Dear UFE Members, Last week, Evergreen negotiated an agreement with student protestors, and the UFE Coordinating Committee commends the faculty, administrators, staff, and students who contributed to this resolution. Our institution’s approach has made international news in the higher education landscape, as in this front page story in The Seattle Times (paywall-free library link). Evergreen leaders invited student representatives into good faith bargaining, a practice unions hold dear, and upheld academic freedom as a value and policy when deliberating on their demands. Academic Freedom – Article 3 of the CBA – is a fundamental tenet of the union’s work. The UFE represents facultyRead More
Faculty, are you new, feeling new, or new-curious? Maybe you started just before or during the pandemic, or maybe you’ve more recently joined us. The United Faculty of Evergreen is excited to welcome you and, if you haven’t met us, introduce you to the union. Whether you come to us from another institution, or are in a new role at Evergreen, or are brand new to teaching, we want to help you understand your rights and responsibilities and let you know what it means to be represented by a faculty union. We’ve organized two upcoming information sessions, “You MayRead More
UPDATE (6/17): The UFE leadership team is pleased to announce that the Tentative Agreement has been ratified. The final vote in favor of ratification was 62-1. The 63 votes cast represents a 72% voter turnout. The Board of Trustees will now meet to consider ratification. Following their affirmative vote, the new contract will begin on September 1, 2023. Dear UFE members, I am pleased to announce that the United Faculty of Evergreen and The Evergreen State College reached a tentative agreement on a new CBA in the evening of June 7, 2023. That means the current MOU will expire and theRead More
Dear Faculty Colleagues – In Fall 2021, UFE and The Evergreen State College signed a two-year MOU to involve faculty in student recruitment and enrollment; offer faculty a buy-out; charge a Curricular Review Team to review academic coherence in academic units to foster Evergreen’s interdisciplinary mission and serve underrepresented communities; and take further steps to avoid a Reduction in Force (RIF). In the MOU, there was a February 1, 2023 deadline to consider whether there would be a RIF. Today, Evergreen and UFE are announcing that due to the success of these MOU initiatives, there will be no RIF in 2022-23.Read More
Welcome back to Evergreen and to the largest proportional increase in our new-student enrollment in many years. Thanks to the hard work of faculty, staff and the Office of the President, Evergreen has halted its enrollment decline and is growing. Our academic structure and offerings, our outreach to incoming students and continued strategies to recruit and retain students all point to Evergreen being a college that students are eager to attend. Many faculty have asked UFE leadership a big question: with growing student enrollment, and with the large number of Evergreen faculty who have now left the College dueRead More
Berry, J., & Savarese, M. (2012). 2012 Directory of U.S. Faculty Contracts and Bargaining Agents in Institutions of Higher Education. 125. Cain, T. R. (2017). Campus Unions: Organized Faculty and Graduate Students in U.S. Higher Education, ASHE Higher Education Report. John Wiley & Sons. Cain, T. R., & Leach, E. A. (2021). Removing Faculty: Patterns and Processes of Retrenchment and Restructuring. AERA Open, 7, 23328584211058470. https://doi.org/10.1177/23328584211058472 Dominguez-Villegas, R., Smith-Doerr, L., Renski, H., & Sekarasih, L. (2020). Labor Unions and Equal Pay for Faculty: A Longitudinal Study of Gender Pay Gaps in a Unionized Institutional Context. Journal of Collective BargainingRead More
You can read a detailed timeline of the union’s history through 2013 on the UFE website. This series features select highlights! TESC union organizing began in 2005 with meetings of interested faculty, and a large organizing committee was established. In 2005-06 organizing and faculty deliberation continued at faculty meetings, panel discussions, etc. The organizing committee met with nearly every member of the faculty to determine interest in forming a faculty union, and by spring quarter we were confident that a majority of Evergreen faculty supported the union. On May 1, 2006 we filed our intention to become a certified collectiveRead More
This new regular feature in the UFE newsletter shares readings that explore the various dimensions of labor and highlight ideas for creating more enjoyable and humane working lives. Contact Julie Russo if you would like to contribute! This winter, we spotlight a new book by former tenured professor Jonathan Malesic called The End of Burnout: Why Work Drains Us and How to Build Better Lives. Malesic believes Americans have a cultural obsession with work that causes us to build our entire identities around our occupation, which can lead to burnout. In this book, he uses the psychological literature onRead More
