University faculty contracts have not been renewed since August of this year.

Dr. Stacy Muir is a full-time professor in the mathematics department and the chair of the Faculty Affairs Council (FAC), also known as the union for full-time faculty. She is one of the many faculty members currently working without a contract. Muir also serves as a lead negotiator.  

Muir said The FAC has been a unionized faculty since 1974 and celebrated its 50th anniversary last year. As representatives of full-time faculty, the FAC works to improve working conditions, and fair wage benefits. Operationally, they work with documents, have a handbook and a contract that they call the collective bargaining agreement.  

Between their bargaining sessions, they also work on rules and procedures and make adjustments to faculty processes.  

In recent talk among the university community, the term ‘minimal compliance’ has been thrown around. Many people might not fully understand exactly what that means, or what the effects of it are.  

“Another phrase that is commonly used for minimal compliance is work to contract. And so we have a contract, so we have a collective bargaining agreement that tells us what our requirements are for our job. And so, what we are when you're in minimal compliance are working a contract; you're doing everything that's required of your job. 
You're just not doing the above and the beyond,” Muir said.  

Those faculty affected by the current working without a contract are working under the conditions of last year's terms of that expired contract. That does not stop them from being the best they can for their students.  

“We are still doing all of the things that we are expected to do while our salaries are frozen and we're just working under what was called status quo. 
So, we are working under the conditions of last year's terms of that expired contract. All of our teaching responsibilities, all of our research, anything that is required of us, we continue to do. We're fulfilling our job obligations. 
So that's why it's also called work to contract,” Muir said.  

Muir said that each faculty contract has a clause that they agree to start working on the next successor agreement, seven months prior to expiration. The contract ordinally expires at the end of August, which puts the prior in January to start sitting down and working through things forth next contract or collective bargaining agreement.  

“So, we actually, the administration, their counterpart to us, is often referenced as FPC, the faculty personnel committee. The FPC team and the FAC team started meeting. We started meeting for some preliminary groundwork in January. But our first official bargaining session to start bargaining for the next collective bargaining agreement was at the end of February. So, we've actually been at the bargaining table for eight months trying to win a fair contract,” Muir said.  

Muir said they have been working on this for quite some time. They bargained through the spring semester, the summer, and as the contract expiration approached, they were nowhere close to agreement.  

“This has never happened. This is my 22nd year at the university. I have never worked without a contract until this year. So, this is very unusual. We just weren't in a position where we were able to say, okay, well, let's, we're ready to wrap this up. And so we went, the contract expired August 31st, and we've been working without a contract since then,” Muir said.  

Muir explained there will always be struggles with contract negotiations. Both sides have things that they want.  

“We're being faced with offers from administration that devalue our labor. Some specific examples are salary raises that we would get each year. We have been falling behind for years against inflation, so the cost of living and the offers that have been made to us this round are well below current inflation and are not even tied or considering inflation in the out ears. But on top of that, not only are these very low percentage offers, but the’re being paired up with significant cuts in other benefit areas and other compensation,” Muir said.  

Muir said they have made some progress, known as tentative agreements. That is something that is considered an okay section of the document. However, they only found that one slight progress in August.  

“There has not been an impetus at the table to find a place where the offers say to the faculty, ‘We know that you are the foundation of the high-quality education at the university for our students. We recognize that we see your labor; we value your labor, and here's how we're going to put that into practice.’ So, there's just not a lot of movement happening,” Muir said.  

What this situation means is faculty still get their monthly paychecks, yet they will not receive any kind of raise right now. This brings them into status quo mode, where there is still an obligation to stay at whatever was the last sort of standing position.  

They still have health insurance and some benefits. However, there is currently no increase in compensation for salary or teaching overloads, honors tutorials, readers, and anything related to that.  

“So in some sense, we were just frozen and we're doing our job and trying to help the administration to see what it is that we regularly do to go above and beyond our students. I think that maybe speaks to some of the minimal compliance or the work to contract is we're doing what they say they will pay us for,” Muir said.  

Faculty of course value how they have the ability to serve their students, and they want to continue to do so.  

“That makes this place so, I think, wonderful and special is that sort of energy and vibe that we have with our students and our faculty and the mentoring and the research and the teaching and the innovations and the community-based learning. I think that is really just such a heart of this place,” Muir said.  

Faculty want their collective efforts for their students to be rewarded as well in a reasonable fair contract.  

“I think that has created a misperception that we have now, that we're somehow shirking our responsibilities when that's not what's happening. At least I certainly haven't heard it happening. 
We regularly tell our members. No, don't forget. You know, you got to look at the handbook. 
You got to, you know, make sure you're doing these things. And so I think that's where a disconnect comes from that all the things that became normal, people didn't realize was actually us going above and beyond,” Muir said.  

Muir said the endgame is to have a contract that says the university of invested in the faculty like they’ve invested in the students, in buildings, and other things.  

“We don't like being here. We want a fair contract. We want to settle this. We want to get back to how we can work. 
We all work together for the betterment of the university and our students. And so, if there's some idea out there that somehow this is like, this is what the faculty want, it's not. We just want a fair contract. 
We want to be valued and to sort of, let's get back to things,” Muir said.  

Faculty continue to work without a contract today. Posts containing a countdown of the number of days are on Instagram @scrantonfacultyaffairs  

A brief statement from the university:  

“The University of Scranton negotiates a contract every three years with our unionized faculty and that process sometimes extends into the semester.

We are very proud of our faculty and their deep commitment to our students, which is why we're committed to reaching a contract that is fair and acknowledges the realities facing higher education. In the coming days, students will be receiving additional information from the Provost’s Office about student support resources.”

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