Massachusetts Society of Professors

Welcome back!

 

We hope that your fall semester is off to a brisk start. We are now working under an expired contract, and your MSP negotiating team is back at the bargaining table. We are committed to concluding this process in time for the Governor’s budgeted January raises – but this will happen only if we push the administration to move faster than they were willing to last spring.

We need your help! We are mobilizing members: to testify, to witness, to write, to march, and to win our priorities! Click here and sign up to help
 

For a refresher on the MSP’s priorities and the challenges we face, read on:

Our proposals remain focused on our members’ highest priorities:

• Across-the-board (ATB) raises to keep up with inflation: 8% was a good start, but we still need significant raises in the next three years just to stay even

• Increase salary floors, especially for NTT faculty and librarians

• Increase promotional increments, create new ranks to address salary compression at senior levels, and have PMYR added to base pay

• Robust merit raises to cover the past seven years, beyond the cost-of-living raises provided by the Governor

• Expand the equity raise pool to address documented inequities on campus

• Childcare: expand access to child care and provide infant care on campus

• Increase professional development opportunities, particularly for NTT lecturers

• Guarantee university assistance with visas and immigration for faculty from other countries

• Improved leaves: fix the sabbatical credit hole, increase NTT professional development fellowships, and make all MSP members eligible for parental leave

• Climate justice and green transportation including incentives for occasional parking

• Protect faculty rights in online teaching

 

We’ve done the research and our proposals are widely supported and doable. But reasoned arguments at the table won’t be enough to win most of these things -- we’ll need your help and we’ll be asking for it this semester!

As of our last bargaining session in the late spring, the administration has said “no” to almost every single one of our proposals. They have proposed across-the-board raises of less than 2% a year, lower than the Governor’s parameters, lower than the cost of living, and lower than the salary offers made to any other faculty and librarians union in the UMass system.

In addition to rejecting our proposals, the administration has presented the following take-backs:

 

• Curtail the MSP grievance procedure

• Extend the probationary period for NTT faculty to four years

• Enable the administration to terminate employees on extended sick leave

• Reduce the salary equity review process

• Remove the right of faculty to decide if and when to teach online

• Remove the minimum stipend for summer/winter teaching

• Remove mandatory bargaining over policies that affect faculty (sabbatical and

• Other leave policies, IP, conflict of interest, outside consulting, and additional compensation policies)

• Impose new policies around conflict of interest and outside activities, with cumbersome requirements and restrictions targeting international faculty and off-campus collaborations. 

 

Which of these issues matter to you? What can you do to help defend the rights and resources that faculty and librarians need? We look forward to working with you to win another excellent contract this year.

In solidarity,

Katie D’Urso

Kate Hudson

Marc Liberatore

Lori Reardon

Sigrid Schmalzer

Jeremy Smith