By DONOVAN HARRELL
Eligible members of the Union of Pitt Faculty nominated candidates to among their ranks to represent their academic units during a virtual meeting on Dec. 12.
The selected nominees and their candidate statements will be available on the Union of Pitt Faculty’s website, as they accept the nominations.
The nomination meeting for the 77-member Council of Representatives — who will oversee bargaining negotiations between faculty and Pitt administrators and provide information about the negotiations to faculty — was the latest in the bargaining process where approximately 3,300 Pitt faculty will select representatives for contract negotiations.
The meeting was closed to media and union representatives declined to reveal how many people attended the meeting.
This comes after the United Steelworkers, the union that will represent the faculty, released information on Nov. 18 outlining the next steps of the bargaining process and the rationale behind the representation structure.
Once each nominated member accepts their nomination, members will elect representatives for each academic unit. The Council of Representatives will then elect 15 people from its ranks to form the bargaining committee.
The bargaining committee and USW staff will create proposals and sit down with University administrators to negotiate the terms of a labor contract. When the bargaining committee decides on the proposed terms for topics being negotiated, the language goes to the Council of Representatives for approval.
Members of the Council of Representatives or other faculty can work with the bargaining committee if their expertise is relevant to certain topics during negotiations.
Once the bargaining committee and University administrators agree on the topics being negotiated, union members will vote on whether to ratify the tentative agreement.
The agreement becomes a contract if most union members vote to approve it. Only union members who have signed membership cards are eligible to vote.
School of Medicine faculty and many in administrative positions are not covered. Find a full list of the positions covered and excluded here.
It’s unclear how long the negotiation process will take, but experts predict it could take one to two years. To view the nominees for the Council of Representatives, visit the Union of Pitt Faculty website.
Donovan Harrell is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at dharrell@pitt.edu or 412-383-9905.
Have a story idea or news to share? Share it with the University Times.