Cumulative gains 1973-2010:

Highlights of the TAUP contract

While most faculty, librarians and academic professionals strongly support the work of TAUP, many may not realize the full extent of what we have achieved in our 37 years of collective bargaining history. Indeed, 50% of the 1,350 faculty and staff we represent have been hired since the beginning of the fall semester of 2002. About 20% are new since mid-2008, when we began negotiations for the contract we ratified in September 2009. From the very first contract in 1973, TAUP has been the agent that brought about many improvements for all members of the bargaining unit. One only has to compare the older contracts with the current one to see all the positive changes.

Legally binding and enforceable contract: The TAUP–Temple University contract defines our terms and conditions of employment in important ways that benefit all members of the bargaining unit, and contains procedures and policies that are legally enforceable, and provides that the union is the vehicle for enforcing them. Without TAUP, faculty members would individually have to take on the expense and trouble of filing a lawsuit if their rights were violated. Without our contract, faculty would be at the mercy of the benevolence of the trustees.
Without TAUP, faculty would instead be governed by the policies listed in the Faculty Handbook. These policies are promulgated at the sole discretion of Temple’s Board of Trustees, and can be unilaterally changed or eliminated by them. In contrast, the administration must reach mutually agreed-upon changes for TAUP members.

Salaries: The TAUP-Temple contract does not place a ceiling on salaries, only a floor. Temple can raise individual salaries anytime it feels it is appropriate to do so. In fact, there is a contractually guaranteed pool of at least $100,000 that Temple must use each year for this purpose.
The current contract provided increases in minimum salaries for faculty, librarians, and academic professionals; guaranteed annual raises; a guaranteed merit pool and transparent procedures for decisions on merit awards; improvements in summer teaching pay and overload pay; and increased stipends for summer research awards. It also establishes supplementary salary and benefit support for faculty who receive prestigious fellowships or awards.
One very important victory in the 2008-2012 contract that TAUP won for the faculty was to beat back the administration's latest attempt to eliminate across-the-board-raises and instead and impose "pay for performance"—an all-merit system whose details were never explained.

Pay equity: Starting in 1973 there was language about salary equity, particularly for women and minorities. The current contract includes a process for applying for increased compensation to remedy salary inequities stemming from various causes.
Promotion & Tenure: Our contract protects promotion and tenure procedures from being changed unilaterally. Over time, TAUP has added protections for faculty in the P&T process—specifically gaining rights to information during the process, rights of appeal, specificity as to who is eligible to serve on P&T committees and what the steps are in the process. Most recently TAUP clarified the role of department chairs in P&T to assure that each level makes independent recommendations while providing the department committee members and the chair an opportunity to understand better a candidate’s tenure/promotion dossier.
Protecting shared governance: TAUP complements the work of the Faculty Senate. Our contract explicitly preserves their role in academic decision-making, in the tenure process, in the sabbatical process, summer research awards and in faculty discipline procedures.
Rights of Nontenure-Track Faculty: The contract specifies procedures and rights for nontenure-track faculty, involving appointment, reappointment, promotion and notification when faculty will not be reappointed. These procedures have become especially important, as NTTs have become a greater proportion of the full-time faculty. Their numbers have grown from about 160 out of 1,025 faculty (16%) in fall 1999 to about 500 out of 1,320 faculty (38%) now.
Department Chairs: The contract establishes procedures for selecting department chairs and maintains the current classification of chairs as faculty as members of the faculty, rather than as managers. Chairs have been protected by the contract since the union was first certified as the bargaining agent in 1973.
Sabbaticals: The current contract provides, for the first time, a true Sabbatical policy, which guarantees the number of sabbaticals available each year and broadens of the purposes of sabbaticals. Over time, our contracts have improved the amount that a faculty member can earn while on a research leave. Currently, 100% pay and benefits for a semester; for a year, full benefits and 65% of salary with the option of earning an additional 35% from external sources. We have also gained sabbaticals for NTT faculty.
Benefits: Guaranteed health and dental insurance as well as long-term disability insurance were first negotiated in 1976. The current contract maintains our excellent benefits from the 2004-2008 contract – no change in the percentage of premium co-pay. With only a slight change, we have maintained our outstanding prescription benefit intact.
Work-life balance: In the current contract, we negotiated a brand new parental work-life balance agreement for tenured and tenure-track faculty that releases them from teaching duties for a semester when a child enters the family. There is a new provision for nontenure-track faculty and others to request work-life balance flexibility in their assignments.
Diversity: The current contract establishes a Diversity Committee, a joint faculty-administration committee to discuss all diversity issues pertaining to the bargaining unit.
Grievance & Arbitration of Disputes: Since the first day, our contracts have established grievance procedures if a union member’s rights under the contract have been violated. We are guaranteed recourse to 3rd-party binding arbitration when grievances cannot be resolved between the TAUP and the administration.
Due Process: Our contract also guarantees due process procedures for discipline and termination of faculty members and it lays out procedures for retrenchment in the case of elimination of a department or program. Our contract follows the AAUP retrenchment language and goes even further.

DUES: Certainly all of us are concerned about money these days. Considering just the across-the-board salary increases that TAUP won for all faculty in the bargaining unit, which more than cover the amount that anyone has to pay in dues, the cost is small compared with the many gains in pay, benefits and rights that TAUP has negotiated and defended.