Troubles continue at Eastern

A couple of weeks ago at our regional Uniserv meeting we heard about some of the troubles they were having at Eastern getting a new contract settled for the professors. Now, The Spokesman-Review ($) has picked up the story:

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EWU faculty contract talks reach impasse
Mediator to consider salaries, workload

Negotiations between the faculty union and administration at Eastern Washington University broke down this week and will move into mediation, stalled over salary and workload issues.

It's the first time a mediator has been brought into the negotiations in the union's decade of existence, and it represents a long-simmering frustration, said Tony Flinn, president of United Faculty of Eastern.

"I wouldn't impute bad faith" to administrators, Flinn said. "But I really think the problem is a fundamental ignorance or indifference to the problems that have been developing over the past several years."


Flinn and other faculty members said that while Eastern's enrollments and class sizes have grown, its faculty salaries have stagnated, falling further behind other Washington schools and the national average. The union says that administration salaries, especially for the top positions, have risen steadily.

EWU administrators said they remained optimistic a fair contract can be reached. New President Rodolfo Arevalo, who took office April 1, said in a news release he was disappointed that the union had declared an "impasse" in negotiations, but noted that the negotiations had produced agreement on several topics, and were stuck on salary and workload concerns.

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At the meeting I went to there was talk about organizing some sort of action against the school, perhaps a letter-writing campaign, but nothing firm yet. Despite all this you have to be happy with how Eastern has grown over the last decade; since my freshman year they've re-opened two dorms, built another downtown, and are still experiencing record enrollment. Not bad for a school that was nearly merged with Washington State in 1998 in a proposal spearheaded by none other than former State Senator become Mayor become Pariah Jim West.