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URGENT: Support Portland State University AAUP

Dear AAUP member,

Our collective bargaining chapter at Portland State University urgently needs your support. PSU-AAUP has been in contract negotiations with the administration since April 2013. After 11 months of bargaining with little progress on critical issues, PSU-AAUP’s membership voted 94 percent to authorize the union to call a strike. On Wednesday, April 2, PSU-AAUP gave the PSU administration notice of their intent to strike beginning at on April 16.

PSU-AAUP’s issues are our issues:

  • Improving economic security and providing a path for professional advancement for faculty with “fixed term” (contingent) appointments and academic professionals
  • Protecting tenure
  • Providing high quality, educator-led education that protects academic freedom and gives AAUP-represented educators the professional respect they deserve.
In a recent request for support, PSU-AAUP President Mary King (Economics) summarized the situation:

"It is clear that the campus community is united in opposition to the direction of the administration and around the urgent need for changes in campus priorities needed to create a student-centered budget. We can no longer afford the ongoing and dramatic shift of the PSU budget away from instruction, non-academic PSU investments (questionable real estate acquisitions, administrative salaries and athletics) and a model of top-heavy management.

We need a student-centered contract that promotes faculty stability, provides for equitable pay and protects educator-led higher education. Most importantly we need a student-centered model of higher education that focuses on academic quality and serves the Portland community, which for decades has regarded PSU as ‘Portland’s University.’"

I am writing to request that you support PSU-AAUP right away by signing this petition.

For additional information on PSU-AAUP’s contract campaign, please visit http://www.psuaaup.net/blog/category/BARGAINING.

Best,

Rudy Fichtenbaum
President
American Association of University Professors