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Dear faculty, As we engage in impact bargaining to prepare for the upcoming transition from Blackboard to Brightspace, the importance of the workload form has come to the fore. The first volley of impact bargaining from the administration simply assumed that a faculty member could negotiate a reduction in some other duty to accommodate transitioning to Brightspace. There are several problems with this proposal. First, it leaves the faculty member, as an individual, to negotiate – anathema to the whole concept of a union. Another issue is that many faculty members simply have no wiggle room in their workload. But if new items are added to our workload forms, some other area of work should be reduced to make space for that. And if that isn’t possible, isn’t what we are really being asked to do simply additional, uncompensated work? For this reason, UA is proposing collective solutions created from faculty input that involve additional compensation, especially given that much of the work will likely be completed over the summer. Please use care when reviewing your workload form this spring. Only by diligently recording work obligations and the effort attached to them are we, as employees, in a position to defend the work obligations we have agreed to against the possibility of additional uncompensated work. Make sure that those forms truly reflect your work, that they are completed and signed off on before the work is undertaken, and that changes to your work and your form are reflected in revised forms. And explore when you can say ‘No’ when additional duties, advisees, students are heaped on. As your union, we hope to foster a healthy, appropriate, and fair work culture for ourselves and model that for our students and community. Relatedly, please note that this afternoon (2/3) UA will be hosting the first of what we hope will be a series of workload discussions for faculty. See details and the registration link below. All the best for a successful and rewarding semester.
In solidarity,
Ellie and Katlyn
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