Brief Report of UFE BT First Bargaining Session - March 4, 2008

Yesterday, Monday, March 3, the UFE Bargaining Team presented our proposed contract to the College. We met for four hours. After an initial discussion of procedural rules and guidelines, the Bargaining Team offered a tour of each of the twenty-three sections of the proposal. We explained that we had developed the proposed contract based on three principal objectives: to preserve and enhance Evergreen’s traditions and ideals, which have led to national recognition as a distinctive and distinguished liberal arts college; to ensure that those primarily responsible for such recognition, the faculty, are compensated at the level of their true worth; to achieve parity and eliminate a faculty caste system.

The College was represented by Rod Younker, an attorney with the Summit Law Group in Seattle who has negotiated agreements on other four-year campuses in the State, Steve Trotter, Laurel Uznanski, and Walter Niemiec. They listened closely, asked good questions, and said they would need time to digest our comprehensive proposal. We have not yet scheduled the next session, but we expect it to be in about two weeks.

I was proud to be at the table with the Bargaining Team. We were well prepared, disciplined and we showed we know what lies ahead. I’m confident the College team saw that we have been working hard, and that we’re serious about arriving at a tentative agreement we can proudly bring to the membership, one that supports us in carrying out our best work and one that guarantees compensation far closer to a true measure of our worth.

Chuck Pailthorp,
for UFE Bargaining Team

Gery Gerst
Jose Gomez
Jeanne Hahn
Allen Standing Bear Jenkins
Laurie Meeker
Gary McNeil*
Zahid Shariff
Rebecca Sunderman
Edward Taub*
Brian Walter

*United Faculty of Washington State (WEA/AFT)