Dear TT Faculty members,

On October 1, I wrote to notify you that KSUFA officially declared impasse in these negotiations. The impasse concerns union busting provisions contained in the administration’s proposals on Article III: Management Rights and Article VII: Grievance and Appeals Process and Faculty Senate busting provisions contained in the administration’s proposals on Article IX: Faculty Workload, Article XI: Promotion, Tenure, and Reappointment, and Article XIX: Faculty Professional Development. KSUFA’s team clearly communicated our positions with respect to these five Articles in a statement read into the record at the September 25, 2026 bargaining session.  

Despite the impasse on those five Articles, KSUFA continues to bargain in good faith (at the administration’s preferred glacial pace of no more than four hours a month) on four other Articles: Article XII: Salary, Article XIII Medical Benefits, Article XIV: Other Benefits, and Article XXIV: Duration and Negotiation Procedure. All four of those Articles are currently on the administration’s side of the table. The parties have exchanged numerous proposals on Article XIV and are very close to reaching tentative agreement. However, the administration has made only a single proposal on each of Articles XII, XIII, and XXIV over the entire 16 months of negotiations. The administration waited until September 11, 2026 to make its initial proposal on Article XXIV. (KSUFA responded to this proposal at a bargaining session held on October 9.) To date, the administration has been unable or unwilling to make formal counters to KSUFA’s proposals on Article XII: Salary and Article XIII: Medical Benefits of August 12.  

The parties are scheduled to meet again on October 23. KSUFA is not confident that the administration will be prepared to make counter-proposals on any of the remaining Articles at that time. Whether or not the administration will have counter-proposals on Article XII: Salary and Article XIII: Medical Benefits at the October 23 session will reveal whether they are serious about reaching agreement on those Articles or intend to continue to unnecessarily drag out these negotiations in the hope of weakening the faculty union. 

Meanwhile… On October 12, KSUFA filed an unfair labor practice charge (ULP) against the University for the wide-spread incident of direct dealing that occurred between October 2 and October 6. On October 13, KSUFA’s attorney notified the State Employee Relations Board (SERB) of the impasse reached on Articles III, VI, IX, XI, and XIX and formally requested a list of conciliators, noting that none of those Articles is a permissible subject for fact-finding under the parties’ mutually agreed upon dispute resolution process. (Nor would fact-finding be helpful on any of those Articles given that the nature of the impasse in each case allows no room for compromise.) The administration’s attorney has notified SERB that they do not believe that conciliation should take place on those Articles before fact-finding occurs—presumably on any of the four remaining Articles on which we might reach impasse and on which fact-finding is permissible. Once again, this is a naked attempt to unnecessarily drag out the negotiation process. The TT faculty have been working without a contract since January 1, 2026.

KSUFA has created a section of our website dedicated to the TT negotiations. This section contains links to all of the negotiation updates we have sent to our members and links to all proposals on all articles made by either party. Although the MOU extending the CBA expired on December 31, 2025, the provisions of the CBA will remain in full force and effect until a successor contract is ratified.

If you have any questions or concerns about negotiations, please don’t hesitate to contact me (dsmith@ksufa.org).

Sincerely,

Deborah Smith

President, KSUFA

Chief Negotiator, TT-Unit