off its 5-year, high-interest $13 million loan?
Is there a plan, or any planning, other than the LRPs?… Programs to be evaluated on their profitability? Higher education is carried on for some larger social and cultural good and has never been profitable in any business sense. If programs become profitable, then the ethical and principled non-profit institution lowers its tuition and makes its offerings available to more students. And the mission of UB–to be a “private comprehensive university”? This is the dog chasing its tail. What else was UB ever, pray tell? This is a substitution of a factual description for a statement of principle. It is less useful even than the Long Range Plan I mission statement, that UB’s mission was “to serve the community.” That at least points somewhere, although it is such a general gesture…that it could apply equally well to the corner gas station. If this is the best our administration can do to plan for UB’s academic and financial future, the track we are on is surely headed for oblivion.
May 5, 1990.
There is now no communication possible between the faculty union and the Administration, except through the University’s outside attorney; inquiries sent to the President are directed to the Provost; memos sent to the Provost appear to be answered by the attorney, writing under the Provost’s name; at bargaining sessions, although there are administrators present, all questions must be directed to him; he is the also the Chief Negotiator. In the AAUP Negotiating Team’s summary of the first bargaining session, it is noted that “Tone of the meeting was combative and set by Sabanosh.”
May 6, 1990.
The administration this week announces a 9.5% tuition increase for next year (current tuition is $10,100 annually) or an increase of nearly $1000. This is much less than the $3000 tuition increase the Administration said would ensue if 50 faculty members were not laid off at once. And because of the union’s legal actions, no layoffs were allowed to take place.
However, on March 12, when the plan to layoff faculty was announced to students and the public, Board Chairman Panuzio told the press that there would be a tuition increase of about 9% in addition to the massive reduction in faculty, consolidation of programs, and increase in class sizes. So the tuition increase announced this week was planned for all along.
The usual fall course schedule has been published for early registration. But clearly the administration has not given up on the layoffs as it begins contract negotiations with the faculty. It has tried repeatedly to get the union to move the deadline for layoff notification to August 1, so it can keep the layoff option open if negotiations fail to reduce the faculty budget by $3 million.
So as the semester ends, and students go home, the conflict over layoffs and restructuring remains unresolved. If the administration gets its way at the bargaining table, and effects the mass layoffs in August, students could return in the fall to a class schedule radically different than the one they signed up for. If it doesn’t succeed in reducing the faculty, a bigger jump in tuition might be in the offing as well.
May 7, 1990
UB/AAUP President Alfred Gerteiny responds to Provost Eigel’s memo of May 3, in which the Provost vehemently denies that the Administration ever said that without mass layoffs of faculty, tuition would have to rise by $3000.
“I might have assumed that you carefully read memos submitted for your signature, but I must be under a serious misapprehension. For indeed you would have realized how damaging to your credibility it was to sign a memo attempting to refute the clear statements that high University officials (including the President and the Chairman of the Board) made to the press, students, and general University community to the effect that “the only way” to preserve the university “without raising tuition in excess of $3000 per student” was to layoff 50 faculty members. As for the veracity of our charge, I urge you to consult the appended documents.
“So much bilious ink has been wastefully spilled over a matter that would have best been dealt with through a special public relations campaign, as I suggested, seeking to allay the fear of students and their parents about next year’s tuition!
“This memo is being distributed, as my previous one was, to the same elements of the University community who received copies of your previous two messages. Doesn’t that represent fairness and common practice? Indeed, I did not try through such dissemination to discredit the Administration, as your memo of May 3 accuses me. The Administration itself does a superlative job of it, unfortunately, without my concourse.”
Attached: President Greenwood’s letter to students; University press release of March 12; Bridgeport Post article of March 14.
May 8, 1990
Alfred Gerteiny’s message, “War and Peace” in the union Newsletter, (May 7):.
This torturous and difficult academic year has finally come to an end without the catastrophic planning elaborated by the Administration for both faculty and University. The Admininstration’s attempt to use one part of the contract to abrogate another has failed miserably. Indeed by declaring financial exigency the Administration assumed that it could reduce the faculty from 185 to 135 by way of immediate termination of tenured faculty members without the 15 months notice and the additional year’s severance pay. This perfidious scheme was effectively countered by us on many levels and through various means, and we are pleased and relieved that the sanctity of our contract and the principle of the inviolability of tenure have been upheld.
We wish to congratulate and thank all the faculty for their steadfastness and calm during that storm, steadfastness and resilience that, with the assistance from AAUP chapters across the land, and that of the Washington headquarters, have allowed us to close this academic year with at least a semblance of usualness.
Most importantly, the Faculty resisted pressure to name colleagues for termination and refused to cooperate in the dismantling of the institution. We have overcome, finally, not only because of the rightness of our cause, but because of the solidarity, discipline, and esprit de corps that are indispensable in any confrontation. We do hope that this aggressive interlocution will not be repeated in the Fall. But should it emerge, the AAUP knows it can, as usual, count on its membership.
The damage to the University, however, as a result of that terrible episode, cannot be estimated until next fall. The bad publicity, the sense of lack of leadership and direction, the public impression that the University is on the verge of collapse, that its faculty is expendable, and the threat of a $3000 tuition increase should the faculty not be truncated have sapped the morale of the entire University community and created in the students and their families the impression that UB is moribund, not worth patronizing, and should not be included in their future plans.
There is an urgent need to rectify that image. The Administration must exert itself and use all that is in their power to show that far from being an affront and a defeat, their renunciation of Article 10 terminations is in fact a victory for the University, as all its constituents have now coalesced to revitalize it and put it back on the road to recovery, prosperity and competitiveness.
I have suggested exactly that in my memo of May 1 to Eigel, and the AAUP is ready in the forthcoming months to study, evaluate and make recommendations to trim the WHOLE BUDGET, not just the Faculty one!
The students, their families, and the community at large must be immediately reassured that there will be no $3000 tuition increase and that we have preserved our faculty to better serve them.
We have, as a University, won an Olympian battle. Let us not renew hostilities on the first of September. In this context, the AAUP can only react to aggression; our will, however, is cooperation in constructive, peaceful coexistence.
May 9, 1990.
“Demographic Dance,” an article in the May 7 UB/AAUP Newsletter, challenges the Administration’s explanation for UB’s enrollment decline as part of a national trend.
“What the Administration signaled is that they believe that they are caught in the grasp of overwhelming and inexorable demographic forces…and so they have begun to liquidate the University. … In support of their “overwhelming forces theory,” the Administration presents [a chart of] national data drawn on an arithmetic scale. We believe that these data, which reflect the bases upon which the restructuring decision was made, according to the Bulletin, are inappropriate for an analysis of the University, and to the extent that they are inappropriate, they are misleading.”
The article dissects the charts the Administration used to sell its claim that enrollment at private universities nationally has declined sharply over 30 years, compared to public universities. The chart uses indiscriminate national data (mixing all categories of institutions of higher education) to show a widening chasm between public and private, with public enrollment soaring out of sight. When enrollment data is used more particularly, on a semi-logarithic scale, and using data specific to Connecticut, a dramatically different picture appears: “we see that both private and public 4-year institutions in Connecticut had a remarkably similar experience with respect to enrollments, for the past sixteen years. We see no evidence of a widening gap of the magnitude or of the duration suggested by the data used by the Administration.”
UB falls below its closest private competitors (University of New Haven and University of Hartford) starting in 1978 and remains in decline thereafter, significantly below the average. All three competitors are in large cities, with similar problems of access and crime.
“It is our belief that the explanation of UB’s poor performance in enrolling new students has three components: (1) an ineffective management, (2) an indulgent Board of Trustees, and (3) faculty and academic deans without the authority to change the direction of the University. In order to save the University from liquidation, two of these three conditions must change–any two. Otherwise, the partial liquidation proposed for 1990 will turn out to be phase 1; the Administration will be back next year with Phase 2 liquidation, and this will go on until the University no longer exists.”
May 10, 1990.
From Provost Edwin Eigel’s letter to Parents (May 3), in which he announces increases in tuition and room and board. No mention of the financial crisis of March 12, exigency, mass layoffs, or the threat of a $3000 tuition increase described in the last letter sent to students and parents; it is as if it never happened.
I am writing to advise you of the 1990-91 tuition costs for the University which represent on average a 9.5% increase in overall rates. This tuition rise is similar to that being announced by private colleges and universities across the country, which are experiencing some of the same challenges we face at UB in trying to hold tuition costs down while enhancing the quality of educational support services for their students.
Full time student tuition costs at UB will increase from $10,166 to $11,130 per year, a $964 (9.5%) increase while room and board costs will increase by 9.8% from $4828 to $5300 per year.
…The primary reason for the tuition increase is the rise in educational costs per student projected for next year. This decision was made after a thorough analysis of our anticipated operational costs and with every effort being made to implement cost cutting measures and increased operational efficiencies.
Your tuition increase is going toward the maintenance of the academic quality of the University and the support of the accreditation of academic programs.
We have judiciously sought and obtained funding in the form of grants and gifts to further enhance the campus. These have permitted us to complete renovation of the Student Center Social Room, begin renovation of the Science and Engineering facilities, and complete a new Law School wing and the initial portion of the University Walk.
…The University of Bridgeport has committed its resources to the intellectual growth and personal development of our students, as well as seeking to ensure their success in their professional career goals. American private higher education is currently facing a period of significant challenges and the University of Bridgeport is prepared to meet those challenges in the spirit of offering its students the best possible educational opportunities.
May 11, 1990.
The University’s accreditation by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) is up for review this year. A university-wide self study was prepared last year, and an NEASC visiting team came to campus to interview administrators, students, and faculty, and submitted its report to the University in October 1989. The report is generally favorable but wary, with reservations about the handling of the financial crisis, cutbacks in staff, the adequacy of the governance structure, and the absence of an academic plan:
“The team has some questions and concerns: (1) Why did trustees with business experience and acumen allow a deficit of such magnitude to develop over several years before taking corrective action? (2) Are the appropriate governance mechanisms in place to preclude a repetition? (3) Are the governance arrangements within the University effective in facilitating decision-making and faculty-administration communication? (4) Are the avenues of communication which are available adequately used on both sides?”
“...The University should continue to review its administrative and governing structures, and include serious consultation with faculty and others in this review process.”
“Faculty governance involves both a collective bargaining structure and a collegial structure involving a Council and Senate. The preamble to the AAUP collective bargaining agreement is particularly clear on “maintaining educational excellence, facilitating effective participation in decisions affecting the welfare of the University and promoting harmonious and productive relationships.”
“Tenure and promotion practices appear sound.”
“Present faculty resources appear generally adequate to deliver the instructional programs currently offered by the University. The team has some questions and concerns about whether they will remain adequate or appropriate in the future. …the absence of an academic plan identifying those degrees departments and disciplines to be given priority in a multi-year setting can lead to a lack of congruence between where the University wants to be and the faculty resources it inherited from its past. The University has a clearly stated Financial Recovery Plan to overcome its cumulative deficit. It’s time to develop an academic plan as well.”
“The quality of the academic programs while still satisfactory because of the very high dedication of the faculty to the instructional mission of the University appears to be on the verge of serious decline because of a cutback in the number of faculty, staff and administration. The lack of funds for some equipment, limited information (if any) on the status of the budget, and the lack of understanding by the faculty of various administrative actions tend to exacerbate the situation.”
“…the cost of debt service has been increased to over $2 million annually as a result of the deficit financing, which makes balancing the operating budget that much more difficult.”
“The faculty must understand that the financial crisis is real and calls for sacrifice on the part of all. The administration must understand the faculty’s commitment to the University and its students and the cumulative effect of small frustrations. The battle of the deficit will be better fought by pulling together as a community. ”
Text in bold indicates sections of the report which the administration edited out before distributing to the UB community; these included references to the faculty’s dedication, criticism of the handling of the finances, the adequacy of current staffing levels, and the need for faculty participation in decision making.
What most faculty, staff, and students fail to understand is that regional accreditors act as academic consultants to university administrations. Communication is strictly between accreditors and administration and is strictly confidential. It is the prerogative of the administration to decide what information, if any, to share with outsiders (which includes students and faculty). Between the Visiting Team’s Report and the final recommendation of the NEASC committee, the administration has had another opportunity to meet privately with NEASC committee members. The final letter of recommendation will arrive from the NEASC within the week, but will not be released to the faculty. In fact, the union will not learn of its existence until August.
May 12, 1990.
A recent opinion piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education (May 9) by Peter Likins, President of Lehigh University, reflects on the rising costs of higher ed, and the reasons for it (“In An Era of Tight Budgets and Public Criticism, Colleges Must Rethink Their Goals and Priorities.”)
“Some institutions are streamlining administrative operations, others are eliminating whole academic departments,and still others, like Lehigh University, are talking about a “change in culture.”
“In this new culture, institutions would not automatically pass on to students and taxpayers the inexorably rising costs of laboratory equipment, books, and faculty-salary increases. Nor would we simply redouble our efforts to obtain gifts and grants to cover rising costs. Rather, the change will require learning how to “manage less.” I don’t mean manage with less, I really mean manage less.
“…Each college and university, large and small, public and private, should ask itself if it needs all its vice presidents, and if these vice presidents need all their managers. Over the past two decades, there has been tremendous growth in personnel on US campuses, but it’s been primarily outside the faculty ranks. I have always felt that, on a case by case basis, I could justify non-faculty personnel and programs as they were added, but I also felt intuitively that the trend was wrong. Striving for flawless administration is not our proper goal.
“After we reduce administration, we need to talk to our faculties about consolidating academic units to accomplish our mission more effectively. We cannot succeed in such efforts if our only goal is to reduce costs, however. Academic leaders have to convince their faculties and staffs that managing fewer resources can produce something of permanent value, rather than simply causing bloody budget cuts.
…”I’ve come to believe that it’s less critical to manage administrative details efficiently than to put our hearts into our missions, to put our money where the students are, and to allow our colleges and universities to be a little more creative, a little less structured.”
May 13, 1990.
“There’s no drama left in academic collective bargaining,” says the director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions (Chronicle of Higher Education, May 2) who sees a trend in academe toward “non-confrontational, less adversarial forms of negotiating and more cooperative models.” While many think that facing off at the bargaining table is still the most effective way to come to a compromise on faculty contracts, others say it is unnecessarily fosters bad relations between the two sides, and often produces an unsatisfactory settlement.
May 14, 1990.
At UB’s Commencement Ceremonies (May 13), the University awards an honorary degree to Anselm Franz, an Austrian engineer with a long, distinguished career designing jet engines for the U.S. military at a defense plant in Stratford, CT. The honor raises protests from some faculty members because Franz had started his career designing jet engines for the Nazis during World War II; after the war, he was brought to the U.S. along with other Nazi scientists as part of “Operation Paperclip.” The idea to give him an honorary degree seems to have been suggested by the Engineering College.
May 15, 1990.
A letter is sent from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges to UB President Greenwood, announcing that the committee in charge of reviewing the school has recommended that UB’s accreditation be placed on probation. The main reason stated is the financial crisis that seems to “permeate every aspect of the institution,” and which the administration seems incapable of addressing. Moreover, the plan the administration has put forth to solve the crisis seems unachievable: recovery relies on enrollment increases which are unlikely to occur; financial cutbacks have endangered library holdings; and academic planning has been deferred because of preoccupation with the fiscal crisis. (Ironically, the recovery plan which the NEASC finds obviously unrealistic is the basis on which the banks gave UB a $12 million loan.)
In particular, having determined that $3 million must be cut from the faculty budget to meet its financial obligations, the school is unable to make those cuts because of opposition from the faculty union, a problem which the committee attributes to a flaw in the governance structures in place at the school. UB is given until October to offer reasons why it should not be put on probation, at which time another committee will visit the campus.
Although the faculty negotiating team has been asking for the final report of the NEASC evaluation since its first bargaining session (April 30), the administration does not ackowledge the existence of the letter, but claims instead (strictly speaking) no report has been received.
The administration will use the NEASC probation threat as a pretext to strip the faculty contract of every governance provision in its forthcoming contract proposals, and any provision, implicit or explicit, that might allow the union to obstruct any administrative action.
The union will not learn of the letter’s existence until August.
May 16, 1990.
In preparing for contract negotiations, the union negotiating team is reading Getting To Yes by Roger Fisher and William Ury, a now-classic business manual on how to avoid confrontational bargaining. The book’s advice is to focus on mutual interests, not positions, and to invent options for mutual gain. Issues are decided on merits, and the goal is win-win for both sides. The four essential paradigms are:
Separate people from the problem; focus on interests, not positions; invent options for mutual gain; insist on objective criteria. Finally, come up with a Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement.
The most critical question in the method is: What if the other side won’t play? The recommendations are: use principled negotiation to encourage them to do the same; if they continue to attack using positional bargaining, refuse to retaliate and redirect their attacks to the problem; involve a third party to synthesize the opposing views.
If all fails, fall back on your Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement, and walk out.
(This book will eventually be found among the dusty discarded detritus of the union archives.)
May 17, 1990.
The Administration’s chief negotiator has told the union negotiating team that July 1 is the deadline for a new collective bargaining agreement (even though the current agreement does not expire until August 31); July is when the new fiscal year begins, at which time, he says, next year’s budget will be set and unchangeable. The implication is that the cut in the faculty budget which the University is seeking to achieve through negotiations will be a fait accompli in July, whatever happens at the bargaining table.
The implication is echoed in a fundraising appeal to alumni sent by President Greenwood (May 17). The plan she refers to is unknown to the faculty, unless it means the restructuring which has been suspended by agreement and court order:
“This is a critical point in the history of the University of Bridgeport.
“A plan has been adopted and put into place that will produce balanced budgets and a solid academic program to serve as the foundation for the university in the years ahead.
“The plan will have impact as of July 1. But in this academic year that ends in June, we face a financial squeeze brought on by shifts in enrollment.
“It is for this reason that I make this extraorindary request. I ask you, as a dear friend and supporter of the University of Bridgeport, to make a second annual fund contribution by June.
“Your additional contribution will help put this crisis behind us. It will make for a stronger university that truly addresses the needs of the region and wider community.
“So please, give what you can now, whether it is $50 or $100 or $1000. Every dollar is crucial in opening the gate to a bright future for this vital institution that has committed itself to the region and people for so long and so well.
Sincerely,
Janet D. Greenwood”
May 18, 1990.
Memo to President Greenwood from Provost Eigel:
Jan —
The annual report from the national AAUP on faculty salaries for the current year has just arrived. UB ranks in the top 20% nationally (rating “1”) in all ranks for our category (IIA). Following are some comparisons of “average faculty salary, all ranks.” [Connecticut]:
1. Yale University I $58,500
2. Univ. of Connecticut I $54,300
3. Hartford Graduate Center IIB $51,000
4. Wesleyan IIA $50,700
5. Univ. of Bridgeport IIA $47,500
Without comment, Eigel also includes a list of 28 institutions in the Northeast, in which UB surpasses all in salary and total compensation, including schools like Smith and Williams College.
The subtext in which these figures are offered is obvious, as the University moves ahead on its intention to cut the faculty budget. But averages are misleading. Faculty salary averages for UB typically include Law School faculty, who are not in the bargaining unit. Also, professors who serve in the administration and then return to the faculty keep their higher executive salaries, which helps raise the average.
In its August 1989 issue of the Newsletter, UB-AAUP presented its own breakdown of salaries in the bargaining unit, in real terms:
82% of the faculty earn less than $50,000 a year.
41% earn less than $40,000 (between $21,000 and $40,000).
In 1990, less than 10% earn between $47,500 and $50,000.
May 19, 1990.
As of May 1, letters of termination have gone out to some non-tenured faculty members, while letters of re-appointment have gone to others.
The letters of appointment this year contain curious out-clauses. Two non-tenured professors in the College of Arts and Humanities receive one-year contracts for 1990-91 which contain the following proviso:
“This appointment will terminate automatically as of May 31, 1991, unless it is terminated earlier at your initiative or at the University’s initiative, subject to any then-applicable contract provisions.”
The clause advertises the Administration’s intention to radically alter conditions of employment, making the appointment letter subject to any future changes that may occur, including the possibility of termination before the end of the coming academic year.
Union president Alfred Gerteiny informs the Provost that such letters of appointment are illegal, and asks that all such letters be revised to comply with the current collective bargaining agreement.
May 20, 1990.
The Administration’s March 12 plan to layoff 50 faculty members seemed to be a drastic response to a sudden financial emergency, but in fact the personnel reduction was written into the Administration’s fiscal recovery plan two years ago, and submitted to the banks as part of its loan application. The number of faculty needing to be cut to meet the goals of the plan has thus reduced over time–first 70, then 60, now 50–as attrition and early retirements have reduced the overall number of full-time faculty at the school. Pointedly, while the Administration’s enrollment projections show sharp declines to justify personnel reductions to the University community, its optimistic projections to the banks anticipate significant enrollment increases for the same period.
The Administration is now in a bind to meet its “financial obligations” to the banks, since neither of the two main features of its recovery plan–massive personnel reduction and significant enrollment increases–are likely to occur in time to meet its scheduled goals.
May 21, 1990.
Letters of appointment, reappointment, and termination have been sent to non-tenured faculty.
UB/AAUP Grievance Officer Hans Van der Giessen observes that “We are confronted once again this year with several cases in which the President has cited “institutional need” to terminate several of our un-tenured faculty and these are at several different stages of the grievance process. It has always been difficult for the Administration to convince us that the institution’s needs are best served by terminating colleagues who have been recommended for re-appointment based on merit. The Administration’s argument is ordinarily couched in terms of an actual or projected decline in enrollment and a resultant SCH/FTE ratio, which it claims the University cannot afford. We have in general remained unconvinced. This year our credulity has been stretched a little further than usual. Consider that the Administration has officially declared a condition of financial exigency and has unsuccessfully attempted to apply (some) of the provisions of Article 10 through which tenured members of the faculty may be terminated. Then consider that tenure was granted to every non-tenured member of the faculty who was recommended this year. Put this in light of their decision to terminate several individuals who were recommended for reappointment (the probationary period for tenure had not yet been completed in these instances) based on institutional need and you will understand why it is likely to be extraordinarily difficult to convince us of institutional need this time around. In matters such as this consistency may fairly be thought of as a virtue.”
May 22, 1990.
Bridgeport Post: UB’s Board Adds Seven New Trustees.
“Seven new members were added to the University of Bridgeport Board of Trustees, it was announced recently following the board’s annual meeting.”
“New to the UB Board are:
Warren Bennis, educator and university administrator at the University of South Carolina. …an internationally known specialist on leadership and planned change.
Jacob Ukeles, president of Ukeles Associates, Inc. …known for his leadership in helping to bring the city of New York out of fiscal crisis in the mid-1970s.
Geoffrey Etherington, owner and president of Etherington Industries. ..a director of numerous companies in Connecticut, including the Bank of Boston, United Illuminating Co, and the Hydraulic Co.
Frederic A. DeLuca, president and founder of Subway Salads and Sandwiches. DeLuca graduated from UB in 1971 with a degree in psychology.
Marian Heard, executive director of United Way of Eastern Fairfield County.
Frances Ahlbin, volunteer and new elected life trustee. …Ahlbin has long supported Bridgeport’s Kennedy Center for handicapped people, the Bridgeport Rehabilitation Center, and Jupiter Hospital in Florida.
Glegg Watson, manager of urban affairs and higher education programs for Xerox Corp., Stamford.”
(Of the seven new trustees, only three (Heard, DeLuca, and Watson) live in the area. Bennis lives in South Carolina, Ukeles lives in New York City, Ahlbin and Etherington live in Jupiter, Florida.)
May 23, 1990.
To: Professor Gerteiny, President, AAUP Bridgeport Chapter
From: Professors Crowley & Costello
Subject: University Claim of Financial Exigency
Date: 5/23/90
The Chapter has commissioned a study of the University’s finances by an outside expert, Professor Richard E. Weber. The administration has provided Professor Weber financial and other data through fiscal year 1994. Professor Weber has concluded from his analysis of the University’s financial records that he is unconvinced that the financial problems rise to the level of financial exigency.
The Committee finds no basis for disagreement with Professor Weber’s conclusions.
In addition, it should be noted that the administration has recently granted a number of faculty tenure. Further, in a May 16 memo, the Dean of CBPM has announced that the administration has authorized the hiring of eight new faculty. Clearly not the decisions expected for an institution facing financial exigency.
In summary, neither by its financial performance nor by its recent decisions has the administration demonstrated that its current financial problems rise to the level of financial exigency.
May 24, 1990.
The University’s declaration of financial exigency for the purpose of terminating 50 faculty members seems to have been undertaken for expedience, with no sense of the legal quagmire that would ensue on a grand scale if the union had not succeeded in stopping the layoffs. Numerous grounds for individual lawsuits against the University would have been laid once the termination letters were sent, not just over the lack of notice and severance pay, but over flaws in the procedure for choosing each of the tenured faculty for termination and denial of due process. Had the administration succeeded in its intention, the chaos that resulted would most likely have sunk the restructuring plan, negated any financial savings, and doomed any hope of the school meeting its obligations to the students, banks or accreditors.
Having stopped the University from destroying itself, for the moment, the union now bears the onus of “obstructionism,” as well as facing the battle at the bargaining table, where the administration hopes to accomplish its original intention, legally.
May 25, 1990.
UB/AAUP President Alfred Gerteiny writes to Provost Eigel, reporting the faculty committee finding that the University’s financial difficulties do not meet the AAUP definition of financial exigency, a condition necessary for terminating tenured appointments. The committee points to consultant Richard Weber’s analysis of the University’s financial accounts, together with recent administrative decisions to grant tenure and hire new faculty in other areas.
“…niether by its financial performance nor by its recent decisions has the administration demonstrated that its current financial problems rise to the level of financial exigency.”
May 26, 1990.
Letters of termination have been sent to the Nursing Faculty, including Prof. Virginia Betts, who is a member of the union negotiating team. A decision to eliminate the Nursing College was announced by the administration last October along with the plan to replace it with a Chiropractic College.
The decision to phase out the college and its faculty was done in spite of faculty protests and without the requisite input from the faculty Program Evaluation Committee. A grievance on this matter has been filed by the committee, and will remain unresolved right up until the strike in September.
May 27, 1990.
End of the school year sees a sudden rise in crime; a professor is robbed at gunpoint in a campus parking lot. More brazen incidents will follow.
May 28, 2010.
Housatonic Community College has for many years occupied an old sewing machine factory on the East side of Bridgeport, and is desperate for a new home. Plans are underway to build a new campus downtown, but some politicos, including Congressman Christopher Shays, are pushing to have HCC relocate to unoccupied buildings on the UB campus.
Shays says the UB campus is under-utilized and the university could make its facilities–library, cafeteria, and gymnasium–available to HCC. According to the Bridgeport Post (5/30/90), “Shays is sensitive to concerns from HCC students and faculty that the community college would lose its identity if it were relocated within the 86-acre UB campus. “There are ways to give HCC a separate space and allow the college to preserve its identity,” he said.”
A tentative arrangement has been made to build the community college a campus on a site just two miles up Park Avenue from UB. Shays is against the plan, which would “gobble up $35 million in state money” and remove a valuable piece of downtown property from the city tax base.
HCC and UB officials, meanwhile, are mutually lukewarm to the Shays proposal. “If there is any reason to re-examine the question, we are always ready to participate in the discussion,” says UB spokesman William Flynn.
May 29, 2010.
In the last two years, security on campus has become a major concern, highlighted by a number of shocking incidents on campus, including the shooting of a female student (the Student Council President) during a robbery attempt, and the shooting death of a male student after a city man crashed a frat party. As the administration seems preoccupied with the school’s financial problems, security seems to suffer along with all other campus services sacrificed in the budget war. This will become its own crisis in the summer.
May 30, 1990.
Provost Edwin Eigel responds to UB/AAUP President Alfred Gerteiny’s memo of May 25 which reported the faculty committee’s finding that the University is not in a state of financial exigency.
“The existence or non-existence of financial exigency is, of course, a legal conclusion based on the interpretation of that term as it is utilized in the 1940 Statement of Principles of Academic Freedom and Tenure. It is, moreover, a term that has been interpreted in a number of federal and state court opinions over the years in a manner fully consistent with the University’s position on exigency. In short, the existence of financial exigency does not ultimately rest on the opinion of Professor Weber or any other outside expert or consultant or even agreement or acquiescence of UB-AAUP. It is a determination made by the University’s administration, subject to judicial review should that prove necessary.
…Despite the foregoing, we do not discount Professor Weber’s study and would like to know the basis on which he reached his conclusion.”
Eigel goes on to request an extensive array of documents, including Weber’s criteria, specific financial records he consulted, “all documents, notes, or other written memoranda prepared by or at the request of Professor Weber; all documents, notes or other written memoranda prepared by or at the request of Professor Weber setting forth the conclusions of his study; a list of all the names of all individuals orally contacted or interviewed by Professor Weber in the course of his study (as well as notes of all such interviews); all of the above items of information prepared by or at the request of any individuals assisting Professor Weber in his study; and copies of all documents or notes setting forth the arrangement made between Professor Weber and UB/AAUP for the commissioning of Professor Weber’s study. Your prompt response is appreciated.”
May 31, 1990.
UB/AAUP President Alfred Gerteiny’s replies to Provost Eigel’s memo of May 30 which disputes the faculty committee’s finding that the University is not in a state of financial exigency.
“We quite agree with you that the existence or non-existence of financial exigency is…a legal conclusion based on interpretations contained in AAUP documents and other relevant legal sources. This, however, has not precluded you, and ips0-facto us, from drawing respective conclusions based on the same set of materials. Judicial review may, at this point, be called for if you insist that the existence or non-existence of that condition continues to be relevant in the relationship between the Administration and the Faculty; we think it is not.
Quite apart from that, however, we recognize that a certain morass, well below the condition of “financial exigency” exists at the University that requires addressing, and we are both willing and committed to jointly consider palliatives to it within the negotiating process.”
June 1, 1990.
One year ago, the University took out a $12 million loan from a consortium of area banks to address a $10 million deficit. According to the Bridgeport Post, “UB’s deficit climbed to $12 million this year, university officials have said.” The loan agreement stipulates a balanced budget for the coming year (1990-91).
The loan was obtained on the basis of a financial plan whose centerpiece was the elimination of 60 “excess teaching personnel” along with expected enrollment increases through enhancement of (part-time) adult learning programs. The loan took over a year to negotiate, and contains strict payment schedules, along with penalties for failing to meet them. The University put up all of its remaining unencumbered property as collateral.
June 2, 1990.
From the University’s audited financial report for fiscal year 1989:
“The University’s current unrestricted fund balance decreased significantly in each of the three years ended June 30, 1989, resulting in a fund deficit at that date in excess of $10 million. …the University negotiated a five-year term loan for $10,200,000 and a line of credit for $2,500,000 in July 1989, the proceeds of which have been used to liquidate a short-term loan for $9,100,000 at June, 1989 and to provide working capital. The loan agreement requires that the University meet significantly improved operating results in each of the next five years. Failure to do so will require the University to dispose of certain real estate and to accelerate the repayment of the loan.”
June 3, 1990.
As the University’s financial position deteriorates, the administration spends approximately $1 million a year on consultants. One of the consulting firms, Higher Education Executive Associates, appears to be the original source of the claim that the University faculty is “overstaffed.”
The incoming Greenwood administration hired Higher Education Executive Associates in the fall of 1987 to evaluate the school from top to bottom, and to make recommendations. The conditions they found were the result of 13 years of “budget balancing” by the Miles administration which included continual retrenchment, layoffs, hiring freezes, cuts in programs and services, and deferred maintenance. This background they dismissed as “historical baggage,” irrelevant to the need to move forward with urgent action. In particular, they found the faculty lacking, a theme repeated often in their Preliminary Report.
“Challenges are an almost totally unionized setting, older workers, average age 55+, comfort for many, low productivity, lack of involvement in institutional decisions to a point of no longer caring…”
“The faculty and staff are poorly matched to the needs of the institution…The management and faculty in place on the campus are large enough for an enrollment of three times the present enrollment. The faculty are recalcitrant and hostile…The plant needs attention. The mission needs to be thought through.”
“The wrong faculty, a student body one third the size that is needed for the existing faculty, a need to recruit a younger and more flexible faculty while being faced with an existing faculty that is both ageing and overly tenured.”
The consultants’ worst criticism was reserved for the Humanities faculty, whose programs had been reduced to “service” status for vocational majors under the Miles regime: “The Humanities people need to stop yelling and get out and be pro-active in their disciplines…They need to get with it or retire. There is no other solution.”
Coincidentally, or not, the most active and involved faculty on campus, both in the union and in governance bodies like Faculty Council and Senate, were Humanities faculty. More curious was the consultants’ conclusion that “the faculty do not support the President,” since in 1987 there was still a palpable feeling of buoyant optimism on campus over the change in administration.
The Higher Ed Associates recommendations included: “Attraction and retention of an energetic, viable, dedicated and scholarly faculty,” along with “Attraction and education of a balanced student population matched by appropriate faculty and programs.”
At the same time the consultants evaluating the academic area determined that the faculty was too big, old, and inept, the consultants in charge of overhauling the accounting system at UB began to uncover deficits in what was thought to be a sound operating budget.
Almost immediately, the Greenwood administration announced its intention to reduce the faculty by 70 out of 215 at the time (or one third) while attempting to close the deficit with a major loan from area banks. The mass reduction in personnel was a budgetary decision; there was no academic plan to address what faculty and programs should go, nor would there ever be one. The loan application to the banks, which was finally approved in 1989, simply contained a promise by the administration to eliminate “excess teaching personnel.” The attempt to eliminate 50 faculty at once on March 12, 1990 was a way toward that goal.
Although the union repeatedly asks to see the consultants’ report which determined that the school was overstaffed, the administration refuses to disclose it. The report, heavily redacted, will finally be turned over through legal discovery, in 1991, when the strike is over a year old.
June 4, 1990.
The faculty committee which examined the question of financial exigency turns up some interesting data in the University’s line item budget which shed light on how resources are allocated. From a report by Prof. Peter Costello:
“The following two accounts have been selected from the general area named “Executive Management.” From each of these accounts specific items have been identified and listed with the budgeted figure.
Dues/Memberships $6,000.00
Subscriptions 3,500.00
Admin & Gen Travel 29,000.00
Vehicle Rental 4,000.00
Gas 1,000.00
Vehicle R&M 1,000.00
Text Books 500.00
The second includes the following items.
Consulting Fee $2,000.00
Dues/memberships 1,200.00
Subscriptions 400.00
Admin & Gen Travel 3,000.00
Vehicles Rental 6,300.00
Vehciles R&M 100.00
Office Machines 500.00
…An academic department that appears to have eight members has the following line item budget figures.
Dues/Memberships $0.00
Subscriptions 0.00
Admin & Gen Travel 350.00
Text Books 0.00
Office Machines 0.00
Software 635.00
“Comparing departmental budgets to administrative budgets may well be comparing apples to oranges. Both the functions and the activities are different. But the view that emerges from reviewing both types of budgets is that the administration tends to take care of their own resource needs first and those of the instructional activity last.”
June 5, 1990.
The University announces that it is selling real estate: four buildings, including a mansion that is on the National Register of Historic Places. Although the bank loan it received last year requires such property sales in the event of default, the administration insists this sale has nothing to do with the loan.
According to the Bridgeport Post (6/5/90), Sheila Burke, the university spokesperson, said “it doesn’t mean the university has slipped from its proposed financial position,” even though it is selling at a time when the real estate market is depressed.
The buildings for sale are: 285 Park Avenue, former home of John G. Howland, president of the Howland Dry Goods Company, built in 1902, on the Marina Park Historic Register; a mansion at 276 Park Avenue; Warner Hall, a towering dormitory on campus; and North and South Halls, a block of academic offices on Lafayette Street, parking lot included.
June 7, 1990.
The University announces that it is selling two more buildings–multi-family homes on Myrtle Avenue–bringing to at least six the number of properties the school has put up for sale, including a dormitory, an office complex, and two Park Avenue mansions, one of which is on the National Register for Historic Places.
The administration insists that the sales have nothing to do with the $12 million bank loan it took out last year, which requires the University to sell buildings in the event of a default. But actually the school is in default on the loan, by failing to meet the enrollment targets in its business plan and failing to file reports on time.
In fact, the $10 million deficit which prompted UB to seek the loan is now a $12 million deficit, less than a year later. The administration is also in a cash-flow crisis, since the loan agreement includes strict payment schedules in which the banks take their cut off the top of tuition revenue before the school can access its share for operating expenses.
In the absence of any other explanation, however, one newspaper account speculates that the reason for the sudden sale of campus buildings is because the school was unsuccessful in getting givebacks from the faculty union.
June 8, 1990.
Security on campus becomes increasingly urgent. Secretaries have been robbed in the parking lots, and many are locking themselves in their offices during the day. The President’s response has been to tell employees “everyone must be responsible for their own safety. ” Some take this advice to heart by carrying guns.
June 9, 1990.
The next negotiation session is scheduled for June 15. The union negotiating team has still not received the preparatory information it requested on May 2.
June 10, 1990.
Between the summer of 1989 and the end of March 1990, the University has spent almost a quarter of a million dollars on legal fees. With its outside law firm handling negotiations as well as all correspondence between the administration and the union, the meter is running overtime.
June 11, 1990.
On a Saturday, in the computer room of her department, Prof. Donna Wagner is held up at gunpoint while working on a grant project. She is told to lie on the floor and not look at the gunman, but she recognizes the man from the neighborhood. She had locked her purse in the filing cabinet of her office, and has nothing of value on her but a ring.
“Gun in my back, me on the floor and another person enters the office. That’s when I got really scared…I figured I could handle one but not two…even though one was armed. I told him I didn’t have a purse and had nothing of value on me…after a short argument about the ring I was wearing they left empty-handed. I feel pretty confident that it was my previous relationship with the gunman that sent him out of the office quickly without shooting me.
“…About that time we were also having a lot of the secretaries getting mugged as they went to get in their cars after work. After my attempted robbery experience, Janet Greenwood convened a meeting of faculty and staff to discuss safety on campus. Her discussion consisted of telling us we had to take responsibility for our own safety and used Nancy Reagan as an example — carrying her own small handgun. (I’m not making this up). After that I did two things — went down to the union office and complained asking for some support for this security thing. That led to me ultimately ending up on the negotiating team.
“The second was to convene a small group of staff who were members of 1199 who had also been at the staff/faculty security meeting to a meeting in my office to talk about security. That little group then became the core of folks who ended up working with us when the negotiations broke down.
“I do think that the failure of the administration to take care of even the most basic human needs on campus like the protection of workers was pivotal in bringing a diverse group of workers together. Greenwood told us she couldn’t do anything else to protect us….or the students (there were also students being robbed, mugged and raped as well).”
The joint security committee which Donna Wagner instigates eventually becomes a coalition of unions that agrees to strike together if none of them can reach an agreement with the administration.
June 12, 1990.
Provost Edwin Eigel (aka Atty. John Sabanosh) finally responds to the union’s May 2 request for information. He says the list was extensive, and required considerable time and effort to prepare. However, a large number of the requested items are denied, most he says have already been provided, and some information is still being collected.
In particular, the administration will not turn over the requested consultants’ reports, which it says are confidential and have no relevancy to the subject of bargaining. “If you can persuade us to their relevance now or in the future, we will be happy to reconsider our position.” (The union cannot be certain of the relevance of the Higher Education Executive Associates report, since it doesn’t know what the report contains, but it seems to be the source of the claim that the University faculty is overstaffed and should be reduced by a third.)
The administration also will not turn over the final accreditors’ report from the NEASC, which it says does not yet exist. “We do not expect to receive the next NEASC Final Accreditation Report until some time near the end of this year.” However, unknown to the union, there has been correspondence between the administration and NEASC in advance of the report, which will bear directly upon negotiations.
In sum, “the University submits that UB/AAUP now has more than sufficient data to engage in meaningful negotiations with the University. As our next fiscal year begins July 1, 1990, we hereby reiterate the plea we made to you on April 30 to begin bargaining over issues that directly affect the University’s budget for 1990-91. Although the current collective bargaining agreement does not expire until August 31, we have an immediate need to formulate a balanced budget by July 1.”
June 13, 1990.
The administration requests negotiation sessions for June 14 and 15. The union defers to June 15th, with the expectation that the admin negotiating team will provide its letter of credentials in keeping with protocol.
June 14, 1990.
Spokesmen for the United Methodists say that they may have to move their annual convention out of the city because of UB’s decision to sell dormitory space which they depend on for accommodations. The move would end a 28-year relationship with the school which brings in more than $100,000 annually. UB administrators have no comment.
June 15, 1990.
At the second negotiating session, the administration team again refuses to produce letters of credentials, the protocol which means the team is officially authorized to bargain on behalf of the University. The union team walks out of the meeting.
Prof. Virginia Betts, spokesperson for the union negotiating team, writes to Provost Eigel that the team will take up the June 15 agenda “upon receipt of these letters or your assurance that the letters will be supplied to us…”
The administration’s Chief Negotiator (Atty. John Sabanosh) sends a message to the UB/AAUP negotiating team decrying the union’s insistence on letters over the administration’s verbal assurances: “The University’s negotiating team was appalled at the behavior of your negotiating committee this morning in establishing a precondition to commencing discussion of the substantive issues relating to wages, hours, and conditions of employment for faculty…Accordingly, as the university is eager to begin bargaining over the substantive issues that face us, I am transmitting to you herewith the University’s proposals for a new agreement to succeed the one expiring on August 31, 1990. In addition, so that we can engage in meaningful negotiations prior to the commencement of our fiscal year on July 1, 1990…our committee is making itself available to resume bargaining at 10:30 am on Monday, June 25, 1990, and each day thereafter that week.”
June 16, 1990.
The administration’s First Proposal (6/15/90) is to gut the current contract with the faculty. The administration assumes all powers, rights and prerogatives. There is no requirement even for consultation with the faculty on academic matters, no tenure, extremely limited possibilities for grievance and arbitration, as well as massive reductions in compensation.
Highlights include:
• 30% reduction in compensation. (Mysteriously, new full-time faculty are being hired for next year at substantially higher salaries.)
• Elimination of the UB contribution to TIAA-CREF.
• Reduction of medical insurance to a minimal policy with faculty co-pay. Access is restricted by the bureaucratic processes written into the contract. Temporary disability coverage is eliminated.
• Overload and summer pay is reduced.
• Dues checkoff for AAUP members is eliminated.
• Grievance and arbitration except in the case of specific rights (interpreted by the administration) is eliminated.
• The Program Evaluation Committee, which was the only means of faculty input into program reduction and modification is eliminated.
• Chairpersons, directors, and athletic staff are removed from the bargaining unit.
• Administration Rights explicitly reserves for the administration complete authority in every academic process, including personnel decisions in hiring, teaching assignments, scheduling, department and college organization. It also eliminates the past practice and non-discrimination rules, and rules regarding personnel files. Absolute authority in all personnel decisions resides with the president. None of these matters would be grievable or arbitrable.
• Tenure is eliminated in Article 9 (and in Article 8, it gets killed twice). The administration agrees to follow the AAUP 1940 Statement “insofar as practicable,” and no arbitration is allowed in this area.
• Early retirement is eliminated.
• The teaching load is increased to an absolute 24 hours per year. There is no priority in teaching assignments.
• The right to a secretary and grad assistants when available is eliminated.
• Notice for termination and severance pay are eliminated.
• All notes, reports, records, research, findings, data developed or prepared during a sabbatical leave shall be the property of the University.
In sum, the administration’s contract proposal erases everything the faculty has bargained for and gained since 1974, in addition to a compensation reduction which would cost each member of the bargaining unit, on average, $18,000 a year. The contract is reset to zero, with two weeks (according to the administration’s own deadline of June 30) to reach agreement. It must be clear to both sides that this is impossible. So why would the administration put forward a proposal it knows the union will reject when the need for agreement on financial matters is urgent?
June 17, 1990.
The union considers its response to the administration’s first proposal, which basically eviscerates the contract and seems intended to set the bargaining baseline at zero. The union also anticipates a Yeshiva move by the administration–i.e., decertification of the union based on the Supreme Court’s Yeshiva decision (1979) which holds that faculty in private universities are managers and therefore have no right to collective bargaining under the National Labor Relations Act. At this time, the Yeshiva decision has been used frequently in academe to decertify faculty unions, and the union’s legal counsel has been involved in at least one of those cases (Fairleigh Dickinson).
June 18, 1990.
The union’s chief negotiator, Prof. Toby Moore, writes an article for the UB/AAUP Newsletter reflecting on “life after Yeshiva:”
The article makes the point that a Yeshiva declaration only means that the union is no longer protected under the National Labor Relations Act, but that this protection doesn’t amount to much, in practical terms. “The assumption is that under NLRB protection, strikers always regain the jobs at the cessation of hostilities, but unprotected strikers lose their jobs….But under the National Labor Relations Act employees striking for increased benefits receive little protection. They may be replaced during a strike and the employer is not obliged to reinstate them….If employees strike because of an unfair labor practice, they are entitled to reinstatement but even then it is not automatic.” [The union usually has to bargain a reinstatement clause into the final agreement.]
“Speculation about a Yeshiva declaration has been going on for some months and undoubtedly will continue. As we speculate, we must keep three things in mind. First, trying to get rid of the union would not be in the University’s best interests: as a legal consultant to the Department of Labor has noted, “when constructively applied, collective bargaining [within the university] can be a mechanism for reducing tensions among different groups by providing a framework within which common problems can be addressed.” Second, we must remain united and not allow fear to divide us. The words of Benjamin Franklin at a time of even greater crisis…”We must all hang together or assuredly we shall hang separately.” Third, even under a Yeshiva declaration, WE AIN’T DEAD YET!”
June 19, 1990.
The Bridgeport Post runs a short item about the UB administration’s contract offer: “UB OPENS FACULTY BARGAINING WITH A 30% PAY CUT PROPOSAL.”
“A 30 percent pay cut for all University of Bridgeport faculty was proposed by the administration as part of contract negotiations with the faculty union. A provision that would allow faculty to be dismissed with 30 days notice was another administration proposal, union and administration representatives said Monday.”
This shorthand summary in the University’s “hometown paper” is the most detail about the contract proposal that will be seen in the press for the rest of the summer and the ensuing two years, except in rare cases, despite the volumes of articles written about the labor conflict by a wide spectrum of publications. Even this will eventually be reduced to “a 30 percent paycut.” The gutting of the contract is not mentioned, or the Management Rights clause, or the loss of tenure and due process, grievances, arbitration, etc. The short explanation may be that editors assumed the general public would not understand or care about the details of academic processes or the concept of “academic freedom.” It may be the assumption that unions and strikes are always about pay and benefits. Whatever the reason, the union is at a disadvantage in getting its message across, and this will alienate it from the public more as time goes on.
June 20, 1990.
(6/20/90) A letter signed by Provost Edwin Eigel, Vice President Michael Beecher and George Mihalakos, Counsel, addressed to Alfred Gerteiny, President, UB/AAUP, upbraids the union again for insisting on letters of credentials from the administration bargaining team. Curiously, the letter is not signed by Atty. Sabanosh, who obviously wrote it:
“Your insistence on receipt of a “letter of credentials” as a precondition to bargaining over the critical issues now confronting the University is another example of irresponsibility and recalcitrance by UB/AAUP….There can be no doubt in your mind of the University Committee’s authority or its membership…Accordingly, as officers of the University empowered to bargain in its behalf we ask that you withdraw your ridiculous demand for a “letter of credentials” and return to the bargaining table promptly to discuss the substantive issues that face us.”
(6/2/0/90) A “supplemental” letter is sent by Vice President Michael Beecher separately, carrying the unmistakable tone of an affadavit; it addresses a remark that Prof. Gerteiny seems to have made to him in conversation about the likelihood of a strike:
“This is a supplemental response to our conversation of Monday, June 18, 1990 regarding the current status of negotiations. My position relative to your demand for a “letter of credentials” from our committee consisting of two University Vice Presidents and the University’s In-house counsel is clearly set forth in our letter to you dated June 20. I find even more disturbing, however, your strike threat made to me in our Monday conversation. This threat disturbs me because, with the contract expiration only two months away, you appear to be making no effort to bargain in good faith to avoid a strike. On the contrary, you are setting up artificial barriers to addressing the substantive issues at the bargaining table. In this context, I construe your strike threat to be another act of bad faith.”
Considering the weeks spent on this issue, and the extensive correspondence written about it, one wonders why they couldn’t simply write the letter the union requested.
Clearly the “substantive issues” are being left behind as the University’s attorney compiles a “paper trail” as evidence of “bad faith bargaining” on the part of the union, to be used at some future date.
June 21, 1990.
(6/20/90) A brief item in the Bridgeport Post announces that Patrick Hart, from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, has agreed to serve as mediator in the UB negotiations. He has been asked by both sides to step in. (The presence of a federal mediator has actually been standard practice in these negotiations for many years.)
The article concludes: “While union president Alfred Gerteiny charges that the administration is being hard line and inviting a strike, Sabanosh claims that faculty members are refusing to talk about the issues.”
June 22, 1990.
Union president Alfred Gerteiny responds to Michael Beecher, Vice President of Administration and Finance, on his correspondence of 6/20 and 6/21:
“I deeply regret the inappropriate and degrading tone of your Sabanosh-inspired letters. I can assure you, however, that it will not diminish our resolve to reach with you a just and fair successor to the collective bargaining agreement extant.
“Nevertheless, you must agree that the tone in question exacerbates an already fragile relationship and is not conducive to the spirit of cooperation that should be characteristic in an institution of higher learning.
Be that as it may, we thank you for complying, albeit imperfectly and tardily, in meeting our simple and justified request for a letter of credentials….”
“Under the circumstances, we are now able to meet with you as early as June 25th to hear to what extent your committee has been empowered to negotiate and reach decisions with us, and who is your chief negotiator and his/her alternate–rumors about that abound as well–and last but not least to listen to the explications and justifications for the preposterous package of proposals you delivered to us earlier this week. Our chief negotiator will communicate with you to set a meeting date and time.
“Thank you very much for your kind cooperation.”
June 23, 1990.
Circular from the Department of Public Safety:
“Following a recent incident in South Hall, employees and their supervisors are being asked to work on locating their staffs in central locations within less-populated buildings on campus. Telephone call-forwarding or other methods of maintaining departmental communications between buildings and offices will be explored where appropriate.
“Personnel are also urged to maintain the normal business hours…to the extent practical. Those individuals working beyond the normal business hours or on weekends should notify the Department of Public Safety of their location and call Public Safety upon vacating the building.
“Employees are reminded to exercise caution at all times and to travel about the building or across the campus in pairs to the extent practical.
“Suggestions on improving campus safety are encouraged and will be given serious and immediate consideration upon being submitted to Vice President Beecher.”
June 24, 1990.
Status of Negotiations:
The Administration’s first proposal sets the negotiating baseline to zero, stripping the contract of governance, grievance procedures, and everything that is not mandatory under Taft-Hartley rules (wages, hours, and conditions of employment) in typical industrial settings. Besides this, the proposal demands a drastic compensation reduction (30%).
While it may appear shrewd as an opening move to force the union to defend everything they already have, it is not the best approach for an institution in crisis that claims it must settle its contract within a matter of days. The Administration’s own deadline for concluding the financial part of negotiations is July 1, when the new fiscal year begins and it is required to have a balanced budget under its loan agreement with the banks. The Administration’s aggressive, all-inclusive proposal makes agreement with the union in that timeframe impossible.
The union is forced into a defensive position, from which it would have to bargain for everything in the current contact, starting with the Preamble. Its only leverage is the financial portion, which the Administration is keen to settle at once. But if it gives in too soon on compensation, the union fears it will have no cards left to play on the long list of governance issues that are now at risk.
June 25, 1990.
Excerpts from the union’s minutes of the Second Negotiation Session (6/25/90).
Present for UB/AAUP: Profs. Moore, Betts, Allen, Baumgartner, Wagner.
Present for Admin.: Atty. Sabanosh, Poxson, Provost Eigel, Vice President Melendez, Vice President Beecher, Atty. Mihalakos
The discussion begins with Atty. Sabanosh answering questions on the Administration’s financial proposals, starting with cuts in disability pay and medical insurance. Disability pay would be reduced to 6 months.
SABANOSH: 6 months is long enough to pay somebody who’s disabled. They have insurance after that.
MOORE: Which the University will not pay for.
SABANOSH: Yes.
ALLEN: What would be left after that?
SABANOSH: Nothing. We’re eliminating TIAA disability.
MOORE: So you’re eliminating disability pay and disability insurance.
SABANOSH: Right….Our goal is achieve savings.
ALLEN: How much?
MOORE: The whole medical plan ball of wax?
BEECHER: Approximately $323,000. Includes dental.
On other proposals, such as raising the eligiblity requirements for “tuition remission,” to 10 years of service, elimination of the University’s contribution to TIAA-CREF (retirement fund), eliminating free office space for use by the union, Financial Vice President Beecher doesn’t know how much would be saved.
Sabanosh pushes for union suggestions on cutting the faculty budget by $3 million.
MOORE: We would prefer to comment after you’ve discussed your entire proposal.
SABANOSH: Won’t have time to get to meaningful discussion of the budget.
MOORE: The contract is a complex entity and we need to see the entire explanation. We’ll give you as much time as you need.
SABANOSH: Do you have any proposals for us? For savings? Prior to July 1? Do you have any interest at all in bargaining these budget items in time for us to crank in your input?
MOORE: We do, but not in isolation.
SABANOSH: …You know we have to have a balanced budget.
MOORE: No such thing as “have to have.”
SABANOSH: It’s required under the loan documents.
MOORE: I wasn’t consulted when the loan agreement was made. I don’t think the faculty should be put on the firing line for Administration choice to enter into a loan.
SABANOSH: …Will you waive your faculty rights to input in budget and we will make our own? I want you to have every opportunity to exercise your right to bargain over those issues before we make up our own budget.
MOORE: Our contract runs until 31 August. Also, if you were really concerned, you should have asked your clients to cooperate with us [on supplying information].
SABANOSH: …You have everything but one document. There’s only the seniority list to go.
Discussion moves to explanation of the Administration’s extensive changes to the non-financial provisions.
The Preamble to the current agreement, which has existed in every contract since the first one, states: “The purpose of this Agreement is to provide the faculty-professional staff and the University of Bridgeport with a contract which will insure a healthy and viable institution of higher learning, capable of supporting a quality educational program. The Agreement aims at maintaining educational excellence, facilitating effective participation in decisions affecting the welfare of the University, promoting harmonious and productive relationships, assuring fair and reasonable conditions of employment and providing techniques and procedures for the peaceful adjustment of disputes, should these arise.”
This paragraph is eliminated in the Administration’s proposal because:
SABANOSH: It doesn’t state the purpose of the agreement. All the contract is obliged to cover is salary, hours, conditions.
On “Management Rights,” Moore points out that the accreditors’ report recommended greater, not less, faculty involvement in governance.
EIGEL: Nothing says faculty should not be involved, just says ultimate responsibility lies with Administration.
ALLEN: “Exclusively” doesn’t sound like involvement.
EIGEL: Be careful with your reading. Don’t mix sentences together.
MOORE: “University” does not mean Administration or Trustees. Traditionally it means faculty and students. I don’t like saying “University” to mean “Administration.”
SABANOSH: But we’re using a capital “U”.
EIGEL: This is consistent with the old document.
SABANOSH: We mean the entity, the University of Bridgeport.
MOORE: Everyone here at this table is the University, Mr. Sabanosh, except you. You are not, because you are a hired attorney.
SABANOSH: I speak for the University.
WAGNER: What does Sarah think about eliminating the non-dscrimination clause?
SABANOSH: You can ask her after the meeting.
MOORE: Why can’t she speak now? Are you discriminating against Sarah?
SABANOSH: 6.3 is the position of the committee. I’m the spokesperson for this committee. Are we here to bargain or engage in name-calling? The positions here are positions of the committee. Everyone here is free to talk or give facts or documentation. I will give positions.
On Article 8, personnel decisions:
SABANOSH: …The time delay is eliminated so if the President denies reappiontment, the faculty member is immediately terminated. No extra year.
BAUMGARTNER: In other words, summary dismissal?
SABANOSH: Yes, I guess. …[On eliminating the clause that permits a grievance if the Administration misses a deadline;] Why should we be held to time limit? This just enables the faculty member to avoid accountability.
BAUMGARTNER: The Administration can’t be held to a procedure, but the faculty can.
Article 17 of the current agreement states: “This agreement states the minimum terms and conditions for employment or continued employment of a member of the bargaining unit, and the University will not employ a member on terms less faborable to those stated herein.”
WAGNER: Why discontinue Article 17?
SABANOSH: Don’t need it.
MOORE: Does it do any harm?
SABANOSH: Does it do any good?
At this point, the 5 hour meeting comes to a close.
June 26, 1990.
Article 6.1 in the collective bargaining agreement reads as follows:
Administration Rights. The parties agree that all the rights and authority of the University which have not been abridged or modified by this Agreement are retained by the University Administration.
The Administration proposes to revise Article 6.1 as follows:
Administration Rights. The University, acting through the Board or the Administration or both, retains and reserves to itself exclusively all the rights and prerogatives of management it held prior to the Certification of the Union by the National Labor Relations Board, as described in Article 2 hereof, whether exercised or not, except as, and only to the extent that, such rights and prerogatives are limited by the specific provisions expressed in this Agreement. Among such reserved rights and prerogatives, but not limited thereto, are the right and prerogative to manage the University facilities and select and direct the work force, both professional and non-professional; select and determine supervisory personnel; determine the extent to which the University shall be operated, including but not limited to the selection of courses of study; to determine the location of branches, courses of study, academic disciplines and departments; to relocate, continue or discontinue or increase or decrease any program, course of study, academic discipline, branch or department, in whole or in part; to subcontract any or all of its operations; to determine the size and scope of departments and programs; to introduce new materials, procedures, methods, processes and equipment and to determine and assign to employees, including bargaining unit members, their implementation and use; and generally to make and implement all decisions normally considered managerial.
June 27, 1990.
The Administration proposal includes the following amendments to the collective bargaining agreement:
Article 9, Tenure and Seniority. Amend to read as follows: ” 9.1 The University shall continue, during the term of this Agreement, to endorse the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure and the 1970 Interpretive Comments. The specific provisions expressed in this agreement shall be read as supplementary to the 1940 Statement or the 1970 Interpretive Comments, insofar as practicable.
Article 8.6 Amend to read as follows: “Notwithstanding any other provision of the Agreement, the University may terminate the contract of employment of any non-tenured bargaining unit member, at any time, upon thirty (30) calendar days’ written notice, for reasons of financial exigency or as the result of a decision by the Administration to modify, reduce or eliminate one or more of its educational units (college, division, or department) or educational programs.
Article 10.6 Rights of Tenured Faculty. (Discontinue)
11.4 Overload, Summer Teaching and Non-Traditional Assignments. (Discontinue)
14.3 TIAA Total Disability Insurance (Discontinue)
14.4 Connecticut Blue Cross/ Blue Shield (Discontinue)
14.13 Representation and Indemnification (Discontinue)
14.14 Early Retirement (Discontinue)
Article 19. Succession. (Discontinue)
Article 20. Impact of Restructuring. (Discontinue)
Article 21. Faculty Participation in Program Evaluation and Planning (Discontinue)
Article 22. Governance. (Discontinue)
Article 23. Effective Date and Duration. Change expiration date of contract from August 31 to June 30, 1993.
13.2 Salary Minima. “Effective Setpember 1, 1990, salary minima for the faculty-professional ranks shall be as follows:
________________9 month 10 month 12 month
Instructor & IV $16,517 $18,352 $22,023
Assistant Prof. & III $18,877 $20,975 $25,169
Associate Prof. & II $23,596 $26,217 $31,461
Professor & I $28,315 $31,461 $37,753
The minima set forth above shall continue in effect for the duration of this Agreement [3 years].
June 28, 1990.
The union submits its First Counterproposal. The proposal basically maintains the existing collective bargaining agreement, with several significant amendments:
Part-time faculty are included in the bargaining unit.
The Non-Discrimination clause is extended to include sexual orientation, disability, and union activity.
Personnel Decisions by the College Personnel Committees must be voted on with a quorum present.
Faculty members who leave to take jobs in the Administration, then return to the faculty, shall be paid faculty salaries, not retain higher administrative salaries.
A Safety and Security Clause is added, mandating security improvements on campus.
The Program Evaluation Committee is maintained, and its input is further extended and codified.
Faculty is given greater voice in budgetary decisions.
Faculty is given the right to evaluate Administrators, as administrators evaluate faculty.
The Compensation Proposal is absent, with a note that it will be submitted later.
June 29, 1990.
Negotiation Session. Present for UB/AAUP: Profs. Moore, Allen, Barumgartner, Betts, Wagner. For Administration: Atty. Sabanosh, Poxson, VP Melendez, Provost Eigel, VP Beecher, Atty. Mihalakos.
The discussion centers on the union’s counterproposal, minus the compensation package. Sabanosh presses for the financial proposal.
MOORE: We need more information. ..We don’t have info to support your contention that there is “no place left to cut except faculty.”
SABANOSH: The $3 million is the need determined by Administration. It isn’t necessarily that that’s the ONLY place to find the money, but Administration decided that along with all other cuts made or planned, that’s the wisest choice.
MOORE: We would have to be convinced of the wisdom of the decision.
SABANOSH: …Can you suggest alternatives?
MOORE: I need to see the complete picture before I can answer that. [She suggests that the Faculty Budget Commitee could suggest alternatives, but it’s not the work of the Negotiating Committee.]
WAGNER: …We don’t deny the need to cut programs but there is a systematic procedure for that, and the University hasn’t been working with it.
BEECHER: …The timing is crucial too. Rapid critical decisions need to be made. Long-term studies are appropriate but not in our critical stage.
MOORE: Things were allowed to slide?
BEECHER: Can’t say. I wasn’t here.
Sabanosh explains that the attempt was made to cut the budget in March by laying off faculty, but layoffs won’t provide savings if the University has to pay severance. So they are now taking this approach to the faculty budget. “We’re only trying to achieve $3 million cut.” Wagner points out that in spite of the emergency, tenure and promotions were approved; Moore says there were also new hires–there seems to be money for some things.
SABANOSH: It’s a necessity even in a downturn to maintain programs that will bring you income.
ALLEN: But these retentions and hirings are not all in programs that will bring you income.
SABANOSH: Accreditations have to be maintained.
The union turns the discussion to what caused the financial crisis. Beecher: Drops in enrollment. Allen says the “short term is need. The long term is that problems leading to this situation have been corrected.” Wagner points out that the faculty was questioning enrollment projection models three years ago. Beecher defends the current model:
BEECHER: The current model is good, and Weber is wrong about it. After Jackie Benamati and I worked it out, we applied to back to last year. It would have been pretty accurate. Should have used it before.
[NB–VP Beecher replaced VP Donatelli, who negotiated the loan with the banks last summer. Weber’s analysis found that the positive enrollment projections in the loan application, on which the school’s “recovery plan” is based, contradicted the current negative enrollment projection. This could explain why.]
The session ends by mutual agreement. The union urges the Administration to use the Faculty Budget Committee to help find alternatives to cutting the faculty budget.
June 30, 1990.
From the University’s audited financial statements for fiscal year ending June 30, 1990:
As of June 30, the deficit in the Current Unrestricted Fund is $4,469,000.
“…the increase in the deficit in 1990 (excluding proceeds of the term loan), and in 1989 (after giving effect to the prior period adjustments), exceeded certain covenants of the University’s loan and security agreement dated July 5, 1989. Under the terms of the agreement, the University is required to sell certain real properties, to repay a portion of the debt, and unless waived by the banks, the banks’ obligation to make advances under the $2,500,000 line of credit shall terminate and all indebtedness outstanding under the agreement ($12,470,000 at June 30, 1990) is immediately due and payable. ”
The report notes that “expenditures of $1,547,000 were advanced from the Current Unrestricted Fund to the Plant Funds for additions to the Law School building in anticipation of collection of pledges for this purpose, and/or, provided releases can be obtained under the current bank term loan, the use of proceeds from the sale of certain properties placed for sale.”
The report also notes that the University has not received any “firm offers” for the two dormitories it has put up for sale.
July 1, 1990.
Today begins the University’s fiscal year 1990-91. According to previous statements by the school’s attorney, the (reduced) faculty budget is now locked in for the coming year, pre-empting anything that happens at the bargaining table.
July 2, 1990.
The union negotiating team repeats its request for more information from the Provost, in advance of tomorrow’s negotiating session.
Again, a request is made for the Higher Education Executive Associates report, expenditures per line item for 1989-90, and the savings the administration expects to save from its long list of discontinued contract provisions, including early retirement, union office rent, union officers’ released time, and interlibrary services.
“Mr. Sabanosh also invited new requests” at the last meeting; so add to the list:
The dollar amount saved by cuts in administration; the new budget for 1990-91 (supposedly approved yesterday); a list of all new hires and salaries this year; the amount paid to consultants this year; the amount budgeted for consultants in the coming year; the monthly cost of outsourced services.
July 3, 1990.
From the UB/AAUP minutes of the Third Negotiating Session:
Discussion opens on the subject of line item budget and outsourcing. VP Beecher still does not have figures on how much would be saved by some of the administration’s proposed changes.
The Administration again refuses to turn over the Higher Education Executive Associates report.
SABANOSH: We don’t see the relevancy.
MOORE: They refer to advice on various situations in UB in terms of faculty, administration, secretaries, etc. These have to be considered. If these consultants were hired to provide expert advice re quality of programs we need to know what they said.
SABANOSH: We’re not here to bargain accreditation matters. Only salaries, hours, and conditions of employment. …
MOORE: We’re not here to bargain accreditation because we don’t want to see any accreditation lost, that’s given. But certain requirements of accreditation do affect wages, hours, conditions of employment.
SABANOSH: That’s not information we’re required to share to enable you to bargain to fullest. …These reports contain advice which employer is entitled to keep private. Items about individuals, operations, unique only to employer.
MOORE: No law restricts us to discuss only salary, hours, conditions of employment.
SABANOSH: We choose to restrict to those things we’re required to discuss….The Higher Education consultants’ reports were provided to employer. Not relevant. I’m sure you’re interested, why I don’t know. But you’re not entitled to them. We don’t plan to make those reports available.
MOORE: Higher Education report deals with conditions of employment.
SABANOSH: To that extent they were revealed in 1988. [Sabanosh is referring to the excerpts and summaries that were shared with faculty.] We would dig them out, I suppose. The point is you already have it. More than enough to make judgements as regards your bargaining position.
WAGNER: Could you just define “conditions of employment”?
SABANOSH: Secretaries, office space, something other than salary and benefits. Do we require you to pay for materials, like pencils?
[Prof. Baumgartner here makes a note to herself: “We need to define ‘conditions of employment’ for ourselves. He’s described them for public school teachers, maybe, for factory workers. Not considering the nature of higher education–including at state universities, but even more so at private university.” ]
In fact, Sabanosh’s background in bargaining includes public schools and factories; this appears to be his first time negotiating a contract at a university.
ALLEN: …Those recommendations impact programmatic decisions. Also large amount of money spent on these reports, and we’re told the University is out of money. Also asked to accept that financial decisions made will mean the University be better managed. Reports would give a better sense of whether or not the University can be effectively managed. We are adamant on this issue; we believe we should have those reports and have a right to them.
SABANOSH: I hear you. I hope you hear me. We may have a real tough issue if that’s the case. To my knowledge, to the extent that they’re relevant to wages, hours, conditions of employment, you have them. I’ve looked at them. …We’re trying to make a contract for the future. What the 1987 report has to do with that–it’s old news. …As a practical matter, what difference does the consultant’s report make?
ALLEN: President says we’re negotiating on basis of this old report.
SABANOSH: The budget we gave you was not put together by Beecher. I don’t know to what extent the consultants’ report was used to come up with it. Next budget for the year just begun was put together by this guy right here.
MOORE:…So the big fee paid to those consultants was useless?
SABANOSH: The information was not used, but it was not useless.
BEECHER: Surely some of their recommendations are being considered. But not following a budget, and none put together for 5 years by consultants. Certainly there is a long-range plan. Our present reporting structure is based on consultants’ reports.
Sabanosh turns the discussion to the administration’s request for information from the union: i.e., the May 30 request for all of the notes, interviews, and data Prof. Weber used for his report on financial exigency.
MOORE: It’s your material. The information originated with you.
SABANOSH: No, give us the data Weber used described on there. And if he used our stuff, I’d like him to identify the items on which he based his conclusions….
WAGNER: You have the full report from Weber.
SABANOSH: No, just a sentence. I’d like a copy of that document.
MOORE: We’ll let you know. Is there anything else?
July 4, 1990.
No negotiation activity today. National holiday.
July 5, 1990.
Vice President Beecher follows up (July 3) on the union request for information by sending some of the items on the list. He estimates the cost of eliminating office space for the union as saving $10 per square foot per year (as much as $1000); however, such office space is available because it’s vacant and would not have been used anyway. He admits that he cannot estimate the savings in other areas the administration proposes to discontinue, such as secretarial services, faculty office space, personal leaves, unpaid leaves, and research leaves because they “have no measurable value at this time.”
July 6, 1990.
Memo from Provost Eigel to the UB/AAUP Negotiating Team (7/5/90) repeats its request for information from the union, including the Weber Report and all of the data, interviews, notes and any other materials he used to come up with his conclusion that the university is not “financially exigent.”
July 7, 1990.
Excerpts from the Administration’s First Contract Proposal:
[Existing language:] “Article 6.3 Non-Discrimination. The University and the AAUP agree that there shall be no discrimination against any member of the bargaining unit or against any applicant for employment by reason of age (in accordance with applicable state or federal law), race, creed, color, sex, religion, national origin or handicap.” Discontinue. Bargaining unit members who believe they have been discriminated against may pursue their claims, free of charge, in state and federal agencies that specialize in addressing and processing such claims. The current contractual provision permits them to file and process a grievance to arbitration based on the same claim and thus to require the university to bear the expense of defending the same claims in a multitude of forums.
[Existing language:} “Article 6.4. Non-Interference. The parties acknowledge that the members of the bargaining unit must remain free to practice their profession in the performance of their work at the University without interference or harassment because of their opinions or beliefs. Toward that objective, the parties pledge to use their respective offices, authority, and influence to maintain the atmosphere of collegiality and academic freedom which must prevail at the University.” Discontinue. This is duplicative of the 1940 Statement on Academic Freedom and Tenure, which the University continues to endorse.
[NB–Elsewhere, the Administration agrees to abide by the 1940 Statement “insofar as practicable” or modified by other articles of the contract.]
July 10, 1990.
Excerpt from the last negotiation session, re: the Administration’s proposal:
MOORE: You hold all the cards.
SABANOSH: That’s what I’m after.
July 11, 1990
From the UB/AAUP Minutes of the July 11 Negotiation Session. Present: Atty. Sabanosh, Poxon, VP Beecher, Atty. Mihalakos, Provost Eigel (Admin.); Profs. Moore, Betts, Wagner, Allen, Baumgartner, Young (UB/AAUP).
The session begins with the Administration again demanding the Weber report, which concluded that the University is not in a state of “financial exigency.” The union responds that the Administration will not turn over its consultants’ reports.
MOORE: We can exchange. But if you feel consultants’ reports should be private to those who commissioned them, then we have to keep ours to ourselves.
SABANOSH: We’re saying ours isn’t relevant to you. Weber is, addresses the financial situation. …
MOORE: …We consider it relevant to mandatory subjects of collective bargaining. Reorganization, accreditation, affects working conditions.
SABANOSH: The security report? Its relevancy?
MOORE: Working conditions. If you would like Weber, you will have to acknowledge our right to see your reports.
Sabanosh changes the subject. Discussion moves to the Administration’s changes in the non-financial provisions of the contract, starting with Article 1, which defines who the parties are, who is a bargaining unit member, who holds faculty rank, etc. It moves on to the union’s right to a closed shop, dues checkoff, etc. The Administration proposal essentially requires the parties to revisit and re-bargain nearly every article in the current agreement, with the object of erasing every check on administrative power which has been in place since the union began in 1974.
On the non-discrimination clause, Sabanosh argues that there is no need for a grievance mechanism, since faculty members have access to the courts.
ALLEN: Your proposal makes redress more difficult, and also sends it to litigation process that can tie it up. ..The contract makes redress mandatory. I believe it’s standard in most labor contracts.
SABANOSH: It’s expensive as a grievance.
MOORE: More expensive as a law procedure.
In the ensuing argument over grievance procedures, Sabanosh disputes the entire concept of a faculty member’s right to grievance over personnel decisions made by other faculty members.
SABANOSH: Our objection goes a heck of a lot deeper than just the right to complain. Has to do with the nature of this agreement in and of itself. You’re asking for ability under Taft-Hartley to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement and to include rights included. Hardly anywhere except perhaps in education and nursing do you find clauses that give bargaining unit members management responsibility. …But if you screw up, we pay. That’s not good. You’re looking for redress for alleged violations by a fellow employee that the employer pays.
ALLEN: …There may be some differences in the way a university operates. The difference makes for uniqueness in a university contract, recognized in 1940 by AAUP and accepted by Administration. There has to be some kind of grievance procedure.
SABANOSH: In a corporation, managers who make decisions are not members of a bargaining unit. Needn’t be different in a university setting. Not to say that faculty should stay away from participation in management decisions…but contract should not create liability of employer for errors by faculty engaged in management functions.
BAUMGARTNER: Then why do you also make the President’s decisions non-grievable?
Discussion moves in another direction.
July 12, 1990
Excerpts from UB/AAUP Minutes of the July 11 Negotiation Session, continued. Atty. Sabanosh represents Admin.; Profs. Allen, Moore and Wagner, UB/AAUP.
Discussion continues on proposed changes to non-financial provisions, including the discontinuation of early retirement, status of librarians and librarian workloads, layoff of tenured faculty, and the University’s claim to all research produced during a sabbatical. The last subject opens up an argument that touches the rationale for the Administration’s contract package:
ALLEN: We’re not trying to be unreasonable. We realize that there should be negotiation and recognition in terms of what we produce in research. We credit the university even in unpaid publication. But as with the whole contract, our intent is not to increase restrictions on the university and make their job more difficult. We want a quick and fair agreement. We could have come in with a proposal as far out in left field as the faculty we met with consider your proposal. We didn’t do that. We’re trying to establish real issues.
SABANOSH: We’re trying to do the same thing although I know you don’t believe it based on our proposal. We have two concerns: we want to eliminate restrictions on our ability to manage, which we feel is responsible for getting us into the situation we’re in….Then of course the bold financial issues. I appreciate your interest in not increasing the burdens of the contract, but the contract as it is is very burdensome to the university.
ALLEN: This is a philosophic difference we bring to the table….I don’t see that giving more rights to the administration is going to make the university better…
SABANOSH: I think there is a philosophical difference. I’m not sure we’ve identified the crux of it yet. The university’s administration does not object to faculty participation in management of the universtiy. We differ on how to express it. We believe it should not be in the contract. Now collective bargaining agreement provides access to grievance and arbitration. If faculty is management under this agreement and a member disagrees and grieves, it goes to arbitration….an outside arbitrator who has no interest or stake in the university or its future.
MOORE: Can’t they still do a good job?
SABANOSH: I’m not making decisions. The Administration I represent are making the decisions.
MORE: You’re a hired gun?
SABANOSH: Yeah.
ALLEN: …It may well be that at a university the various “management” functions are part of working conditions. …It becomes management’s job to facilitate these activities to do our jobs with students competently. The contract becomes a protection for those working conditions.
SABANOSH: …A labor contract that provides management functions to employees is no longer a labor contract. A definition of employee is very narrow–someone hired to do a job for a fee. You’re not an independent contractor. Because of that technicality, you fall within definition for Taft-Hartley….Role of faculty does not depend on the scope of this agreement. That’s a matter between administration, trustees and faculty.
WAGNER: If we didn’t need this agreement, we wouldn’t have it.
SABANOSH: You don’t need it in order to participate the management functions of UB the way UB faculty feel they should. You do these things not because of the contract, but because you are faculty.
MOORE: Not here. There is a union because it was necessary. Faculty were very badly exploited.
SABANOSH: History is immaterial. We’re talking about the future.
MOORE: Not immaterial, because administration continues in the same way.
Discussion moves to other issues, then winds eventually back to grievances, arbitration and the fundamental “philosophical differences”:
SABANOSH: A lot of decisions that are purely management are made by faculty. But once in the contract, you expose it to outside influences, lose the ability to control the environment.
ALLEN: You want us to have the responsibility but not the power. I question the grasp you have on the environment in which the agreement operates, if you can say what you just said.
July 13, 1990
After a meeting with VP Beecher about finances, Prof. Donna Wagner sends a memo to the other members of the UB/AAUP Negotiating Team:
… After reviewing the NEASC report and listening to Beecher today, it appears that the key to the University’s survival lies in a total overhaul of the organizational structure of the University and the introduction of accountability in administrative functions. Giving up faculty salaries and/or reducing spending in the area of instructional supplies and items related to teaching will not make a change in the path on which we are currently going down. It would just contribute to the problem and down-sizing will eventually result in the close of the university.
We have a good opportunity to effect change now that we know that NEASC is returning and expects to see changes prior to issuing a final accreditation recommendation. Specifically, we need to stick with the part-time faculty inclusion for as long as possible as it is the one contract item that directly addresses the criticisms of the expansion of IDEAL and Metropolitan College. We also need to stick with our governance changes since that also positively addresses their recommendations regarding joint planning and governance.
…The real problem lies in management, or lack thereof. Unfortunately, we can’t directly address the need for a revision in the organizational chart at the administrative level. We might, however, be able to do some good by insisting that salary adjustments in our current financial position be tied to equal reductions at the administrative level….and if we are successful in getting faculty participation on the Trustee level, pressure could be brought to bear on the need for organizational chart revisions….We are extremely top-heavy with high paid administrators who have no accountability requirements imposed on them.
Short of the real need–an entirely new and streamlined administration which is willing and able to accept responsibility–all we can do is our little bit through the contract by increasing our role in academic planning and governance and decreasing the efforts to turn the school into a “short course” model.
[NB–Prof. Wagner and the team are so far unaware of a letter from the NEASC to the Administration which modifies or contradicts the summary report issued to the faculty, especially related to governance.]
July 14, 1990
(7/12/90) A letter to President Greenwood from Amy Lezberg , Associate Director at the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, clarifies a phone conversation between them regarding the NEASC’s announced intention to put UB’s accreditation on probation. The issue in question is the commission’s standard on governance.
Director Lezberg quotes the May 15 letter: “We wish to point out, as the University undertakes to resolve its problems, that the standard on Organization and Governance also stipulates that the Governing Board of the institution is responsible for sustaining the institution and its objectives. We trust that in the fulfillment of this criterion, the board will endeavor energetically to address the serious issues facing the institution.” She goes on: “In no sense was this paragraph meant to imply that the University’s board should become involved with the day-to-day management of the institution in any way which might jeopardize the President’s authority to direct the affairs of the institution on a continuous basis….The Commisson, through its reference to its standard on Organziation and Governance, was reminding the University’s Governing Board of its general responsibility for the University’s well-being, particularly at this time of considerable difficulty for the institution.”
The context of this exchange is unclear, but it suggests there is some uncertainty or disagreement between the Board and the President over who should be managing the school through this crisis, and the NEASC was enlisted as an arbiter. The idea that the NEASC felt it had to remind the Board of its obvious responsibility for the University’s well-being is especially strange, except that it seems to echo the NEASC Visiting Team’s impression that the board was not involved enough, to allow such a crisis to emerge in the first place.
July 18, 1990
Bridgeport Post: EMPLOYEE ASSAULTED ON CAMPUS. 4th Incident in about 2 months.
“A 52-year-old cleaning woman was assaulted while working at the University of Bridgeport Tuesday morning, fueling fears of personal harm that has smoldered among employees for two months. Faculty and other university workers, who have long expressed concern about safety at the South End campus, became increasingly alarmed early this summer as three attacks occurred within about six weeks, beginning in May.
“In Tuesday’s incident, the suspect attempted to molest the woman but fled when she started screaming, police said.
“It makes me angry,” a secretary robbed at gunpoint in May commented about Tuesday’s confrontation..’We are what they call sitting ducks at the university.'”
“…Tuesday’s attack occurred about 8 a.m. when the Bridgeport woman was cleaning offices in a poorly lit section on the second floor of South Hall…A man came up behind her and hit her on the head with a blunt object…He then put his hands around her throat and demanded money…When the woman said she had none, he began choking her and ripping off her clothing, she said. He left when she began screaming.
“Two faculty members also were held up at gunpoint on campus–one in a parking lot in May, the other in her office in South Hall last month.”
July 19, 1990
Cartoons Blamed for the Financial Crisis
An article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (7/5/90) examines the financial crisis at UB: “Administration and Faculty Are at War Over How to Rescue U. of Bridgeport From Its Daunting Financial Problems.” The article does not attempt to explain the cause of the financial problems but focuses instead on the inability of both sides to address it, suggesting a fundamental disagreement over methods of attack and an unwillingness to compromise.
In the article, President Greenwood makes the startling assertion that she did not attempt to terminate 50 faculty members in March, but her object was only to save $3 million from the faculty budget, which might have been accomplished with salary cuts. This claim stands at odds with the numerous “restructuring” documents distributed by the administration, including the Board Chairman’s statement that faculty terminations were needed to bring UB’s student/faculty ratio closer to the national average.
Maintaining its theme that both sides are responsible for the crisis, The Chronicle notes that “The union itself has come in for some criticism from several professors and administrators who say it shares the blame for the inertia on campus. The union’s newsletter, for instance, has annoyed the administration by printing unflattering caricatures of Mrs. Greenwood and writing that she ‘occupies a position that towers way above her head.'”
July 21, 1990
Administration claims about the regional accrediting agency (NEASC) and its concerns about governance at UB continue to sow confusion. Provost Eigel’s “Midsummer Status Report” (7/12/90) to the campus community asserts that the NEASC “specifically noted concern about the impact of labor reltations on the Administration’s flexibility in managing the University.” In short, the Administration is using accreditation requirements to justify removing faculty governance from the collective bargaining agreement.
The NEASC report which was made available to the faculty, however, contains no such reference, specifically or by implication. In fact, the NEASC visiting team in the fall of 1989 noted the constructive, favorable impact of the collective bargaining agreement on governance at UB; at the time, the Provost himself praised the governance structure in the University’s self-study report.
The union is still unaware that the Administration is referring to confidential communications between itself and the NEASC commission, in correspondence it has kept secret, which it can therefore interpret as it chooses. (NEASC rules do not require the Administration to share information with anyone, least of all the faculty.)
July 22, 1990
The union negotiating team takes issue with the Administration’s cancellation of a bargaining session on July 18; the reason given for the cancellation was that no air-conditioned room was available.
The union team had expected the Administration to respond to its counterproposal, and Robert Goldstein, the union’s attorney, had come from New York to attend, when the meeting was suddenly canceled.
The Administration suggests that the next session be given to signing off on the few articles of the contract that both sides agree on. The union suggests instead that such unsubstantive activity could be done outside the bargaining session, and charges the Admin team with delaying tactics.
July 23, 1990
Memo from Prof. Toby Moore, UB/AAUP Negotiating Team, to Provost Eigel:
“On 13 July you and I discussed the agenda for the meeting of our negotiating teams scheduled for July 18 1990. …You told me at the time that the Administration would have no new counterproposals for the 18 July meeting. Instead, the Administration merely wanted the agenda to consist of signing off on those sections of the contract currently in effect [that neither side proposed to change]….
However, UB-AAUP’s agreement to your proposal became moot when the Administration negotiating team aborted the meeting of 18 July. The reasons given–the conference room was too small, the Founder’s Room was too hot–only indicate the Administration is not interested in agreeing to a contract as quickly as possible. Your statement in your memo of 18 July, that you have arranged for further meetings to take place in the Trustees Dining Room, only points out the absurdity of the Administration’s excuse for refusing to meet on 18 July. General agreement that the Trustees Dining Room is hot and airless led us to seek another room.
…In order to facilitate negotiations, UB/AAUP has prepared the enclosed document containing sections of the Administration proposal and the UB/AAUP counterproposal in which neither team has made changes from the current contract. We suggest that both teams sign off on these sections prior to the next meeting. This procedure will expedite matters and will help to alleviate the waste of valuable time incurred by the Administration’s choosing to terminate the 18 July meeting before it began. Please contact me to let me know your decision.
I hope you will agree with me that we should put an end to unproductive meetings, filled with lengthy boring monologues and much repetition. We would like to receive your second proposal with your current position. When the Administration’s second proposal is prepared, in writing, with substantive and substantial changes that come closer to the UB/AAUP position, we can schedule our next negotiating session.
July 24, 1990
Typically, the memo Prof. Moore sent to Provost Eigel is answered by Atty. Sabanosh, whose categorical answers contradict the Provost’s earlier statements.
Sabanosh writes that:
(1) There was no agenda for the July 18 meeting; the Provost said nothing about “signing off” on any articles; furthermore, the Administration team has no intention of “signing off” on any item “until we reach agreement on all issues.”
(2) The Administration team will not have another proposal at the next meeting; “We reserve the right to select the appropriate time, format, and manner for making proposals to you and respect your right to do the same.”
(3) “I will not dignify with a direct response your claims that we aborted the July 18 meeting. Suffice it to say we will not be bullied or give in to ultimatums.”
(4) Arrangements have been made for a portable air conditioner, should the weather warrant it.
(5) The administration team objects to the presence of people attending bargaining sessions who are not members of the negotiating team [this refers specifically to the administration’s demand to remove Prof. Richard Tino from the last meeting because “sensitive information” is sometimes revealed at these meetings, and Prof. Tino, a member of the union Executive Committee, does not have official clearance].
“We urge you to withdraw your preconditions to resumption of talks and get to the business of negotiating a contract.”
Sabanosh concludes by telling Prof. Moore to send all future communications and correspondence directly to him.
July 25, 1990
Prof. Moore responds to Atty. Sabanosh’s memo of July 24.
Dear Mr. Sabanosh:
The UB-AAUP Negotiating Committee is ready to meet with the Administration Negotiating Committee as soon as we have mutually agreed on a productve agenda. Agreement on an agenda is not a precondition to collective bargaining sessions. … In the absence of a new proposal, we suggest that an equally productive agenda would be a discussion of the administration’s financial position before our next meeting with our constituents.
On 31 July 1990, the UB-AAUP will be meeting with the University faculty. The faculty is most interested in how the administration arrived at the three million dollar deficit figure and how the administration determined this sum should be deducted from the faculty budget. We are ready to meet with the administration negotiating team at any time to discuss this matter.
… The members of both negotiating teams are busy with many professional commitments. None of us wishes to waste time with unproductive meetings, although, obviously, to you no meetings are unproductive, as they add to your billable hours.
We hope to hear from you promptly, as we wish to negotiate a realistic and workable contract as soon as possible.
July 30, 1990
A negotiation session is scheduled for today, but the Administration cancels because of “prior commitments”, insisting on rescheduling to tomorrow, a time when the union has said it is unavailable.
July 31, 1990
Prof. Toby Moore sends a letter to Atty. John Sabanosh (de facto chief negotiator for the Administration) protesting the Administration’s cancellation of yesterday’s meeting:
“As we have explained to you several times, the UB-AAUP is unable to meet today because of a Safety and Security meeting at 10 am and a Faculty Meeting at 2 pm. The morning meeting is of great importance and urgency, as a number of acts of violence in June and July took place in office and classroom buildings. Faculty and staff were beaten, robbed, and terrorized by armed men. Security on the UB campus is still grossly inadequate. The UB-AAUP hopes the Administration will realize its obligation to provide appropriate and sufficient security on campus. ..The Administration should realize that refusal to meet with the rest of the University community only reveals indifference to the welfare of faculty, staff, and students. [NB-This refers to the cancellation of a scheduled meeting a week ago with a representative group of faculty and staff.]
…We not only wish to get back to the negotiating table, but we have suggested two agendas we believe would result in productive meetings. However I have received neither agreement nor suggestions as to an agenda from you. Since the UB-AAUP counterproposal is now on the table, I once again suggest a new proposal from the Administration is the logical subject for the agenda of our next meeting. The UB-AAUP is ready to meet with the Administration as soon as we can agree on an agenda.
August 1, 1990
Excerpts from the union negotiating team’s report on the last negotiating session (July 18), published in the UB/AAUP Newsletter of July 30:
On Wednesday, July 18, the union team goes to the meeting at the scheduled time and place, to find the administration team waiting outside the room. The Administration’s lawyer says they have to find another room because the table is too small. The teams move to another room to find the tables arranged in a square which will not accommodate everyone.
Prof. Tino, seeing the problem, attempted to rectify the situation by re-arranging the tables end to end. Mr. Sabanosh apparently objected to this action, as well as the very presence of Prof. Tino; in addition, commenting on the heat in the room, he said the meeting should be changed to another day, gathered his group together, and said to them “We’re leaving.” They left.
“Dr. Eigel returned and summoned Prof. Betts; when she joined them she was verbally challenged in a decidedly less-than-conciliatory manner by an exercised Attorney Sabanosh. “Who is that man and why is he here?” he demanded, shaking his finger.
“He [Prof. Tino] is a member of our team for the day” we replied.
“A member of your team for today?”–with volume intensifying.
“Yes, an ad hoc member of our team.”
“We discussed this at the table and told you you could not bring any observers to the table.”
“He is a member of our team for today.” [The union’s] Attorney Robert Goldstein joined Prof. Betts and a loud but short exchange of vews occurred between the attorneys, with Mr. Goldstein basically stating that UB/AAUP could appoint anyone temporarily to the team at any time. Mr. Goldstein asked directly if the Administration’s team was walking out because of the presence of Mr. Tino. Immediately Mr. Sabanosh’s tone became conciliatory. Denying that was their reason for leaving, Mr. Sabanosh stated that rather it was the environment, the room, the table size, etc. They recessed to the Library Director’s office, and we adjourned to South Hall, willing to meet at their disposal.
“Federal mediator Pat Hart attempted to resuscitate the meeting. Evidently the Administration team told him we had said we could not meet that afternoon (untrue) and had also accused us of “setting preconditions to negotiations” because we requested their counterproposals as an agenda item for a next session–it had been several weeks since they had received our counterproposal, and they seemed mired in their own rhetoric, simply restating the whys of their first proposal, which we received in mid-June, rather than discussing the counterproposal on the table. After several phone discussions with Mr. Hart, we realized that a meeting on July 18 was not to be.
“…The UB-AAUP negotiating team remains totally and vigorously opposed to the administration’s current (and only) proposal. We are opposed to anything and everything which will result in the evisceration of our contract and jeopardize the health of the University. Our attorney has characterized their proposal as both outrageous and provocative. Couple, if you will, said proposal with the nonsensical cancellation of our July 18 meeting, and the conclusions seem obvious. How can we fail to see today’s encounter and the absence of fair and realistic counterproposals as anything but game playing?”
[As of August 1, another negotiating session has still not taken place.]
August 2, 1990
At its membership meeting of July 31, the faculty union resolves to set up a strike committee and strike headquarters, “so that we may be prepared for any eventuality,” according to President Alfred Gerteiny.
August 3, 1990
Mass Layoffs or Mass Hallucination?
In the UB/AAUP Newsletter (July 30), President Alfred Gerteiny addresses the article by Denise Magner in the Chronicle of Higher Education in which UB President Greenwood denied she had tried to terminate 50 faculty in the spring.
“The reason for Ms. Magner’s confusion was that Ms. Greenwood had asserted to the Chronicle that she had never attempted to terminate 50 faculty members last spring; that I had conceived of the lie to rally the faculty behind the AAUP. Could I really have concocted such a destructive hoax and spread it far and wide in newspaper headlines across the country?
“…Ms. Magner never answered the question, preferring instead to diplomatically note that a disagreement between administration and faculty exists over the issue. [!] Yet a mass of evidence, including the restructuring outline, the bank loan document, the preliminary NEASC report, and the famous Eigel memo, “Layoff Notice for Tenured Faculty” (April 30) disseminated to the entire University community, seem to confirm the administration’s plan to terminate faculty.
“…[In March] the President conducted a blitz of internal public relations, speaking to the various constituencies of the Universtiy and externally to the media. She asserted that the alternatives to the termination of faculty were either an increase of $3000 in tuition or a 25% reduction in faculty salaries. (On May 3rd, however, we were confounded by a memo from Attorney Sabanosh, masquerading under the signature of the Provost, in which he denied that a $3000 tuition hike was ever entertained!
“…Greenwood’s many-faced leadership has failed spectacularly to meet even our modest expectations. The real Ms. Greenwood is unmasked. It is time to recognize it and move on to a new administration.”
August 4, 1990
From a memo from President Greenwood (August 3) to Administrators and Non-Bargaining Unit Staff:
I am grateful for the magnificent support you have provided the University in its difficult period of financial recovery. Your positive attitude and morale, your willingness to forego pay increases in 1989-90 and again in 1990-91, and your assuming more responsibilities and performing more work creatively, with fewer resources, have been a source of inspiration for all of us.
…Despite our best efforts, we need something more than just another salary freeze from you in 1990-91 in order to meet our goals. Therefore, I am asking you once again to contribute to the University in an extraordinary way. I am asking you to accept a reduction in compensation for 1990-91, effective September 1, 1990, as follows:
1. A reduction in the University’s contribution to your pension so that the University contributes no more than 5.5%;
2. Sharing in the cost of group insurance coverage for your dependents by contributing 25% of the premium cost for dependent coverage, and
3. A 7% reduction in your base salary for 1990-91.
I have already made arrangements to have my compensation for 1990-91 reduced as described above.
Again, let me thank you for your cooperation in this extraordinary situation.
August 5, 1990
Bridgeport Post: UB Security Chief Leaving Job
“University of Bridgeport’s security chief has resigned at a time when school officials are encountering increasing criticism about campus security.
“Cornelius “Connie” Carroll, head of public safety resigned Wednesday and will leave at the end of the month.
“Carroll’s resignation was received by the university administration in the wake of a recent drowning tragedy and numerous assaults on students and faculty alike in the past few months.
“…When asked if she thought that the departure of a university official could harm the university, [President] Greenwood said, “In a university this size you have turnover every year. With a large number of employees, there will be turnover.”
“…Donna Wagner, a UB professor and a spokesperson for the American Association of University Professors, said she was surprised at Carroll’s resignation. AAUP is the faculty union. “I am sorry to see him go, “said Wagner who has been working with Carroll on developing safety measures for the school. “He worked hard at his job and tried to do what he could.” [Wagner herself was a victim of robbery at gunpoint in early June in her office on campus.]
August 7, 1990
From UB/AAUP minutes of a negotiation session (August 3).
Present: For UB/AAUP: Profs. Betts, Wagner, Sethi, Baumgartner, Crowley; For Administration: Atty. Sabanosh, Poxon, VP Beecher, Provost Eigel, VP Melendez, Atty. Mihalakos.
The faculty team again requests the Higher Education Executive Associates report; the administration again refuses. Sabanosh emphasizes that time is short, and the administration is “extremely serious” about getting $3 million out of the faculty budget: “…we don’t have to get all the money in one place; any combination of sources within [the] faculty budget is something we would be receptive to consider very strongly. When I’m asking for 30% cut from someone making $30,000 it doesn’t necessarily have to come from just salary.”
CROWLEY: Let’s fantasize, suppose people consider this kind of sacrifice. What do you offer in return for that kind of serious sacrifice?
SABANOSH: What do you want? I don’t know what you want.
CROWLEY: What you did on March 12 took a serious risk with [the] University. You could have come to us during vacation and discussed it with us without publicity. But you didn’t. We go back to August ’89. We’re asking the same questions over 2 years old. We have some trouble sensing this time pressure; these numbers were fixed up as of March ’88. [There is] a lot of variability in what can happen…We think we can get a positive outcome if you follow some of our suggestions….I hope that the banks we are consorting with will give us some time to work things out…
SABANOSH: What we do will determine whether we have a life after 30 days.
CROWLEY: We want to change things, not confront the same crisis over and over again. Get off the crisis management, the cut-cut.
SABANOSH: We don’t like it any more than you. But we’re in a crisis. University has a major cash-flow problem. I let Mike [Beecher] talk to that because he can speak with the numbers.
CROWLEY: How about restructuring?
BEECHER: We’re off the original loan plan. I’ve been in negotiations since I walked in here. I have no new assets to pledge. We are pursuing it. …They are not motivated to consider restructuring…I am not hopeful that they will provide sufficient capital to get through next year.
CROWLEY: They do have an obligation under their charters. Unless they can think of an alternative use for the resources.
BEECHER: It’s a business decision. Citytrust may be on the verge of bankruptcy.
SABANOSH: Banks are concerned about negotiating relationships. One source is the newsletters that go out. …Source of concern about whether we are going to find a cooperative atmosphere. Context in which it shocks them. They’re all free-speech and all, and hard-nosed, but their concern is that it is a reflection of an unstable employment relationship and that makes for an unstable business.
CROWLEY: Have they expressed any concern to you about the management strategies and analytical abilities of the institution over time?
SABANOSH: They examine strategies, policies, projections, and the people who developed and will implement when they are going to give a loan. Also examine health of the business, including labor relations.
CROWLEY: Where did we screw up?
BEECHER: Projected revenue. Tuition and tuition-related in full-time undergraduate.
… SABANOSH: We’ve been here since March. All we’ve been doing is providing data to the exclusion of discussing the issues.
BETTS: We’re taking this seriously. That’s one reason we can’t make decisions quickly.
CROWLEY: Do you understand what goes on in an institution of higher education? Do you understand the standards and protections promulgated by AAUP? You cannot imagine how things got done here before the collective bargaining contract. We spent nearly twenty years to put together a contract that smoothed all those areas of problems.
SETHI: If we intend to negotiate a contract, may I suggest a few things? I think you need to look at this 30% figure and think about it carefully, and come back to us with real numbers. I think the 30% is unrealistic…Unachievable as a negotiator. Second, let’s look at what we have proposed as a contract and what are the clauses where we agree, to get them out of the way. …We will get a lot farther, faster.
…EIGEL: Also some areas where it appears there is not much difference.
WAGNER: So why don’t we deal with those?
SABANOSH: Let’s get to it. One of the problems that plagues us is a tremendous lack of credibility on both sides.
CROWLEY: The President said she’d work with us. Cuts and mixed messages. She wanted us to collaborate. That never quite happened. When we met in May 1988 we discussed early retirement. Nothing [happened] til Halloween, when she said she needed 15 people to retire early or they would involved Article 8 and 10. There was a point a which she could have built credibility, but she refused. We made her the queen of the resolution of the last contract. We gave her every bit of support, a chance to heal this institution. You read what you sent to the banks.
August 8, 1990
From UB/AAUP minutes of a negotiation session (August 8). Part I.
The union attorney, Robert Goldstein, goes head to head with the administration’s attorney John Sabanosh. The session begins with a tug of war over the language of the contract’s Preamble, then quickly devolves into an argument over the administration’s proposals in general:
GOLDSTEIN: I understood this place was under serious financial problems and I expected that these negotiations would be tough because the administration would want the faculty to make contributions out of meager salaries to help the University survive. …But when I saw this proposal, I thought nobody in his right mind who really wanted concession bargaining would try to take their whole contract apart at the same time.You know as well as I do that you can’t ask a union to give up all rights, protections, and money too. They can’t do it…I have difficulty taking your proposal seriously as a bargaining document because it is so extreme.
SABANOSH: Better start taking it seriously.
GOLDSTEIN: Not even close to achievable. I have to see it as some sort of political document. The University is not going to be affected by any of these changes.
SABANOSH:…We have two things to accomplish. Number 1 is financial.
GOLDSTEIN: I think what you have to accomplish is to get to August 31. I can tell when somebody wants to talk and when somebody just wants to provoke. …Everybody knows that the hardest changes to get are language changes, and so lawyers are very judicious in what they propose if they want a deal. ..You have chosen to wave a flag in our face, make a bunch of speeches, you don’t have any justification except your view of contracts….If you want any financial concessions, you have defeated that purpose entirely by this document.
SABANOSH: …Our other goal is to recover the right to manage the University. Unfortunately since 1974 the negotiations have really usurped the right of the Board and administration to manage because of all the things that indicate an intent to involve the union in educational and academic decisions. We’ve stated that that is not the union’s place. The union represents people with respect to salaries, hours, and conditions of employment. ..The Board of Trustees and administration want to recover their right to manage the University and the way to do it is to eliminate from this contract many if not all of the clauses that provide for the union’s management of the University.
GOLDSTEIN: I take it the financial problems have to do with the union’s managing this place. This contract hasn’t stood in anybody’s way to making decisions. …Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Decide what’s important.
SABANOSH: What we’ve decided is important is these two areas.
GOLDSTEIN:…Take everything that’s a benefit economically and a benefit in terms of language, and what’s left?
SABANOSH: Wages, hours, and conditions of employment.
GOLDSTEIN: Nobody who’s a professional is going to sign this contract. Nobody. You’re looking for a battle, or you’ve miscalculated what’s possible. …I haven’t talked to anybody who wants to give you money. Nobody believes you can handle it well, nobody believes you won’t come back and ask for more in 6 months. … You have imposed a complete obstacle to talking about what you want to talk about because you’ve thrown out everything that’s important to us.
PROF. SETHI: …I would have no difficulty with this place if it was managed beautifully. I want to stay out of it and teach. But I’m looking at mismanagement every day.
SABANOSH: …I’m not saying all managers are as qualified as they should be. All I’m suggesting is that as a matter of structure, order, and management, the management has to reside somewhere.
PROF. SETHI: …The President says this contract doesn’t allow her to do innovative things or change things. Our president asked her to show some area where the contract prevented her, and she could not come up with a single example. This isn’t getting us anywhere.
August 9, 1990
From UB/AAUP minutes of a negotiation session (August 8). Part II.
[The union attorney, Robert Goldstein, and the administration attorney, John Sabanosh, begin to review the administration’s extensive changes to the non-financial articles. They argue over the elimination of the Past Practices clause (SAB: “We can’t change anything. We can’t manage.”) and then onto the elimination of the Non-Discrimination clause (SAB: “We already have avenues available for people who feel they’ve been discriminated against–state or US district court”).]
GOLDSTEIN: 6.4 didn’t just pop into this contract because somebody dreamed it up. We had an incident. To deal with the problem and make sure everybody felt comfortable and there was language everyone could point to, we wrote this provision. To the best of my knowledge, it has not been cited or used because there have not been any charges.
PROVOST EIGEL: It’s covered in the 1940 Statement.
GOLDSTEIN: Is the 1940 Statement arbitrable in this contract?
SABANOSH: I suppose depending on the issue.
GOLDSTEIN: …Unless there’s a problem and unless you’re not sure the 1940 Statement is arbitrable, why take it out? …You are the moving party in getting rid of those clauses that benefit the faculty and expanding those that benefit the administration. You are not very persuasive. I’m suggesting you take another look at 6.4.
The discussion moves on to new rules regarding a faculty member’s personnel file (Article 6.5):
GOLDSTEIN: You can’t imagine how much effort went into negotiating and amending 6.5 and how valuable it is to the faculty.
SABANOSH: You now have a personnel file statute in Connecticut. We don’t want to fight in two arenas.
GOLDSTEIN: We want to be able to process grievances on important matters even if a faculty member can afford the time and expenses to pursue these things elsewhere. …How many grievances have occurred regarding this Article in the last 25 years?
SABANOSH: I have no idea. What I see in this contract are tremendous areas of liability. Number One, the files belong to the University, even though we call them “your” personnel file. The University determines what goes in there. The state statute tells us we cannot reveal any personally identifiable info to outsiders without written consent…
GOLDSTEIN: That has nothing to do with this section. This deals with an individual’s right to his own files.
SABANOSH: The statute gives that.
PROF. SETHI: 6.5b is important, and unless covered by the state, I want it here.
SABANOSH: Not covered by the state. These are our files and we can put anything we want in there….
PROF. WAGNER: You have two sets of files on people. Personnel keeps status files. Dean keeps personnel files for review purposes and that’s what this refers to.
SABANOSH: Personnel file includes all files on a person, and that’s why you give notice to see it, because they have to be gotten together…[The current language] inhibits our ability to operate reasonably and protect ourselves from liability. What might we do with an anonymous letter of complaint about a child molester? You have a right to see it and comment on it. We’re looking for everything in one file…
GOLDSTEIN: How come we never heard about it before?
The discussion moves on to other issues, including removal of chairs from the bargaining unit.
August 10, 1990
The union responds to Provost Eigel’s message to the University community, in which he charges the union newsletter with misrepresenting the administration’s contract proposal.
Most entertaining is the Provost’s assurance that… “we do not propose to exclude faculty from governance…We made it unmistakably clear to the union’s bargaining committee…that it is the University’s philosophy to involve faculty in management and peer-personnel functions.”
The UB-AAUP Negotiating Committee also made it unmistakably clear to the Administration’s bargaining committee, you may be assured, that no meaningful faculty participation has occurred on this campus except when it is written into the contract. Any member of the Faculty can cite the committees never responded to, resolutions never acted upon, and consultation in name only (the College of Chiropractic decision being particularly relevant as an example of the last). Our perception of inadequate consultation is verified by the observation of the NEASC visiting team, as presented in the draft of their Accreditation Report. Furthermore, surely neither the Provost nor his attorney needs to be reminded that a contract is the words on the paper, not anyone’s good and noble unwritten intentions. The Newsletter is absolutely accurate that the Administration has claimed in the contract complete authority in every academic process–including, by the way, the choice of teaching methods and materials. In light of repeated accreditation team criticisms regarding the low priority assigned to educational outcomes by this administration, not to mention its explicit violation of academic freedom, we find this proposal extremely disturbing.
August 11, 1990
From UB-AAUP Minutes of the August 8 bargaining session, Part III.
[Atty. Goldstein represents the union; Atty. Sabanosh represents administration. The discussion moves to the length of notice given to terminated tenured faculty, the centerpiece of the March 12 conflict. The current contract gives laid off faculty a year’s notice and a year’s severance pay. The administration wants 30 days’ notice and no severance. ]
PROF. SETHI: 30 days is nonsense. Appointments are for academic years.
GOLDSTEIN: This is a national standard.
SABANOSH: …Our proposal is based on a need to cut our financial liability. It doesn’t do us any good if we have to cut staff to save money to have to pay for two years more. ..
GOLDSTEIN: From our perspective, that’s what management is all about: managing resources so you can provide some degree of human response to people. To cut people adrift at a time when they can’t get other employment in the field, at the very least you give what is the national standard. Every university in this country, to my knowledge, gives a year’s notice to terminated faculty. This whole contract seems to be trying to take higher education out of this university.
SABANOSH: With tenured you have the 1940 Statement.
GOLDSTEIN: No we don’t.
SABANOSH: …I want to get back to this business about the terminal year. We can no longer afford to do that.
GOLDSTEIN: Get a new administration that can. Why do we have the only administration that can’t give a year’s notice?
SABANOSH: Who cares how we got that way?
GOLDSTEIN: We care. Why do you suppose the faculty has tenure?
SABANOSH: Because they have the 1940 Statement. Maybe 30 days is unreasonable.
PROF. SETHI: …If you have to give a year’s notice, you have to put that in your equation….We are here in this situation not just because of the shortage of students but because of how badly we have been managed. Such a clause would allow you to continue that practice.
SABANOSH: If the University is badly managed, it’s because there are too many limitations in this contract.
GOLDSTEIN: Do you think we could sell anybody on giving you this power? Don’t you remember what happened three months ago? Without this contract 50 tenured faculty members are gone. Who is going to give you the right to do it by weakening this contract? You are not trustworthy because you abused what you had….
SABANOSH: We have abandoned layoffs as a method of reducing the faculty budget. …What I’m asking you to do now…is give me relief for the reasons that I’ve given you and for the experience we had over the past year.
GOLDSTEIN: …Once again you’ve come to us asking for everything under the sun. … If I wanted something from you that was difficult, I wouldn’t ask you for a thousand other things. That’s foolish. You’ve confronted us in every single possible area.
SABANOSH: You’re saying okay, we’ll give you the $3 million, but we’ll continue to thwart your ability to manage effectively…
GOLDSTEIN: I suggest you have a third unspoken goal and that’s to destroy this union, and that’s going to put you in a lot more difficulty.
SABANOSH: Oh no not at all.
GOLDSTEIN: This is the most union-busting proposal I’ve ever seen. You are trying to induce a strike.
SABANOSH: Oh no not at all. I’m not trying to induce a strike.
GOLDSTEIN: Then come to us with a proposal that isn’t a wish list.
SABANOSH: It’s not a wish list. It’s not a final proposal. It addresses two areas of concern: financial and managerial. By these proposals we’re telling you how we want to attain our goal of $3 million and our goal of retrieving our ability to manage this university.
GOLDSTEIN: The only way we will ever agree with you on this proposal is if we lose this strike.
SABANOSH: We recognize your right to strike. We do not intend to coerce you. But when you consider whether to exercise that right, consider that the result of a strike may very well result in closing this University.
GOLDSTEIN: I would suggest that management consider that same idea. Withdraw these proposals and think about what’s really important.
August 12, 1990
From UB-AAUP Minutes of the August 8 bargaining session, Part IV.
[Atty. Goldstein represents the union; Atty. Sabanosh represents administration.] In this discussion on past practices, the Provost makes a statement that seems to illustrate why governance needs to be written into the contract.
SABANOSH: The contract inhibits us from managing. We can’t make changes to keep the university alive if we have to maintain every past practice.
GOLDSTEIN: Identify past practices which have inhibited you.
PROVOST EIGEL: Any of the cases where we have tried to propose a restructuring or evaluation of departments, this was rejected by the AAUP. What you folks came up with was a totally worthless evaluation. I told you so at the time.
GOLDSTEIN: Didn’t you bypass the established governance procedures?
PROVOST EIGEL: Nowhere in the contract is that required.
GOLDSTEIN: Even so, why didn’t you want to work with the faculty?
PROVOST EIGEL: I did. I explained why it was necessary. What was turned down was the kind and scope and depth of the information.
SABANOSH: Perhaps if we had been able to do that evaluation, we would have had the foresight to anticipate March 12.
PROF. WAGNER: …The accreditation team has said we have too many programs. This is an area that would be better addressed in this contract by setting up a mechanism for evaluating it.
PROVOST EIGEL: I asked the Program Evaluation Committee and they gave us something totally useless that we could have done ourselves in 10 minutes. Let me give you a second example. In one college, teaching load is significantly lower, they say it’s a past practice. We have consistently asked for uniform loads. You give us now a 9 credit. You say our proposal is ridiculous, your counterproposal is ridiculous.
GOLDSTEIN:…Give us a proposal to change those past practices that you find so inhibiting.
PROVOST EIGEL: 12 hour load.
GOLDSTEIN: You make a proposal eliminating past practices regarding workload.
SABANOSH: We’re eliminating the past practices clause requiring all past practice.
August 13, 1990
The union makes still another request for financial information from Vice President Beecher.
Among the information requested is the total amount of salary raises that the law school faculty will be receiving for 1990-91.
August 15, 1990
The administration submits its Second Written Proposal.
Changes to the first proposal include:
Contract provisions which are grievable will be settled “exclusively” through the grievance and arbitration procedure outlined in the contract. (i.e., the grievant waives his/her right to pursue the matter in court.)
The Non-Discrimination clause is restored, but anyone who files a discrimination case with a government agency or court waives the right to pursue grievance and arbitration.
Article 8.2 Reappointment of Third through Sixth Year Faculty; change to “Third through Seventh Year Faculty.” Whereas now a seventh year appointment (given at the end of the sixth year) is granted with tenure, the tenure decision would not occur until the seventh year.
Faculty members with six years’– or more— credit towards tenure shall not receive de facto tenure.
August 16, 1990
From UB-AAUP minutes of the August 15 Negotiating Session. Part I.
The premise the administration has put forward for its removal of all governance from the faculty contract is that the contract has prevented them from managing effectively since 1974. In particular, the administration attorney, John Sabanosh, claims that “past practices” is too vague, and a grievance that leads to arbitration would mean that an “outsider” would be interfering in management of the school.
Prof. Hans Van der Giessen, the union’s Grievance Officer, defends the past practices clause:
VAN DER GIESSEN: This unit does not run to arbitration. It’s an extreme remedy and very iffy. Whoever loses, loses big. We try to resolve things together, and have done so. I don’t know that any useful purpose would be served by removing past practices. The grievance procedure is useful for resolving labor tension, which will exist with or without a union. Grievance procedure has been useful and leads almost always to a mutually beneficial resolution. …[In] personnel disputes, we haven’t gone to arbitration. In almost all instances, resolution has been to the benefit of the university. Grievance language is adequate and works well. Should not be the subject of such an intense assault. …It’s not broke, so don’t fix it.
SABANOSH: …Past practices makes the entire agreement an amorphous document, boundless. We can’t get a handle on it., have no way of identifying our liability, and so makes it difficult for us to discharge our responsibility. A dispute creator rather than a settler. ..It’s an inhibiting factor and for that reason alone we have to get rid of it.
VAN DER GIESSEN:…I don’t know what it has inhibited. I am always surprised by the number of things the administration doesn’t do that the contract empowers them to do. ..As far as the claim that past practices is vague and you don’t like to go outside, language itself is often amorphous. Creative tension has permitted, rather than obstructed, solutions. There will always be people who are unhappy when an established pattern is upset. The clause gives those people a forum to air those feelings….My office has been cooperative, has tried to look at a problem and find ways of resolving it. …The minute you file a grievance, everybody is looking at arbitration down the line. We try to delay filing and resolve in another way.
SABANOSH: …I don’t want outsiders telling us what to do.
VAN DER GIESSEN: And in fact that hasn’t happened. There is enough tension within the process to force resolution. Arbitration is a threat that pressures a resolution. Take it away, and we lose ability to make sure resolution will happen.
SABANOSH: …What your past practice does is expose both sides to obligations and liabilities to things they can’t see in the agreement.
August 17, 1990
The Bridgeport Post announces that John H. Maloney, vice chairman of the UB Board of Trustees has resigned for unspecified reasons. He did not return phone calls to his home and office.
Maloney served as the board’s finance committee chairman and belonged to the 15-member executive committee. “UB President Janet Greenwood, who said Wednesday she had not received any notice from Maloney, said that with such a large number of members on the board, it was not unusual for some to resign. ‘With 70 board members, they come and go,” Greenwood said.
But Alfred Gerteiny, President of the faculty union, said Maloney’s resignation concerned him. “It is surprising that a person of such importance should resign from the board at such a difficult time.”
August 18, 1990
At about this time, the UB Board of Trustees is approached by a representative from the Professors World Peace Academy who suggests a buyout or merger with the University. The PWPA is an arm of Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, but members of the board who entertain the proposal will later claim that they were unaware of the Church affiliation until almost a year later, and in fact, the rest of the board will not hear of the proposal until much later than that, the fall of 1991.
August 21, 1990
From UB/AAUP Minutes of August 18 Negotiating Session. Prof. Toby Moore is chief negotiator for the faculty union team; Atty. John Sabanosh leads the administration team; Vice President Beecher and Atty. Mihalakos are members of the admin. team:
PROF. MOORE: The first proposal presented by the administration so seriously undermined any belief in the administration–many are convinced that the administration deliberately wants to destroy the University. Your initial proposal did more to destroy credibility than any other single thing, and the faculty will not have it. It is the entire proposal from beginning to end. They are not afraid of threats of [the University] folding because there is nothing they could possibly work under. There is no tenure, no governance, no input into academic programs. Your hostile attitude by accusing us of not wanting to negotiate will make it worse. You have stalled for months and then present us with a document that offers changes that are not really changes, and that’s your first response to our conterproposal.
SABANOSH: We discussed all the open items at least twice, including the proposals you made.
PROF. BETTS: We were working down your list of proposals, not ours.
SABANOSH: You haven’t proposed many changes.
PROF. MOORE: Why go to extremes when you have a reasonable, workable contract?
SABANOSH: We do not feel we have a reasonable workable proposal. Your criticism of our proposal really doesn’t persuade us. It misleads your membership as to how serious these proposals are.
PROF. WAGNER…I don’t even know how we could begin to get any progress made considering the gap between the proposals, but I think we have to give it a try.
SABANOSH…We share your frustration, and I’m sorry you feel our proposals are provocative or frivolous. We have to rely on you to dispel those feelings.
ATTY. MIHALAKOS: We’re not unreasonable, we’re not afraid to reconsider. Persuade us.
VICE PRES. BEECHER: Neogtiations mean we trade things.
SABANOSH: It’s up to you to say to us what you won’t budge on, and then let us reconsider.
PROF. MOORE: The mistake was the extremeness. You didn’t get our attention; you got the faculty’s anger and contempt. They wonder what kind of game you’re playing. This is the faculty’s reaction, and I’m telling you they’re our constituency.
SABANOSH: You have to deal with what I gave you. If you don’t want to negotiate, don’t come back.
August 23, 1990
In the Letters section of the Bridgeport Post, UB President Janet Greenwood publishes a strange, meandering epistle describing all the positive accomplishments of her administration since 1987, and boosting the value of UB to the city. In particular, she quotes a study by an “independent consulting firm” that claims UB contributes more than $200 million annually to the economy of Bridgeport. (Although it is not named or described in any detail, the “independent” study appears to be the work of a UB business professor who has his own consulting firm, and the work originated years before, for the Miles administration; it is a vague, ballpark estimate of how much money is made and spent by UB employees and students in the metropolitan area annually, down to how much employees might pay in taxes and how many packs of chewing gum students might buy in local stores. The study is dragged out whenever someone tries to make a case for the University’s value to the local economy, but the details are rarely, if ever, cited. Certainly the estimate of how much UB employees have to contribute to the local economy will drop significantly after the administration makes its deep cuts to employee compensation.)
The upbeat letter makes no mention of the financial crisis at the school which has put it on the front pages of the local papers since the spring, or of the impending war with its labor unions, except to say that “Working within the parameters of a fiscal recovery plan has not always been easy. The good news is that, based on what I have witnessed for the past three years, I am confident that the challenges will be met by both the city of Bridgeport and its university. We should all take pride in the progress made thus far.”
August 25, 1990
UB Unions Form Coalition
The Bridgeport Post (August 17) reports that the faculty, secretaries and maintenance workers at the University of Bridgeport have formed a labor coalition, vowing to work together if a strike takes place at the university. (What the article does not report is that the coalition originally began over the safety issue at UB this summer; members of all three unions were victims of brazen crimes on campus and organized to voice their concerns to the administration.)
“In a protest that marks the first time the university’s unions have joined forces, labor leaders criticized the “arrogant contractual demands” that the administration has made during negotiations this summer.”
“The UB administration and trustees have single-handedly dragged the university down the path of managerial and financial dysfunctions,” the unions said in a press release. “It is therefore they who should bear its immediate consequences.”
“The three unions, whose contracts all expire this summer, have been upset with the progress of the negotiations.”
Local 1199 will be filing an unfair labor practice complaint over how its negotiations ended. Bargaining with Local 1199 ended with the administration declaring an impasse and imposing its last best offer even though the union was prepared to submit a counterproposal.
The secretaries’ union, Local 153 of the Office and Professional Employees International Union, estimates that the administration’s proposal will take about $2,300 out of the secretaries’ average salary of about $15,000.
The maintenance workers union says their pay cut will average $3,000 out of an annual $16,000.
The administration is demanding a 30% compensation cut from the faculty, along with eliminating all governance rules from the contract.
August 26, 1990:
The Bridgeport Post (8/25/90) reports that Senator Christopher Dodd and Rep. Christopher Shays have offered their help as mediators to get the faculty and administration together. Congressman Shays expresses doubt that the university could survive a strike. Senator Joe Lieberman and Mayor Mary Moran have also offered help.
The administration has already imposed its terms on the maintenance workers and secretaries. The faculty contract expires August 31.
UB-AAUP President Alfred Gerteiny says that Shays and Dodd had suggested that the administration and faculty union withdraw their proposals and start fresh. But UB’s attorney, John Sabanosh, said the union made that proposal in an effort to get the administration to withdraw its request for concessions. He says “it is unconscionable” for them to use Shays’ and Dodd’s offices in that way.”
August 27, 1990:
From UB-AAUP Minutes of the August 26 Negotiating Session:
Negotiations founder again on the administration’s determination to remove all governance protections from the contract, dismantling the work of arbitrators and negotiators since 1974. The University’s attorney has stripped the contract of anything he does not consider to be a mandatory subject of bargaining under the Taft-Hartley law, according to his own definition of “conditions of employment.” This is essentially an attempt to impose industrial-commercial workrules on higher education–which operates under a very different structure–and remove any legal barriers to management’s final authority in all academic matters.
Discussion between Atty. Robert Goldstein (UB-AAUP) and Atty. John Sabanosh (Admin.) makes clear the connection between the administration’s current proposal and its attempt to fire 50 faculty in March (although the administration has since claimed in the press that there was no attempt to fire 50 faculty).
[Article 10 allows the administration to terminate tenured faculty. Article 10.6 is the clause that requires a year’s notice and severance pay. In March, the administration argued that 10.6 did not apply to terminations under financial exigency. Now it ties their hands:]
GOLDSTEIN: Do you understand that 10.6 is all that makes 10.1 and 10.2 palatable? Three mediator-arbitrators sat down and tried to come up with a balanced view of this article from proposals by faculty and management. What they came up with was broader rights to terminate but with extended provisions to the terminated.
SABANOSH: That’s what we don’t like. …By having three arbitrators negotiate the contract for us, they did the administration a disservice, because they’ve tied our hands. We can’t address the financial crisis by laying employees off because it will cost us too much. What we need to do is reestablish that as an alternative for us. That’s why we want 10.6 out of there. We don’t want to eliminate the 1940 Statement.
GOLDSTEIN: Every other university has the sense to avoid that declaration because they know it will drive students away. You did it to try to violate the contract.
SABANOSH: No, no. We thought we could get the money we needed. We proposed that you waive 10.6. You wouldn’t , and we respected that.
GOLDSTEIN: Because we took you to court. How can you say that with a straight face?
Discussion moves to Article 8 (rules for non-tenured faculty appointments and terminations):
GOLDSTEIN: We specifically also do not accept the new notice requirements, which create a kind of indefinite notice, which is a contradiction in terms. Something that is by definition not definitive is meaningless. …What we have here is part of national academic standards that are part of the 1940 Statement and Commentary. We are not about to abridge national standards just because you want to.
SABANOSH: Whose national standards?
GOLDSTEIN: The governing bodies of 400 institutions. Can you cite any that don’t?
SABANOSH: I don’t want to spend the time looking.
GOLDSTEIN: You didn’t even bother to look to see if you were creating a whole new concept here? You don’t seem to be taking this seriously.
Later, the question arises on whose authority the administration team is making its demands:
GOLDSTEIN: Has the Board given you instructions in collective bargaining as to what you want to achieve?
SABANOSH: No.
GOLDSTEIN: If that’s true, then we would like to meet with the Board because we feel your position is not serving the institution, and the trustees may find themselves liable when the school doesn’t open. I appreciate knowing that the Board has not given you instructions, because then we can address the Board and give you instructions.
SABANOSH: If they gave us instructions, it would inhibit our ability to bargain. They do approve of what we’re doing.
PROF. MOORE: But they haven’t suggested your goals?
GOLDSTEIN: You created the two-pronged attack?
SABANOSH: All of us.
PROF. COSTELLO: You’ve got the blind leading the blind.
August 28, 1990
In a front page article in The Bridgeport Post (August 27), UB President Greenwood argues that the faculty contract gives professors too much power, more than they have at other universities, and that the administration must take back control in order to manage effectively. [She seems to have forgotten her time as an administrator and contract negotiator at the University of Cincinnati, where the faculty have more rights and authority; in fact, the UB union’s attorney says he would trade UB’s contract for theirs.]
The same article addresses the issue of accreditation: the University has released a heavily redacted copy of the letter from the NEASC (received in May), which seems to bolster their position on removing governance from the faculty contract. The University is in danger of being put on probation unless finances and governance are addressed. However, the article acknowledges that although “The report agreed that the governance system had failed,…it could be used to argue both points” [i.e., more or less faculty involvement in managerial decisions].
“Greenwood agreed that the faculty has a part in governing the university, but that those rights don’t belong in the union contract.” The union’s position is that those rights are unenforceable if they are not legally binding–the administration’s attempt at mass layoffs in the spring is proof of the need for legal protections.
Meanwhile, the public image of the school takes a direct hit. The NEASC points to deficiencies in every academic area; “quality appears to be on the verge of serious decline because of the cutback in the number of faculty, staff and administration,” “Maintenance on the school’s buildings and equipment has been long deferred, while the library and media centers…are unable to appropriately support…the university’s educational mission.” The administration, it says, is entirely focused on finances, while “secondarily concerned with providing the conditions for good learning opportunities for students, good working conditions for faculty and staff, and good communications processes. Ideally, those priorities should be reversed.” Nevertheless, the President is given high marks for her handling of the budget process.
On an inside page, the same issue of the Post reports that a UB student has been shot in a robbery attempt. No details are available. The small item recalls that “Last September, a UB student was shot to death after a fight at an off-campus keg party.”
August 30, 1990
From UB-AAUP Minutes of the August 29 Negotiation Session. The Bridgeport Post has published an article on the regional accreditors’ report on the University, which it obtained through a Freedom of Information request. Now the subject of a confidential letter from the NEASC emerges. Atty. Sabanosh is the Admin.’s chief negotiator and spokesman. Atty. Goldstein is the union’s lawyer.
SABANOSH: We gave the report to the paper. Let’s talk about the letter. There are some sensitive things in there that would be detrimental to the institution’s efforts as a whole, particularly our efforts at improving enrollment. Although we could share it with you, we don’t want it to go outside the confines of this room.
PROF. CROWLEY: Is there something that’s more sensitive and could be more damaging to the institution than what happened on March 12?
SABANOSH: Yeah. In my opinion it is, because, what the hell, it is.
GOLDSTEIN: Since you have chosen to use this document or some portion as a justification for a bargaining position, and you’ve gone public with it, we’re entitled to it without any strings.
SABANOSH: We have not gone public with all that’s in that document. You make it difficult for us to cooperate in trying to be open.
GOLDSTEIN: Don’t use a justification in bargaining that you can’t disclose. …
SABANOSH: The document we gave to the Post you all have. The questions the Post asked were in respect to that document, and when comments were made, that’s the document that was referred to. The document that Ed (Provost Eigel) was referring to has not been referred to.
PROF. COSTELLO: The Post can also subpoena the letter, so I suggest you make it available to us.
PROF. MOORE: How do you think we learned about the letter? It didn’t come to us in a dream.
GOLDSTEIN: I suggest you provide the letter and assume you’re dealing with people who have an interest in it.
PROF. CROWLEY: The NEASC says in their manuals that the whole process of accreditation is not to take sides…I can’t believe they would have a document that only one side could have access to.
Atty. Goldstein suggests that the union file its own FOIA request for the letter. [The letter in question is a notification to the UB administration that the agency plans to put UB’s accreditation on probation. The administration has kept the letter secret since it was received in May, but meanwhile used its content selectively as an argument for overhauling the governance structure at the university, particularly in removing governance from the faculty contract.]
August 31, 1990
The faculty union proposes that the existing contract remain intact, except for financial matters which would be put to binding arbitration. The offer was approved by a vote of the union’s membership: 96 to 3 in favor (with 3 abstentions).
The administration rejects the offer, insisting that it needs all of the “management rights” it claims in its last proposal, as well as all financial demands, in addition to removing all governance rules from the contract.
Through the federal mediator, Pat Hart, the union sends a message to the admin team that it has no alternative but to strike. The mediator returns with the message: “We expect you to strike. And we expect it will be a successful strike.”
The 1987-90 contract expires at midnight.
September 1, 1990
All of the employees’ unions at the University of Bridgeport go on strike together for the first time in their history. Although the strike begins officially today, it is a weekend and classes do not start until September 3. The maintenance and food service workers continue to work the weekend for the sake of students who are moving into the dorms.
The unions set up strike headquarters in offices at the old Jefferson School building on Myrtle Avenue, one block from campus.
September 2, 1990
Some striking faculty report that a presentation by Admissions just days before the strike indicates that total enrollment at the University is down by more than 800 students, contradicting a public report a week earlier that enrollment is down by only 200, as Admissions predicted in the spring.
The contradiction in numbers will become significant when the administration acknowledges the loss of nearly 1000 students later in the academic year; the administration will claim the loss was the result of the strike–but if the loss happened before the strike, as faculty maintain, it would more likely be the result of the administration’s failed retructuring attempt in the spring, and its threat to raise tuition by $3000.
Without evidence of the presentation on paper, the conflict will remain unresolved.
September 3, 1990
The Bridgeport Post (9/1/90): Talks Fail, Triggering Strike at UB
“Faculty, secretaries and maintenance workers at the University of Bridgeport declared a strike late Friday night after the administration rejected last-minute offers from the three unions.
“…Based on votes by members Thursday and early Friday, all three unions will be on strike and picketing is expected to begin Tuesday morning.
“…The three unions all made last-minute proposals Friday to submit contract decisions to binding arbitration shortly after getting approval from their membership to strike.
“The three unions formed a coalition and vowed to strike until all three unions got a fair deal.
“…Secretaries, at meetings held during their lunch hour, voted 75 to 35 with one abstention Friday to authorize a strike. ‘We don’t want to do it, but we feel we’ve been pushed into it,’ said Beatrice Kirkeby, lead representative for the secretaries’ union…. Kirkeby said the vote was a difficult one for secretaries, many of whom have worked at UB for 10 to 20 years. ‘People are very, very nervous about eliminating their income from a place they’ve worked [for so long]’ she said.
“Before the meeting, one secretary said that she wouldn’t honor the strike if it were called. “I’m coming to work, I’m crossing the line,” said Valerie Johnson, who works in admissions. “I want my two weeks vacation, which I get the 12th.” Johnson admitted that other secretaries who worked at UB longer had more at stake than she in the university, particularly their pensions. “I just can’t afford it. I have children,” she said. But most secretaries supported the strike.”
September 5, 1990
The administration makes a last offer to the faculty which includes the following financial “alternatives” (what will become known to the union as the administration’s “Chinese Menu” proposal):
A 28 % cut in salary and 9.5% UB contribution to retirement.
OR: A 24 % cut in salary and a 2.5% pension contribution.
OR: A 21.8% cut in salary with no pension contribution.
OR: A 15% cut in salary, and the termination of 35 professors. The faculty get to choose who among them will be let go.
In addition, of course, all governance provisions in the contract are removed, and a sweeping “management rights” clause is included, giving administration full control over all academic matters, including teaching methods and materials.
The administration has given the union until 5 pm to respond to the proposal before they begin hiring replacements for strikers. Patricia Walsh, the president’s executive assistant, says the university has to see how many classes are uncovered before they can tell how many replacements to hire. She says the strike has already cut into enrollment (?) but does not have any figures to back it up.
A convocation scheduled for today has been postponed until some time later in the semester, “to allow for fuller participation by members of the UB community.”
[HAPPY LABOR DAY]
September 6, 1990
In an interview in The Stratford News (9/6/90), President Greenwood offers the administration’s case for its financial demands, and portrays the faculty as (typically) unreasonable and even irrational. She says that the union has been given all the information it requested, and the school’s books have been opened and studied “ad nauseum” by the union, banks, consultants, etc. “The faculty has never had so much data. It would tower books on both sides of this room.” So the root of the problem seems to be a history of “internal bad feelings” which accreditors noted as far back as 1980. “I have been involved in turnaround situations before. We just need to find a way to create a positive environment.” This echoes previous statements by the president on the need to separate negative faculty from the university.
As whenever the administration presents its case to the press, the focus is on financial concessions, with no mention of the radical governance changes which are the principal motivation for the striking professors.
Meanwhile, in an article in the Post (9/5/90) the State Department of Higher Education says it has no authority to get involved in the labor dispute. Commissioner Norma Glasgow says she is aware of the plan to hire replacements for striking faculty, and that “state accreditation standards require all universities to have qualified faculty in the classrooms and prohibit an over-dependence on temporary or part-time faculty.” The school’s accredtiation is already scheduled to be reviewed in the fall, and a visiting team will examine the conditions at UB in October.
In a related article in the same issue, a working professor in the business college said it was hard to understand the administration’s refusal to allow binding arbitration: “If the administration is so convinced in their own minds that their position is the only position a reasonable person could support, then I don’t see why they would have any objection to having an arbitrator.”
September 8, 1990
The administration team submits its Final Proposal to the faculty union, along with a scolding letter from Chief Spokesman/Negotiator Atty. John Sabanosh. The letter first admonishes the union for not allowing the University to violate the contract in March, then for not accepting sweeping “language changes” which have nothing to do with the “financial crisis”:
“Since at least early March of this year, you and your union have been aware of the financial crisis currently facing the University of Bridgeport. …Last Spring your union vigorously opposed addressing that crisis through the layoff of faculty members unless the University applied the provisions of Section 10.6 of the expired collective bargaining agreement, even though you were fully aware that providing one year’s notice of layoff and paying an additional year’s severance pay to tenured faculty would not address either the reality or the immediacy of our financial problem. …Having been thwarted in our efforts to achieve such savings through layoffs last Spring, we have sought to achieve it through the bargaining process.
“Despite your representations that you would work with us in a cooperative bargaining effort to help us achieve our goals, you have resisted any effort to reduce the faculty items in the 1990-91 budget. In addition, you have stubbornly refused to bargain over our proposals for language changes designed to remove provisions which impede the Administration’s ability to manage effectively and, as stated by the NEASC in the report of its evaluation team issued last Fall, to facilitate our decision-making ability to avoid a reoccurrence of our current fiscal crisis.
“Your rigid behavior and your intransigence in dealing with our concerns at the bargaining table have made it clear that there is nothing further we can do to solve our problems through the bargaining process. …Accordingly, we are enclosing to you our FINAL PROPOSAL to UB/AAUP. Clearly, bargaining has reached an impasse on all issues addressed in our final proposal, after good faith bargaining on our part. Please be advised that we intend to implement, unilaterally, all items in our final proposal effective Wednesday, September 12, 1990. …
“Please be advised also that, due to a sharp decline in enrollment since Wednesday, September 5, 1990, because of the strike and attendant publicity, we may be forced to eliminate some of the sections, courses and/or programs scheduled for the Fall Semester, and, as a result, we may need to implement additional reductions.”
September 8, 1990
The new academic year typically opens with a Convocation ceremony, but because of the strike, the administration last week postponed the ceremony indefinitely. So the striking professors hold their own convocation ceremony to welcome incoming students. In defiance of a ban on strikers setting foot on campus, a parade of faculty in regalia marches from strike headquarters two blocks away to the veranda in front of Mandeville Hall where they speak through a public address system. The event follows the protocols of Convocation, and a representative from each college has a turn to speak. No strike issues are discussed, but the context for the speeches is clear. Prof. Baumgartner is the keynote speaker, and the subject is Academic Freedom.
The same day, President Greenwood holds a press conference in which she announces that the administration will implement its final offer to faculty on September 12, and will begin hiring replacements for strikers after 5 PM tomorrow. She tells the assembly she knows the administration’s contract proposal is “unpopular,” but reminds everyone that the purpose of the university is to serve the students, and this is the only way to avoid raising their tuition by $3,000, which would be required by the faculty’s demands.
September 12, 1990:
The administration imposes its Final Offer on the faculty. The compensation package implemented is “Alternative A” :
“Effective September 1, 1990, salaries at which bargaining unit members were paid for work shall be less than salaries at which such bargaining unit members were paid for work they performed in the 1989-90 normal work year in amounts selected by the individual faculty members respectively, from among the following choices:”
CHOICE I : 28.1% less (with 9.5% TIAA/CREF contribution)
CHOICE II: 24% less (with 2.5% TIAA/CREF contribution)
CHOICE III: 21.8% less (with 0% TIAA/CREF contribution)
Besides each bargaining unit member receiving an individual compensation “alternative,” Faculty Council (not the union) is given the right to examine the University’s financial records annually at its own expense (Faculty Council has no budget) during the term which the salary reductions are in effect, and the University is open to renegotiating its TIAA-CREF contribution (with whom?) after October 1991.
Besides the compensation package, the new imposed contract includes sweeping “management rights”. Although the administration’s rationale for this was to restore rights taken away from the administration since collective bargaining began in 1974, the imposed work rules go far beyond the rights administration held then, including the authority to determine teaching methods and materials and to fire tenured faculty without the notice and severance pay prescribed in the AAUP 1940 Statement–clear violations of academic freedom. It also strips out of the contract any legally enforceable protections of faculty rights in regard to personnel decisions and the creation and elimination of academic programs.
The administration begins officially hiring “permanent replacements” for striking faculty, although the process is said to have begun some time ago.
September 13, 1990:
Although it is widely assumed that the strike will kill the University, the board of trustees decide to risk it for the sake of balancing the budget for the 1990-91 fiscal year.
As anyone who reads the local papers knows by now, a balanced budget is required by the terms of the bank loan the school received last year, and the trustees intend to keep that promise by slashing employees’ compensation and reducing the size of the faculty.
In fact, the reduction of the faculty by one third was a goal of the Greenwood administration since the fall of 1987, before the financial crisis existed, and it was partly the single-minded pursuit of this goal that led to the crisis. Nevertheless, the financial crisis is now given as the reason for personnel reduction, which the strike will accomplish in a random, disorderly fashion.
As if to ensure a strike which will enable them to dump personnel immediately and without cost or restraint, the board and administration have maintained an uncompromising negotiating stance on two fronts–finance and governance: sweeping cuts in compensation combined with all-inclusive “management rights” (and elimination of faculty rights) that the administration claims it needs to manage effectively.
Yet all of the salary cuts and management rights in the world will not get the administration out of the hole it has dug for itself, and the board must know this. Beyond balancing the budget this year at the expense of its employees, the University is still $12 million in debt, and has no feasible financial plan to save itself, and no academic plan to guide its personnel and program reductions. Although it is not public knowledge, the school has already defaulted on the terms of its loan, which makes its avowed determination to keep its promises to the banks at any cost specious at best. Now it will begin a chaotic dismantling of programs under the very feet of the students who enrolled this fall in good faith, and whom the trustees claim to serve, and the ugly battle that ensues will cut into enrollment for next year, which will further impact finances, which will impact accreditation, and so on into the forseeable future.
None of this seems to matter. What the school’s management is doing by dragging its faculty, staff and students into a conflict of historic proportions is buying time. It is managing by improvisation, certain in the knowledge that if everything goes well and according to plan, even if it gets everything it has demanded from the unions and more, it will be back in the same hole a year from now–or worse.
September 14, 1990:
At the membership meeting of September 11, the faculty union overwhelmingly voted down the administration’s Final Offer, and gave a vote of confidence to the UB/AAUP negotiating team. But there is already splintering in the group. The AAUP Update of Wednesday, September 12 reports that “some well-meaning faculty and administrators are trying to start their own negotiations or mediation efforts. At this time, such activity is divisive and counterproductive.” In fact, some members have disagreed with the union’s approach from the beginning and are strongly in favor of giving the administration whatever it wants in order to save the school and their jobs; they are only waiting to see how events unfold.
On September 12, as promised, the administration unilaterally implemented its Final Offer and began hiring “permanent replacements.” The idea of permanently replacing a tenured full professor with a person hired off the street or through an employment agency with a day’s notice–and making that person a permanent member of the faculty, with no departmental review whatsoever–is unheard of in academe, until now. It is still considered by the striking professors to be an empty threat, or one the students, parents, and accreditors would never accept.
As a means of increasing the pressure on the board, the strikers begin demonstrations targeted at the trustees’ places of business: on September 12, informational picketing began at People’s Bank in downtown Bridgeport because the bank’s board of directors was meeting and because Vice President Leonard Maneiro is on the UB Board’s Executive Committee. The Bridgeport Post gives front page coverage to the demonstration, and on the street in front of the building, the strikers happen to run into Lowell Weicker who is running for governor of Connecticut. “I’m with you guys,” he tells the group,” The university is the best thing Bridgeport has going for it.”
September 15, 1990:
“I don’t want the damn faculty back!”
On September 13, the day after the administration implements its final offer, the faculty union makes an offer to return and continue to work under the terms of the old contract while negotiations continue. The offer specifies that any provision of the old contract can be opened up for change or negotiation by either of the parties until a new collective bargaining agreement is achieved.
On September 14, the administration rejects the offer.
On the same day, the union leadership learns that the Board of Trustees is meeting at the Hilton hotel in downtown Bridgeport. Desperate to know what the trustees are thinking, they ask a union sympathizer to go down to the hotel and see if it’s possible to hear what’s going on. In fact, the meeting is loud and contentious, and can be clearly heard in the hall outside the conference room, where a clutch of reporters is already gathered. Over an hour of the discussion is recorded from outside the door with a pocket tape recorder. What the union learns through the excerpt of that meeting changes the direction of the strike.
The discussion clearly indicates the desperate situation the school is in because of the labor dispute. It’s a weekend, and the board doesn’t know how to make payroll on Monday. The trustees argue over whether to tap restricted endowment funds to meet operating expenses, what their legal liability will be if they do it, and what their liability will be if they don’t and can’t meet payroll. If they are later found to be incorrect in using the endowment funds, one says, they must be prepared to underwrite the “loan”: “In case we didn’t get the students back and everything fell apart, there’d be a half a million dollars problem here.”
Another says that the creditors and the banks should be advised of the trustees’ willingness to ante up, “there, I think, we get the brownie points.” Then he adds: “I don’t want the damn faculty back here in two weeks if you got 50 more of them than you need. You’re right back in the same soup we were always in. I mean how are we going to arrange this negotiation to keep the size of the faculty at a level that suits the University when the dust settles.”
Their attorney interjects: “Right now we’re trying to work out a way not to take back the ones you don’t need. You will only have to take back the ones that will satisfy your enrollment requirements.” He adds that the ones not taken back will probably file a lawsuit under Article 10.6 of the old contract, but that it’s something to be addressed down the road.
Trustee: “but right now…Jesus, if we got to take them back and they all go to a big meeting tonight and say, guys, we failed, let’s all go back to work…we’re dead!”
Someone asks that if the school goes into bankruptcy, do the employees have a priority?
Attorney: “Yes they do.”
Trustee: “So they’re going to come ahead of us, and they’re going to get paid, and you’re going to have significant cash flow from some other things. So what’s wrong with staying open on Monday with this payroll…even if we don’t make it and go bankrupt they’re going to get paid in bankruptcy court…”
The Board Chairman suggests that “we do not close down on Monday. We assume there is a method of paying those people…The board is making a commitment to keeping the university open for the next two weeks. That’s about as far as it goes because obviously in the next two weeks if we’re not there then we’ll have to pull the plug anyway, but we’ll deal with that as we get there….” He suggests going to corporate donors for help.
Another: “We need to take out a big ad in the Bridgeport Post articulating that we are open and that courses are being covered and that we have no problems…”
Someone points out that they will have to get corporations to pay for the ad.
The Vice President of Finance asks the board to formally vote on keeping the doors open, because he doesn’t want to be liable if the payroll can’t be met.
September 16, 1990:
The faculty union leadership presents what it has learned from the trustees’ meeting to its members at a meeting at the Days Inn in Bridgeport. What it has learned is that the trustees are determined to reduce the size of the faculty by way of the strike, and have therefore not negotiated in good faith, and that the school does not have money enough to meet payroll; that the board is gambling on staying open another two weeks, and is looking ahead to the likelihood of bankruptcy. The union leadership sees a moral obligation to inform the students who have enrolled for the fall semester that the school could close at any moment. The goal of the strike has now expanded from negotiation for a contract to saving the school from its management.
The news is received with shock and anger, and seems finally to splinter what remains of the “united front.” Several of the most prominent “critics” of the way the negotiations have been conducted get up and walk out. Members who have been vascillating seem to take this moment as the sign that the strike is lost and it is now everyone for himself.
September 17, 1990:
The striking unions distribute flyers to students from the picket lines. The message offers the following advice:
“1. DO NOT pay your tuition! If you have already paid, demand your money back. Only pay your tuition when you are sure that your programs have been saved and your faculty is back. Otherwise, you may find yourself having to sue for a refund or standing in a line of creditors later.
2. If you don’t want to do that, a Temporary Restraining Order to prevent the Administration from cancelling classes will be filed this afternoon on behalf of the UB students. (The message instructs how to join the suit.)
3. If you have paid for your room and board and want to stay to help us try to rescue this school, we would welcome your participation. …
4. Examine your options. If you have alternatives, we will help you in any way we can. You know where to find your instructors if you need letters of recommendation or other advice. We thank you for your faith in us and will continue to try to live up to it.
“…We have since been shown concrete evidence that THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES, THE PRESIDENT, AND THE ADMINISTRATION’S LAWYER DO NOT WANT THIS STRIKE TO END. They have no intention of bringing the faculty back even on the Administration’s terms. They plan to eliminate programs right and left. In fact they have already been doing so. Their lawyer is trying to find a legal way to bring back a selected group of faculty to teach the programs the Administration wants to offer and the minimum Core offerings required for accreditation. Meanwhile, they are trying to figure out how to make students pay their bills and persuade them that they are getting the programs they came here for.
The Faculty, Clerical and Maintenance unions are acting to prevent the defrauding of students and the murder of the University of Bridgeport. We will pursue every avenue to stop them…We have given our lives to UB. We will not let the university be destroyed without a fight.”
September 19, 1990
Bridgeport Post: UB SUES STRIKING UNIONS
“The University of Bridgeport’s administration is suing the school’s three unions for slander, libel and interfering with its contractual obligations to students after faculty members began advising them to withdraw their tuition money. In the third week of a bitter strike by faculty, secretaries, and cafeteria and maintenance workers, the administration also asked late Tuesday for an immediate injunction to stop union members from distributing pamphlets telling students to get their money back and leave the school.
Judge Myron Ballen refused the request Tuesday, but promised UB lawyer Robert B. Mitchell a hearing on the matter.
Striking faculty began advising students Monday to withdraw their money based on their interpretation of an unauthorized tape of Friday’s board of trustees meeting.
…The suit filed Tuesday seeks to require the unions to retract their statements and pamphlets to students and asks for punitive damages including an order for punitive damages from the defendants’ income. In large print, the suit also states that UB intends to seek any damages awarded in its favor by making the defendants work off their debt.”
The article includes a sidebar on the tape recording, a copy of which the union provided to the newspaper. The reporter’s assessment is basically that “it is impossible” to put the conversation in context of the six-hour meeting, and that there is much room for interpretation. It also leaves out any mention of the remarks: “I don’t want the damn faculty back,” or “what if they all decide to come back tomorrow, we’re dead.”
September 22, 1990
As with most of the legal actions the University takes regarding the unions, the “slander” lawsuit goes too far with its demand for prior restraint, attempting to bar the strikers from handing out leaflets on the picket line. The ACLU joins the unions’ defense. While it is impossible to judge the lawsuit’s intimidating effect on the strikers, its wide net includes every member of the bargaining units; those who cross the picket line and return to work, however, are removed from the suit.
Of the three striking unions, the professional staff (the faculty) cave in first. Maintenance workers, food service workers and secretaries hold strong but watch as replacements take their jobs and more professors cross the line.
Academic strikes are thought to have a built-in time limit, because once enough time is lost in a semester (about three weeks), it can’t be made up, and the semester is lost. If it has to refund students’ tuition money, its only source of income, the school will close. As the administration continues to search for and hire replacements for professors, the strike enters its third week.
The unions have been collecting signatures on a petition to call on the state government to intervene. An article in The Bridgeport Post reports that members of the striking unions have held a rally at the State Capitol and presented Governor O’Neill with a petition signed by students, members of the university community and the city at large, urging him to use his office to bring the parties to the bargaining table. The unions claim they have 10,000 signatures; the Post reports 7,000. “Our concerns go beyond the settlement of our own contracts,” the striking workers say in a statement: “We believe the university’s future is in jeopardy. The administration is not capable of solving the university’s problems. The state’s involvement is necessary for the university’s survival.” State Rep. Joe Grabarz calls for an investigation of UB’s finances and state contingency plans to bail out the school or take it over if it fails.
September 26, 1990
Bridgeport Post: Governor’s Aide Trying to Mediate Impasse…
David McQuade, a key O’Neill aide, said he will continue to talk to UB President Janet Greenwood and union leaders in an attempt to bring the parties closer together. But the parties continue to have wide differences, McQuade said….State officials don’t plan to offer any financial assistance to the university because of budget constraints facing the state….Francine Prichard, public relations director at UB, says the replacement faculty meet the educational, teaching and professional experience criteria necessary for the university’s accreditation: “The majority, if not most, have teaching experience, a master’s degree and a large number have business experience.” Higher Education Commissioner Norma Glasgow said state officials have no plans to review the qualifications of replacement faculty members hired by the university. …Glasgow said state higher education officials don’t evaluate faculty except for the review that is part of the accreditation process.
[What the unions hear from their sources in Hartford is that the UB administration is standing on its autonomy as a private school and refusing any help from the state but financial assistance.]
From a flyer distributed to students by UB-AAUP:
WHO ARE THEY?
Who are these substitutes and what are their qualifications?
These people have been hastily hired over the last few days, chosen at random from the files of part-time instructors and rejected full-time applicants, and from deans’ acquaintances. They did not go through the regular hiring procedure, which involves careful peer review, interview, and examination of recommendations. They did not order the texts that are in the bookstore; they did not prepare a syllabus to fulfill the course and major requirements; they know nothing of your programs. They cannot advise you, and they are not prepared to teach you. Furthermore, they have no respect for the teaching profession if they would be willing to help this president deceive you into thinking that you will be getting the education you have paid for.
YOU HAVE THE POWER TO END THIS STRIKE TODAY! ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES AND DEMAND THE QUALITY EDUCATION YOU PAID FOR!
October 3, 1990
Nursing students at the University have organized and sued the school for breach of contract, for not providing faculty to teach their courses.
The nursing college was terminated last year by the administration, to be replaced by a chiropractic college, but was supposed to be phased out to allow current students to finish another year. While the university has been able to “permanently replace” professors in a wide range of disciplines during the strike on short notice, it has so far not been able to replace the highly specialized nursing faculty. In an effort to force the school to bring their professors back, the students filed suit in state court. On October 1, the University lawyers succeeded in moving the suit into federal court, calling it a matter of federal labor law.
In a Bridgeport Post article (October 2), “Lynn Dudley a practicing LPN and senior RN student and several fellow students face missing a year of classes at a time when the state is importing foreign nurses to fill shortages”
The striking Nursing faculty are on their terminal year’s notice, since their program was phased out under the old contract, and they have a year’s severance coming. Their absence so far is a serious handicap to the school’s ability to continue, and may be the linchpin the strike now hangs upon.
October 7, 1990
Status of the Strike:
The Nursing faculty return to work, with the exception of a handful who remain on strike. This makes the nursing students’ lawsuit moot, and dooms any hope of a negotiated settlement for the strikers.
The secretaries’ union returns to work under the administration’s terms (October 1), followed immediately by the maintenance and food service union (October 2). The administration makes them apply to get their jobs back, and many are turned away. The application line extends around the block from the entrance to Rennell Hall.
Longtime members of the faculty union have now crossed the picket line, including two officers of the Executive Committee. A liaison from National AAUP tries to persuade the union leadership to make an unconditional offer to return.
October 8, 1990
Second Founders
The UB Bulletin reports on a campus event at which President Greenwood addressed more than 100 scab faculty and staff, and referred to them as the Second Founders of UB. The school, now rid of the union and its negative elements, is reborn. Without irony, the speech draws its inspiration from a Carnegie Foundation report which recommends strengthening universities’ educational purpose by “enhancing the sense of community.” Among the six principles described in the report is one which reads: “A university is a just community honoring the sacredness of each person” and another which says: “A University is a caring community, sensitively supporting members’ well-being and service to others.”
Meanwhile, a purge is underway. Administrators, advisors, former colleagues, and replacement faculty are busily disparaging the faculty who remain on strike as people the school is well rid of–negative, incompetent, greedy, and self-involved, caring nothing about the students. In one department, a bulletin board dedicated to past achievements of the faculty and students is taken down. Professors who crossed the picket line insist in interviews with the press that it was their dedication to the students (not the panic to save their jobs) that drew them back to the classroom, and some claim that they were on strike in the first place because the union “lied to them.” The long-term effect of this is that some students begin to cross the street to avoid their former professors on the picket line, and many shout epithets at them from dorm room windows.
There is an absurd dichotomy now taking effect: the strikers are considered permanently gone, yet technically–by law–they are still employees–on strike. The administration treats them as both at the same time, or one or the other, depending on the political need of the moment.
October 10, 1990
The faculty union makes another contract proposal:
A. All provisions in the old contract relating to governance shall remain in effect.
B. All employees of the University would share in the financial sacrifice, on a progressive scale: those earning high salaries would take a bigger percentage cut; those earning $20,000 or less would have no cut.
C. The University shall maintain health coverage for the current year.
D. The union accepts the co-payment provisions described in the Administration’s Final Proposal.
E. All striking employees whose positions have been eliminated shall be entitled to severance pay, paid out over several years.
F. All other provisions in the Admin Final Proposal shall be negotiable. Those on which there is no agreement within 30 days of a strike settlement shall be referred to binding arbitration.
The cover letter includes the following statement of principles:
“As we have told you repeatedly, there are certain fundamental principles that must be safeguarded if the work of higher education is to go forward…The more than 70 AAUP members still on strike are firm that these principles shall not be sacrificed. We also believe that there is no sound argument the Administration can offer to sacrifice these principles; the problems of this University must be solved, if they still can be solved, on the foundations of academic integrity and shared responsibility. Unilateral decision-making for administrative convenience in addressing day-to-day budgetary crises cannot drive an academic institution. In fact, it is just the policy for destroying an institution’s future as well as its present.
“You have attempted to put as good a face as you can on the situation you have created at UB, for students, parents, prospective donors, and the general public; and doubtless you see that as your responsibility as administrators, however ethically questionable it may be. But we are fully aware, as you must be, of the chaos that has resulted from the Administration’s refusal to bargain constructively with the faculty and efforts to intimidate the faculty into acceptance of a professionally unsound contract. Besides the students who have already left UB, we know how many are actively seeking to transfer at the end of the semester. You count how many classes are “covered” but you cannot ignore the fact that many programs, some with national reputations and all built over years of effort and planning, are either nonexistent or in total disarray. You know how many faculty members you have managed to intimidate back into the classroom; we know how many of them are actively seeking employment elsewhere and plan to leave as soon as they can. Considering the hiring methods you chose, you are aware how unprepared your faculty “replacements” (even those who may be “qualified” on paper) are to offer meaningful instruction, let alone advisement, to students; from speaking with students, we can tell you how deeply dissatisfied most students are with the instruction they are receiving. And we are aware of the size of the operating deficit that has directly resulted from your attempts to balance the budget at any cost. It is our belief that you intended to bring the faculty to heel even if it meant destroying the University to do it; it is our further belief that you are very close to succeeding in the latter.
“…With the approach of Parents’ Weekend, Homecoming, and the return visit of the NEASC, as well as impending re-accreditation visits for a number of individual programs, we urge you to take this chance to salvage what is left of the University of Bridgeport and begin to rebuild it as it has been built over the 63 years of its history: with the intelligence, creativity, energy and pride of its faculty.”
October 11, 1990
The Need For a Sense of Impasse
The Administration flatly rejects the latest UB-AAUP contract proposal of October 10: “your most recent ‘proposal’ only illustrates your union’s inflexibility on the issues and verifies the impasse between us.”
An informational flyer from the union asserts that “The President once said, in answer to a faculty member’s plea for the Administration to resume bargaining, that ‘it would destroy our sense of impasse.’ In other words, to bargain with the faculty would undermine the Administration’s right to claim there is no hope of agreement and to unilaterally implement its final offer. To continue to have its own way, the Administration must keep things as they are, and continue to assert at every opportunity that the faculty are unwilling to bargain.”
October 18, 1990
Status of the Strike
After more than a month at the Jefferson School, the union has to give up its rented office because the management doesn’t like the constant traffic of picketers in and out of the building. UB/AAUP moves into an apartment at 285 Lafayette Street, only a block away from campus, which becomes its headquarters for the next two years. The landmark building has historical significance as the former Seaside Institute, a school for factory girls; later, it was known as The Herald Building, named for the newspaper that had its offices there. In the 1980s, during one of the brief, periodic neighborhood revivals of the South End, it was bought and renovated by entrepreneurs who converted it to an apartment building.
When the strike is over, the building will be bought by the Unification Church and turned into a prep school.
October 21, 1990
Homecoming Weekend
At the UB Homecoming Parade, about 100 picketers outnumber participants, an event which the administration had expected to draw thousands. The record low attendance bodes ill for the school’s recruitment efforts.
The Bridgeport Post reports that “University President Janet Greenwood appeared unaware of the pickets as she smiled while leading the parade of about 100 students and 10 floats behind a Purple Knight riding a horse.”
She may have been smiling, but not unaware. A photo in the union archives shows Greenwood walking on one side of the horse at the head of the parade, with striking professor Connie Young marching on the other side; a long line of picketers marches abreast of the procession on the sidewalk. “Things are going terrific,” the Post quotes Greenwood as saying.
The UB Bulletin declares the event “a triumphant victory.”
October 23, 1990
The Bridgeport Post reports that a visiting team from the New England Assocation of Schools and Colleges has begun a three-day review of UB’s finances and governance. “The team could also look at other issues–including those resulting from the on-going faculty strike–if the accreditors feel the school’s ability to deliver on its educational mission is being cramped.”
“The NEASC delayed voting to renew UB’s accreditation last year because it was concerned about the school’s financial condition and how administration and faculty govern the university… ” The visiting team will give the administration its recommendation on Wednesday, and the NEASC will vote in mid-November.The state’s Board of Governors for the Department of Higher Education may vote in December based on reports from NEASC.
The NEASC visiting team makes a stop at Strike Headquarters for a briefing on the professors’ point of view on the governance issue. The union is convinced that the chaotic conditions on campus, including the hurried staffing of programs with dubiously-qualified replacements will have an impact on the NEASC assessment.
October 25, 1990
Bridgeport Post: UB STRIKERS DUE JOBLESS BENEFITS
“Striking faculty members at the University of Bridgeport may collect unemployment compensation–and UB will pay for every penny, according to a decision released Thursday by the state Department of Labor.
“Patricia Walsh, executive assistant to UB President Janet Greenwood, refused to say how much the decision might cost UB, but said the school had anticipated the expense in its current $43 million budget.
“If all 70 striking faculty members collect the maximum amount of unemployment–roughly $250 a week–UB will be paying about $17,000 in compensation each week. This is retroactive starting the week ending September 22, said Richard Ficks, spokesman for the state labor department. …The department said UB had locked out its union members when it refused to accept them back under the terms of the old contract until a new one was reached. Under separate decisions, maintenance workers and secretaries, who returned to work in early October after going on strike September 1, will also be able to collect unemployment for part of their time on strike. Because the majority of the strikers were UB employees, the university is obliged to reimburse the state for their claims, Ficks said Thursday.”
[The unemployment compensation is critical to the union’s ability to continue the strike, since neither the National AAUP nor the local chapter had a “war chest” for compensating union members through a long strike. It is worth considering the comment that the school had “anticipated” the need for paying unemployment to separated workers when it made up its budget back in July.]
March 12, 2011
The Past is Prelude
A year ago today, I started this blog to revisit the events of the 1990 strike at the University of Bridgeport, in which the “financially strapped” private university (as the press loved to call it in those days) decided it needed the faculty union out of the way in order for the school to “balance its budget” and pay its creditors. The administration’s contract proposal, which stripped the existing CBA of any and all protections of faculty rights (including tenure, grievance procedures, and the right to determine teaching methods and materials), was designed to put the faculty on the street so they could be “permanently replaced”, which is what happened; but what the administration’s lawyers hadn’t counted on was the strikers’ ability to hang on for two years in a no-holds-barred fight which ultimately bankrupted the school and forced it sell out to a cult (Rev. Moon’s Unification Church).
The school’s ability to hire “permanent replacements” for tenured professors was one reason for the strike’s longevity. With replacements hired off the street teaching classes (and no objection from students, parents, or accrediting agencies) what incentive did the University have to settle? But another reason was the union’s inability to appeal to the National Labor Relations Board over unfair labor practices : faculty at private schools have no protected right to collective bargaining under the Supreme Court’s Yeshiva decision. The Yeshiva decision of 1980 ruled that college professors were “managers” and therefore had no right to unionize under the National Labor Relations Act; private schools bargained with them by choice. Public colleges and universities, however, did not fall under this ruling because they were under the jurisdiction of state legislatures, which protected their right to bargain. Until now.
The state legislatures that are now busy taking collective bargaining rights away from state workers are taking their cues from private schools, asserting that faculty in public colleges and universities are also “managers” under the same definition of the Yeshiva decision. Which places unionized public school faculty in the same boat with private school faculty…and they can now sink or swim together.
So UB is current again. What might have seemed like a bizarre aberration at the University of Bridgeport in 1990 is now the tone for the new war on faculty rights in academe. We regret that more wasn’t done in the last thirty years to undo Yeshiva (maybe because too many felt it was someone else’s problem), or to legislatively roll back the practice (and legality) of permanent-scab labor (again, for the same reason). What we learned at UB for many years was that collective bargaining was not just a matter of negotiating wages or pensions. It was only through a legally enforceable contract that tenure, personnel procedures, grievance procedures and academic freedom could be defended against the capricious and destructive whims of an administration whose main concerns were the demands of business and politics, not education.
But UB still has something else to teach: that faculty who stand together, no matter what the odds, have the combined brains and creativity and strength of principle to make the cost of such wars very high for those who choose to wage them.
UB Faculty Strike 
Now in May of 2014 Quinnipiac has announced sudden layoffs in very much the manner of the March ploy at UB. Worth keeping an eye on.