By MARTY LEVINE
The University Senate Bylaws and Procedures Committee will begin studying the faculty union’s new collective bargaining agreement, article by article, to determine where it conflicts with Senate bylaws. It also will study the missions of each committee, announced Bylaws committee co-chair Nick Bircher at its Jan. 24 meeting.
Three of the committees have already noted conflicts, said Senate President Robin Kear — Benefits and Welfare, Budget Policies and Faculty Affairs. “The (Senate) officers and I have been speaking about this for a while with those chairs,” she reported.
And representatives from the Senate’s Tenure and Academic Freedom Committee and Union of Pitt Faculty have already discussed how the new union grievance process will affect union and non-union members in the faculty (see UTimes, Oct. 18, 2024: Senate committee, faculty union continue refining grievance process).
“There are no doubts that there are real effects” happening to committees, Kear said, noting that the head of human resources, James Gallaher, has already said that he cannot attend Benefits and Welfare meetings any longer, as various HR leaders have regularly done in the past.
“It’s my opinion that the administration is overreacting a little” by withholding officials from attending such meetings, said Bircher, a professor in the Nurse Anesthesia Program and associate professor emeritus in the Department of Anesthesiology.
Although Senate committees cannot affect such decisions, Kear responded, the Benefits and Welfare committee is thinking about changing its name (and presumably mission) in response — a move that would need Senate approval.
“I don’t want to lose the purpose of these committees for those groups” outside the collective bargaining units, she added — both among faculty and staff.
“There may be some committees,” Bircher suggested, “which might need to add a little piece to their mission statement at the end: ‘subject to the collective bargaining agreements’ of faculty and staff.”
Kear cautioned against this, since there have long been dozens of other unions among Pitt employees.
Marty Levine is a staff writer for the University Times. Reach him at martyl@pitt.edu or 412-758-4859.
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