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comments designed to raise awareness about campus concerns will follow them into conversations involving their dean, creating a chilling effect on their willingness to speak openly.
I am also seeing a related and recurring problem involving direct dealing .
Washington law recognizes UFC as the exclusive bargaining representative for CWU faculty, requiring the University to bargain with UFC — not individual faculty — over wages, hours, and other working conditions. The Washington State Public Employment Relations Commission describes direct negotiation with represented employees over those subjects as employer circumvention or direct dealing. Recently, Provost Pease indicated that he wants to revise CWU policy related to conflicts of interest, an area addressed in the faculty collective bargaining agreement (CBA). CBA Article 16 already establishes faculty obligations regarding conflicts of interest, and Article 31.2 provides that the CBA controls where University policy conflicts with the agreement. UFC notified Academic Affairs that proposed changes affecting faculty obligations, responsibilities, or potential disciplinary consequences therefore implicate bargaining. Despite that notice, Provost Pease sought feedback from faculty chairs on the policy. Chairs are faculty bargaining-unit members; asking them for factual information about current operations is different from asking them what the rules governing faculty employment should be. There is also history here. When former President Gaudino pursued similar Conflict of Interest changes, the University acknowledged its bargaining obligation. This issue also was not proposed during our most recent negotiations, in which Provost Pease participated. Nor is this the first direct-dealing concern I have raised with him. Shortly after Provost Pease arrived at CWU, he asked faculty chairs in an Academic Affairs forum how they felt about contractually guaranteed professional-development funding relative to other priorities. I had to tell bargaining-unit faculty not to respond to that request because it put them in the position of bargaining directly with administration rather than through UFC. Any one of these events might be explained as a misunderstanding or isolated error. Taken together — arbitration after repeated efforts to resolve workload recognition, a union vice president’s comments being carried into a supervisory setting, and repeated efforts to solicit bargaining-related input directly from represented faculty — they raise a broader concern about whether Academic Affairs understands and respects the role of the faculty’s exclusive bargaining representative. UFC prefers a collaborative rather than adversarial relationship with CWU, and we have resolved difficult issues informally before. I am not asking the Board to intervene in grievances or bargaining, but I do ask that you reinforce the importance of a constructive labor-management relationship and ask what steps are being taken to ensure Academic Affairs understands its obligations under the CBA and Washington law. Clearer expectations now may help prevent avoidable disputes from escalating to arbitration, with legal, administrative, and arbitrator costs that divert resources from the University’s academic mission.
Sincerely,
Kara I. Gabriel, Ph.D. President, United Faculty of Central
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