New Senate Chair

Colleagues,

I am pleased to announce that Jerry Addie has been elected to serve as Chair of the Senate of Academic Staff for the 2009-2010 year!

According to our senate bylaws the new terms begin on the first day after the end of the academic year in the spring, so Jerry’s term as senate chair will officially begin on Tuesday, May 26, 2009. The senate Vice Chair position will be filled from among the 2009-2010 senators and will be appointed at the first senate meeting of the year.

Thank you for a wonderful three years!

Dennis Shaw, 2006-2009 Chair
Senate of Academic Staff

Final Report as Senate Chair

Greetings! Where have the last three years gone? I have enjoyed serving you as Chair of the Senate of Academic Staff and appreciate everyone's support! Together we have accomplished much both for academic staff and for the university as a whole and have shown how shared governance is supposed to work. We have one more senate meeting remaining on Wednesday. I hope to see you there. THANK YOU!!

Dennis Shaw, 2006-2009 Chair
Senate of Academic Staff
University of Wisconsin-Stout
"Wisconsin's Polytechnic University"

Report to Alumni and Foundation Boards

Greetings from the Senate of Academic Staff! Our senate is nearing the end of another year. How time flies! Following are some of the items we have been working on since my last report:

• Endorsed the draft revisions to mission, vision, and values statements of the university.
• Continue to working on a recommendation to provide more contract security for primarily teaching academic staff who have been at Stout many years.
• Approved revisions to our academic staff personnel committee bylaws.
• Providing feedback on the framework for distributing budget cuts
• Expressing dissatisfaction with the Governor’s proposed collective bargaining bill which would separate faculty from the academic staff and forbids us from joining the same bargaining units.

We are also getting ready for our senate elections. This is my third and final year serving as chair of our senate. It has been an honor to represent this senate and university in my role as chair. I also appreciate the important role you play in shaping the direction of the University and have very much enjoyed meeting many members of your board. Thank you for your support and I hope we can find a way in which we can work together in some capacity in the future.

Dennis Shaw, Chair
Senate of Academic Staff

Collective Bargaining in Guv's Budget Bill

Well as we suspected, Governor Doyle included language in his state budget that would allow faculty and academic staff to unionize and collectively bargain. As you might know our senate has long opposed any decoupling of faculty and academic staff pay plans, and so before the budget was introduced we passed a resolution opposing any bill that started with faculty and academic staff seperate.

Well, the language is even worse than we could have imagined. Not only does it start with seperate bargaining units (up to 6 in all, 1 for Faculty at Madison, 1 for Faculty at Milwaukee, 1 for Faculty at the other campuses, 1 for AS at Madison, 1 for AS at Milwaukee, and 1 for the rest of us AS), but it strictly forbids any faculty and academic staff units from combining.

We encourage you to make your voice hear with your legislators (of course you'll want to contact them from your own personal phone or email) and let them know if you are also concerned about this langauge that is grossly unfair to academic staff in the UW System!

Following is the language of our most senate recent resolution:

University of Wisconsin-Stout Senate of Academic Staff Resolution
Opposing any Collective Bargaining or Enabling Legislation
Language Where Academic Staff and Faculty are Separated

WHEREAS, the UW-Stout Senate of Academic Staff has long opposed the decoupling of faculty and academic staff benefits and compensation plans; and

WHEREAS, as recently as September 4, 2007 the UW-Stout Senate of Academic Staff unanimously adopted a resolution stating, “while we would not be opposed to the right to choose to collectively bargain, we will continue to oppose any bill including collective bargaining bills that would separate faculty and academic staff pay and benefit plans and thereby treat the 11,000 academic staff in the UW System unfairly and inequitably;” and

WHEREAS, legislation enabling collective bargaining for the UW System academic staff and faculty continues to be introduced that would create separate collective bargaining units for the academic staff and faculty on each campus; and

WHEREAS, separate collective bargaining units for the academic staff and faculty will place academic staff and faculty in competition for salary and fringe benefits; and

WHEREAS, any collective bargaining scheme that establishes separate academic staff and faculty bargaining units on each campus places the faculty at Madison and Milwaukee in the best position to demand and receive the majority share of limited state compensation dollars approved by the Legislature. Faculty at the comprehensive campuses would be in the next best position to compete for the remaining limited resources, placing academic staff in a position to settle unfairly for what, if anything, remains; and

WHEREAS, any legislative proposal that starts with separate academic staff and faculty collective bargaining units but offers a mechanism which allows for combining the two units if both agree does not guarantee, and only provides false hope, that the faculty would ever seriously chose fairness over self-interest and permit the units to combine; now

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Senate of Academic Staff at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, strongly opposes any legislative proposals, now and in the future, that would grant collective bargaining rights to University of Wisconsin System academic staff and faculty that would establish an academic staff collective bargaining unit separate from the faculty collective bargaining unit.

Unanimously adopted at the February 11, 2009 business meeting of the Senate of Academic Staff

Report to the Foundation Board

Following is a report I submitted to the Foundation Board which will be meeting this weekend. It sums up what we have been working on in the Senate lately:

Greetings from the Senate of Academic Staff! Our senate has been very involved on campus again this year. Following are some of the items we have been working on:

• Reviewing the draft mission, vision, and values statements for the university.
• Working on a recommendation to provide more contract security for primarily teaching academic staff who have been at Stout many years.
• Approving appointments to campus committees
• Revising our academic staff personnel committee bylaws

We’ve also heard numerous reports on various topics including: Job Satisfaction Study, Salary Equity Study, Suitcase campus report (which basically says we are no more of a suitcase campus than any other campus in the UW), Annual Teaching Workload, Equity Scorecard Project, UCLA Faculty Study, Alumni Follow-Up Survey, StoutMedia Student Organization, to name a few.

The big impact item we are anxiously awaiting is the Governor’s budget address which is scheduled for next week. We are bracing to see what impact this will have on our campus and hoping the Governor will realize the importance of the university system as a priority in assisting the state in quickly resolving our economic crisis.

I understand you will be having several board members using technology to connect to campus and your meeting on Saturday. It should be an interesting test of the technology we regularly use for our distance education students. I hope you have a productive meeting and look forward, as always, to visiting with those of you who will be traveling to our beautiful campus!

Dennis Shaw, Chair
Senate of Academic Staff

Dec Board of Regents Meetings

I attended the Regents meetings in La Crosse yesterday and today and wanted to let you know what happened. Yesterday at the Business, Finance, Audit Committee meeting System reported that we should know agency reduction targets in the next 7-10 days. That surprised us. It might just be targets for addressing this year's shortfall. They weren't clear about that.

As you might know if you were listening in, they did approve in committee, and today the board as a whole approved a 2.5% raise in each of the next two years and a recommendation for domestic partner
benefits.

There was quite a discussion of the cost of textbooks at the meeting today. In the end Senior Vice President Martin said she would be meeting with the faculty reps next week and would discuss the issue there. They also mentioned they are seriously looking into how a 3-year Bachelor degree would work. Interesting discussions.

Off to Regents' Meeting

My Chair's report for the November Senate meeting will be delayed a few days. I had an interesting meeting with the state Academic Staff Reps last Friday but I am off to attend the Regents' Meeting as they talk about Academic Staff and Faculty recruitment and retention issues. I'll post a report after I return!

Dennis.