October 6, 2026
Dear Members of the Central Washington University Board of Trustees,
I am writing in my role as President of United Faculty of Central (UFC) to share growing concerns regarding the current trajectory of faculty labor relations at CWU. I am not asking the Board to decide the merits of a grievance or intervene in bargaining. I simply want you to be aware of a pattern that is making it harder to maintain the collaborative relationship UFC has historically worked to foster. Most immediately, last month UFC advanced our HyFlex workload grievance to arbitration — the final step in our contractual grievance process, in which a neutral third-party arbitrator will issue a binding decision. HyFlex requires faculty to teach students in two or more modalities at the same time and UFC’s position is that the additional instructional demands should receive additional workload recognition. We did not move quickly to arbitration. We first spent considerable time bargaining with CWU over the issue, including offering a compromise HyFlex option that would have required no additional faculty compensation. When that proposal was declined and bargaining did not resolve the issue, UFC pursued the contractual grievance process, filing two grievances that were ultimately dismissed by the administration. Only after those efforts failed did UFC advance the matter to arbitration. Reaching arbitration is significant. Faculty at CWU, Western Washington University, Eastern Washington University, and The Evergreen State College have been collectively bargaining for roughly 20 years, and this is the first faculty labor dispute at any of Washington’s four regional public universities to reach arbitration during that period. Arbitration also carries substantial costs in legal expenses, arbitrator fees, preparation, and administrative time — resources that could otherwise support students, faculty, and the academic mission. That we have reached this point over a workload issue, after months of bargaining and grievance efforts, is deeply concerning. I am also concerned about the response to comments UFC Vice President Clay Arango made about faculty retention during an August faculty leadership meeting with President Wohlpart and Provost Pease, using the recent loss of two junior faculty from his department as one example union officers were hearing across campus. Those department losses were then specifically raised by Clay’s dean in a supervisory conversation. When I objected, Provost Pease explained that he had been seeking retention information, apologized for how the matter was handled to both Clay and me, and said he would instead request retention data from all the deans. I appreciated both the apology and the change in approach. The concern remains that a union officer’s comments in a faculty leadership meeting were carried into a supervisory setting before the power dynamic attached to the Provost’s role was recognized. If the goal was to understand faculty retention, the appropriate approach from the outset was to ask all deans about departures across their colleges. Otherwise, faculty leaders may reasonably worry that candid
United Faculty of Central PO Box 1654, Ellensburg, WA 98926 www.ufcentral.org
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator