Classified staff reach tentative agreement with university system

Many of EOU’s classified staff employees are breathing a sigh of relief today.

Representatives of the 4,000 classified staff employees at Oregon’s seven public universities reached a tentative agreement Friday with the Oregon University System on a two-year contract.

This was welcome news to the 120 to 130 non-faculty classified staff at EOU.

“It (the sense of relief) is incredible. Now we can go forward,’’ said Gary Moses, the bargaining delegate for EOU’s classified staff and an information technology webmaster at Eastern.

Carol Kroll, director of human resources at EOU, is also encouraged.

“We are very pleased to have a tentative agreement,’’ Kroll said this morning.

The tentative settlement was reached following eight months of sometimes acrimonious negotiations. Things had gotten so bad this summer many OUS classified employees had filled out strike pledges. At EOU about 40 percent of the classified staff had made strike pledges, Moses said.

Terms of the tentative agreement call for employees to likely maintain most of their health insurance benefits but receive no salary increases and take 8 to 16 unpaid furlough days over the next 21 months.

The terms of the agreement reflect the difficult financial situation the state is facing in the recession.

“The classified employees stepped up in these hard economic times and made a sacrifice to help the university system out. They put action behind their words,’’ said Marc Nisenfeld, chair of the of classified staff bargaining team and a development engineer at Portland State University.

Nisenfeld said he hopes that OUS administrators and faculty will make the same sacrifices as the classified staff.

Classified staff employees will be required to take unpaid furloughs based upon their pay levels.

Following are the tentative furlough requirements:

• employees making $2,450 or less a month would have to take eight furlough days.

• employees paid between $2,451 and $3,105 a month would have to take 12 furlough days.

• employees paid between $3,106 and $5,733 would have to take 14 days of unpaid leave.

• those making $5,733 or more a month must take 16 days of unpaid leave.

Terms of the contract also call for the state to pay all health insurance premiums for the remainder of the year. The state would pay up to 5 percent of any increases in health insurance premiums for the remainder of the contract, which would expire June 30, 2011. Should health insurance premiums rise between 5 percent and 10 percent in 2010 and the first half of 2011, classified employees would be allowed to ask the Public Employee Benefits Board to cover this portion of the cost increase.

Classified staff delegates will meet Sept. 19 at a bargaining conference in Portland or Salem to vote on the proposed agreement. The delegates will vote on whether to recommend that the state’s 4,000 classified OUS employees pass or reject the proposal.

All classified staff employees will later vote on the proposal regardless of what the delegates recommend.

Nisenfeld is confident that the delegates and later the classified staff employees will vote in favor of the contract.

Should the classified staff employees endorse the contract it will then have to be ratified by the State Board of Higher Education.