Monthly Archives: September 2012

by | September 18, 2012 · 11:21 am

Our colleague Dr. Kevin Mahoney from KU says a lot here that I would also have said. He says it somewhat more savvily than I was going to, so I’m just reposting his version of it.

APSCUF-KU xchange

This past Saturday, APSCUF posted the following negotiations update on its blog:

APSCUF and PASSHE negotiators met Friday, September 14, at the Dixon Center in Harrisburg.  The Chancellor’s team passed a proposal on retrenchment language and made suggestions for future bargaining sessions. APSCUF caucused and responded to their proposal in writing. The two sides reconvened and failed to come to agreement on the language, but agreed to session definitions for the next two times: on Oct. 5th APSCUF will present on curriculum, class size, and distance education and on Oct. 22nd the Chancellor’s team will discuss temporary workload and concessions on retiree health care.   There was neither discussion of nor progress made on the Chancellor’s team’s demand for concessions on distance education, active and retiree health care, and temporary faculty workload.

There is so much packed into this statement, but I want to focus on one issue in…

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Filed under Advocacy, APSCUF, Benefits/Benefit Cuts, Budget, Budget Cuts, Collective Bargaining, Contingent faculty, Contract Negotiations, Office of the Chancellor, Tenure, Uncategorized

by | September 11, 2012 · 11:00 pm

Right to Know request from National Educational Services

Folks, just in case anybody wonders about the two emails from our Right to Know Compliance Office about the request for our salares, office numbers, phone numbers, and home addresses–revised today to allow us to opt into sharing that information rather than having to opt out–

The organization asking for that information is called National Educational Services, and the original request came from somebody named Janine Fye.

Following the lead of the English Department Secretary (thanks, Mary!) who had the good sense to Google the name, I did the same. NES appears to be a mixture of TIAA-CREF and AFLAC for educators; they offer insurance plans (life insurance, disability, disability supplemental, etc), retirement plans, help with fundraising campaigns on campuses, a whole swath of services. I don’t get any inkling they’re more evil or sinister than any other corporation that does what they do.

Once I learned this, I emailed VP Mixner to ask what their rationale for the RTK request is. He explained that it’s “internal research”; I’ve replied to that message asking if “internal research” means something else in legal-land than it does in research-land. They want information about people who don’t belong to their plans, which is about “external” as I can imagine. I just sent that message, but if anybody is curious about the response, ask and I’ll post it.

Anyway, the reason I’m posting this entry on the blog is so that if you’re trying to decide whether to “opt in” (re: Tuesday’s email about the revised RTK request), I figured you should have at least a dim idea of what you’d be “opting into.”

My opinion on the fact that our RTK people didn’t tell us that themselves? I’ll sit on that.

Oops, that probably gave me away, didn’t it?

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Filed under AFSCME, APSCUF, Follow the Money, Right to Know