Dear TT Faculty members,

In the past, I have answered the frequently asked question “why is the administration dragging out negotiations so long?” by appealing to Hanlon’s razor: don’t attribute to malice what can be attributed to ignorance and incompetence. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that the complete answer involves both elements of ignorance/incompetence and elements of malice.

Last April, I attended a meeting of Faculty Senate’s Budget Advisory Committee during which the University CFO, Jeannie Reifsnyder, presented the draft FY 27 budget that the administration planned to present to the Board of Trustees. As was her usual practice, she outlined various assumptions underlying expected areas of expense reduction. One of those assumptions involved changes in healthcare benefits for employees. It struck me at the time, and it has since become increasingly obvious, that this was an instance in which the University’s right hand didn’t know what its left hand was doing.  

On the one hand, the people in charge of proposing a budget to address the fiscal challenges facing the university were counting on specific cost saving changes to healthcare benefits being implemented in 2027. Any changes to faculty healthcare benefits have to be negotiated, and the new CBA would have to be ratified before the October rollout of open enrollment for 2027 healthcare benefits in order for that to happen. It should have been clear to the administration that reaching a speedy conclusion to the negotiations with the TT Faculty that had begun in June of 2025 would be in the best interest of the University’s fiscal health.

On the other hand, the people in charge of developing and implementing the administration’s negotiation strategy were acting in ways that would guarantee that the University would not be able to implement any changes to healthcare benefits (at least for full-time faculty) in 2027:

• They refused to have their team meet with our team more than twice a month.
• They refused to make initial proposals on salary and medical benefits for over a year. 
• To date, they still have not made an initial proposal on Article XXIV: Duration and Negotiation Procedure.
• They refused to move off of proposals that KSUFA had made absolutely clear were poison pills for us: language in the Management Rights and Grievance Articles that would give the administration the greenlight to simply ignore clear provisions of the CBA and language contained in several Articles that would undermine Faculty Senate’s historical role in shared governance.  
• They have proposed language in the Medical Benefits Article that would eliminate KSUFA’s right to negotiate the structure of, and employee contribution toward, any current or future healthcare plans offered to faculty other than the current 85/60 plan—essentially proposing that KSUFA negotiate away our right to negotiate a mandatory subject of bargaining.

It should have been clear to the administration that their go-slow approach to bargaining, combined with a refusal to move away from poison pill language (guaranteed to trigger the time-consuming dispute resolution process), was not in the best interest of the University’s fiscal health.

The administration’s failure to understand, even back in April, that their own negotiation tactics were an impediment to achieving the needed cost savings in healthcare benefits is just one (particularly egregious) example of the ignorance/incompetence that KSUFA has witnessed during these negotiations. However, as it slowly dawns on the administration that the parties won’t have a ratified CBA in time for open enrollment 2027, their response seems overtly malicious. By all appearance, the administration is prioritizing its attempt to weaken the union and Faculty Senate over taking steps to address the University’s financial challenges. KSUFA suspects that the President and his cabinet are being led in this direction by the external labor lawyer they have hired to advise them during these negotiations and who seems to have an outsized voice when it comes to the administration’s negotiation strategy. 

We had hoped that the administration would come to a different conclusion and are saddened that they have not done so. However, if the administration is going to prioritize crushing the union and eroding the collective power of the faculty over acting in the best interest of the University’s fiscal wellbeing, KSUFA will have no choice but to prioritize ensuring that our union and faculty remain strong over all else.  

Although we have lost the right to strike, we still have tools that can bring pressure on the administration. These include:

• informational picketing at times and locations prospective students and their families will be on campus;
• circulating a petition calling for Faculty Senate to conduct a vote of No Confidence in the President and his entire cabinet by the full-time faculty; and
• calling for Work to Rule.

Stay tuned….

In solidarity,

Deborah Smith

President, KSUFA

Chief Negotiator, TT-Unit