Focus Shifts to Chancellor; Workers Speak Out

All OUS Workers Want Is Fairness

With a tentative DAS agreement, SEIU Local 503 members are turning their to attention OUS Chancellor George Persteiner, whose latest proposal amounts to a demand that classified workers take as many unpaid days as Pernsteiner decides that he wants to give them.

All members and supporters are urged to call or email Persteiner in the name of fairness and ask him to withdraw the proposal, which would allow him to furlough classified workers at will over the next two years in 15-day blocks and makes no such demand of other OUS employees.

“All we seek,” said OUS Bargaining Team chair Marc Nisenfeld (Portland State), “is basic fairness. That should not be too much to ask.”

An email alert to members said that Nisenfeld and alternate chair Nat Elder (Western Oregon), “sat at the Central Table for many of the DAS sessions and as tough as those negotiations were, the State's DAS negotiators did not put the kind of aggressive take-aways of our rights on the table as their OUS management counterparts have.



“OUS negotiators continue to insist on a contract modification that would allow management to impose unlimited unpaid furloughs at will (for up to 15 days at a time) in addition to 24 unpaid furlough days on any or all of us.

In addition and different from DAS, OUS, it appears, may not be asking all parts of the campus communities to shoulder the sacrifices we're being asked to accept: on some campuses, solid evidence of raises for some non-classified employee groups persists.



“These proposals are outrageOUS. We must take a stand. Please make a call and/or send an email to the Chancellor.”

One possible message: “Withdraw the proposal in Article 51 that would allow you to impose unlimited unpaid days off at will on us, and settle this contract with fairness and equity. We deserve no less than what our fellow state workers in other state agencies have won.  Don't try to balance the budget on the backs of classified workers. The sacrifices must be shared by all!”

Send or call in the messages to George_Pernsteiner@ous.edu and/or 503.725.5703.




And please sign this on-line petition to the chancellor.

If OUS succeeds in changing Article 51, Oregon Universities could impose as many 15-day blocks of unpaid time off as they want, with no limits. In this video, classified workers at the U of O talk about what impact these unlimited furloughs would have on their work and their lives.



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