EOU faculty votes on dissolving union

By Julie Silverman (Associated Press)
Eugene Register Guard

Published: July 7, 2004

PORTLAND - Faculty members at Eastern Oregon University in La Grande are voting on whether to dissolve their fledgling union, the first such vote at a public Oregon university in more than a decade.

Votes will be counted today, and the margin is expected to be razor-thin, just as it was when faculty members and librarians first ratified the union in February 2003 by a 59-53 vote.

Opponents of the EOU union say it has strained collegiality between faculty and administrators at the small school, which has the lowest pay scale for full professors among Oregon's seven public universities - about $71,000 a year, $10,000 or so less than at Southern Oregon University or Western Oregon University.

``One of our contentions is that we don't believe the active members of the union represent the majority of the faculty,'' said Burr Betts, a biology professor who has been involved in the decertification drive. ``They don't even have half the faculty as dues-paying members.''

Proponents, though, have hailed the advantages of having a united faculty voice on a campus that has gone through three presidents in the past three years, and is far away from the center of legislative power in Salem.

The union had been in contract talks with administrators, which were halted after the decertification drive began, according to Rosemary Powers, a EOU professor of sociology who is the union president.

``I often think faculty believe they can do better negotiating on their own, and for some people that is true - people who have tenure, or stars in terms of their research agenda, who have the ability to negotiate better for themselves,'' Powers said. ``But many of us felt it was important to have a united faculty voice for those of us who are here for the long haul.''

The vote takes place against a background of change in the university system. The state's colleges have been casualties of recent budget battles, and faculty salaries have been frozen, but Democratic Gov. Ted Kulongoski has emerged in recent months as a champion of the higher education system.

At Oregon's two flagship campuses, the University of Oregon in Eugene and Oregon State University in Corvallis, faculty are not unionized. There also is no faculty union at the Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls.

But faculty at Southern Oregon University in Ashland have a collective bargaining unit, while those at Portland State and Western Oregon University are unionized.

Portland State and WOU both had decertification votes back in the late 1980s and early '90s, said Joe Sicotte, the assistant vice chancellor for human resources for the university system; he said both votes failed by slim margins.

Betts said issues that prompted the decertification vote included a union proposal to take money set aside for a few ``significant awards'' for faculty research, and distribute the money among a larger group of professors.

He said there's also concern about possible changes to EOU's merit pay system, and a plan to boost the salaries of senior instructors to the same level as assistant professors, without asking the instructors to do similar amounts of scholarly research.

Powers said union members ``have been very careful not to speak about any proposals in depth.''

But she did say that there may be, ``some of the people who opposed the union who don't have as deep an understanding as they might have liked.''

Powers and Betts both said the vote has been divisive in their small community, nestled between the Blue Mountains and the Wallowa range in Northeastern Oregon, where the university is one of the town's largest employers.

``In a very small university, the politics are always personal,'' Powers said. ``At a big university, you can criticize people in a faceless way. Here, there are real people behind every door.''

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contact Information

University Advancement Eastern Oregon University One University Boulevard La Grande, OR 97850 phone 541.962.3740 fax 541.962.3680 email University Advancement