Portland Community College strike enters third week

The two unions representing faculty and staff at Portland Community College have been on strike since March 11. It’s the first ever strike at a community college in Oregon. Instructors and staff are negotiating for higher cost-of-living and salary increases, among other issues. With the spring term scheduled to start March 30, the negotiations could delay classes, many of which have taken place remotely or been canceled due to the strike.

Ben Cushing is a faculty member in sociology and president of the PCC Federation of Faculty and Academic Professionals. Aaron Hill is the college’s interim associate vice president for finance. They both join us to talk about where negotiations stand.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Geoff Norcross: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Geoff Norcross, in for Dave Miller. Negotiations continue on the historic strike at Portland Community College. Two weeks ago, faculty and staff went on strike after 10 months of contract negotiations faltered. Looming over all of it is the beginning of the spring term, which is scheduled for next Monday.

Both sides have more bargaining scheduled, but they’re taking some time to talk to us. We’ll hear from the administration in a bit, but first we’re going to talk to Ben Cushing. He teaches sociology at PCC and he is the president of the faculty union. Ben Cushing, welcome to Think Out Loud.

Ben Cushing: Thank you, Jeff. It’s great to be here.

Norcross: How close are you to an agreement?

Cushing: Well in some respects it seems like we’re quite close, and in some respects it seems like we’re miles apart. So in terms of actual dollars, we’re only a little over a million dollars apart on our proposals. PCC has a biennial budget of $700 million, so that’s a drop in the bucket. But we’ve had a really difficult time closing that last gap. The last time we were actually in bargaining was Monday night, we finished bargaining at 1AM – which is actually, I guess Tuesday morning. And we haven’t bargained at all yesterday, nor have we today. So our team is really anxious to get back to the bargaining table and settle this.

Norcross: Remind us why the unions are striking. How do we get to this point?

Cushing: So we’re in what’s called an economic reopener, which is halfway through our contract. We only negotiated the first two years of cost of living and benefits, so we agreed to reopen the contract halfway through to negotiate the cost of living adjustment, and basically wages and benefits for the second two years of the contract. We’ve been in bargaining for almost a year now. For nine months at the table, our bargaining team was offered 0.35% cost of living adjustment, during a time in which inflation was closer to 3%. And the management team really only moved off of that position in the 48 hours prior to the strike. So I think a lot of the problem here stems from not being able to meaningfully bargain with the management team during that 10 months or so of bargaining prior to the strike beginning.

Norcross: It sounds like cost of living increase is the big thing here. Why is that increase so important to the faculty and staff at PCC?

Cushing: I think we all know that we’re just living through an affordability crisis right now. The cost of everything is going up. That’s only getting worse with the war in Iran. So our members are facing increased rent, increased groceries, and we need to keep up with that.

But this strike isn’t only about cost of living adjustments, we’re also trying to achieve certain things that our students need. So one of our major proposals – that actually we finally came to agreement on, so this is a piece of good news – is to basically get the college to agree to offer courses to meet student enrollment demand. We’ve had a situation where, for many terms in a row, we’ve had several hundred students on waitlists for key courses, like Writing 121, which is the writing course that almost all students need to take. So that not only hurts students by not allowing them to get into those classes, it cuts enrollment for the college, which is also cutting off an important funding source for the college. And then it also means that part-time faculty who are generally going to be teaching those classes don’t get that work. So we think it’s a kind of a win-win to be able to offer more classes.

We’re also bargaining to try to get the college to stop the closure of a very popular music program at Cascade Campus called Music and Sonic Arts. So there are issues aside from cost of living adjustments, but those are the key ones.

Norcross: About your compensation proposal that you put across the table, how does it compare to recent contracts?

Cushing: I’m so glad you asked that. I’m going to get into some numbers here, so bear with me for a minute. If you take the total cost of the bargaining package that our union has negotiated with PCC in contracts over the past decade, you see a trend. So in 2015, we negotiated a total package of $21 million. In 2017, we negotiated $24 million [and] $27 million dollars in the following two-year period. And then it dipped down to $17 million during the pandemic. And then it came back up as we kind of caught up with some of our cost of living adjustments to $38 million in the last negotiated contract.

By contrast, management’s current offer on the table today is $9.6 million. And our current offer is only $10.87 million, which means the offer that we have on the table that would settle the strike is $7 million lower than anything we’ve agreed to in the last decade, including the period of the pandemic.

Norcross: So it sounds like give and take is happening. I would like to ask though about the impact on students. We got an email from one. His name is Jim Marshall. He said, “Please ask the union leaders why they decided to strike right before finals and put students’ futures at hostage. I don’t fault them for striking. I fault them for the timing.”

Cushing: Yeah. The timing was not entirely within our hands. The timeline for striking is governed by pretty strict laws under the the Public Employees Collective Bargaining Act, which is the Oregon law that governs public employee unions. So the timing was sort of spelled out by that.

But I will say actually, we have an enormous amount of support from students. We have students on the picket line every single day. ASPCC, the student government, actually just voted no confidence in PCC management. So we’ve seen a lot of solidarity from our students, which we’ve been incredibly grateful for.

And that’s especially amazing because we have a situation right now that is really harmful for students. We’re really worried about our international students, particularly. Veteran students are particularly vulnerable. So we just need management to come to the table and settle the strike right now.

Norcross: Ben Cushing, thank you so much for this.

Cushing: Thank you.

Norcross: We’re going to turn now to Aaron Hill. He is the interim associate vice president for finance at PCC. Aaron Hill, welcome to Think Out Loud.

Aaron Hill: Hi, thanks. I’m happy to be here.

Norcross: Same question to you. How close do you think you are to an agreement?

Hill: I’d have to agree we’re close and in some cases it feels like we’re far apart. But I am hopeful with the progress that both sides have been making and I am hopeful that we’ll get a deal here done soon.

Norcross: The college has said it does support its faculty and staff, but it can’t afford to pay for the salary increases that the unions are asking for. So can you describe the financial constraints that PCC is under right now?

Hill: You bet. There has been a shift in how PCC has been operating over the last few years compared to maybe the last 10. I think it was great in that last question of, of what offers we put on the table: $24 million, $27 million, $17 million, $38 million. Those are all great amounts that we’ve been able to offer the unions in past years. But in those biennials, the school was making a profit of $3.2 million in the biennium that ended in 2017. In the next biennium, the college made a profit of $21.6 million. In the following biennium after that, they made a profit of $59.1 million. In the following biennium after that they made a profit of $4.6 million.

In this last biennium, the college had a net loss of $41.3 million. And then just in this previous fiscal year, the college lost $29.5 million. So those dynamics have changed in why our offer is lower than in previous bienniums.

Norcross: I’m sure a lot of people would hear those numbers and say, well, there’s a way to get around that and that is by cutting administration staff. How do you respond to that?

Hill: And you know, they’re not wrong. And I think if you look in our current biennium, to get to our current biennial budget, we had cut $14.7 million to our budget and the majority of that came from management and confidential positions.

Norcross: What is the long-term financial outlook for the institution when you look at those trends?

Hill: Right now, the long term doesn’t look great. But we don’t want to get to the place we’re going if we don’t change anything. So that’s why we tried to create a fiscal sustainability framework and action plan. Because if we don’t make any changes now, we’ll just keep seeing this downward trajectory on our fund balance.

So we made a fiscal sustainability framework and action plan that tried to address two things. One was being able to make reductions to our budget, and also look at ways to increase our revenue. But the reductions are a key piece. We’re going to have to make reductions in order to save that downward trajectory to our funds.

Norcross: A lot of local and state leaders are weighing in on this strike, and that includes Senator Jeff Merkley. He says faculty and staff deserve a cost of living increase. Are you feeling pressure from our leaders?

Hill: Not so much, because I agree with him and I think the majority of our management do agree that all staff at PCC deserve a good cost of living increase. I guess the question, and maybe the shared understanding that we’re wanting to get to, is what happens when the college itself doesn’t receive a good cost of living increase? Our three main sources of revenue come from the state, come from tuition and fees, and property taxes. And if the combination of those three revenues only increases slightly by 1%, let’s say as an example, how can we then give a good cost of living increase of 3% or 4% out to our employees? And that’s the kind of shared understanding that we want to try to tackle.

Norcross: The spring term is set to begin next week. How confident are you that that’s actually going to happen?

Hill: I’m hopeful. I’m on the finance side, so I’m not dealing as much with the spring term, but I am confident that our team is exploring every avenue they can to make sure that that still tracks.

Norcross: You’re on the finance side. I’m wondering how this strike is affecting operations in your department?

Hill: It’s affecting us just like it’s affecting all of us. I work in the finance and business services department, which was recently moved into the office of the president. And from an FTE and salary standpoint, the majority of our employees in the finance and business services department are members of both federations. So it’s been tough. We’ve been trying to wear many hats and get things done. So it’s been hard. But it’s been hard on the entire college. It’s been hard on our staff that’s out on strike. It’s been hard on our management that’s here. It’s just been hard all around.

Norcross: What does the disruption at PCC mean for students that rely on financial aid?

Hill: That’s something that we’re hoping to try to mitigate. Ryan Clark, who oversees that, is really trying to explore every avenue he can to make it the least impactful on students. And we’re hoping that the damage is minimal.

Norcross: What is your message for students who have been caught in the middle of this situation, whether they agree with the faculty and staff unions or they agree with the administration? What’s your message for them who just want to go to school?

Hill: I guess more of a personal message is that we love them and we want what’s best for them. And I think the federations have that same sentiment. They love their students. And we want to come to an agreement and get a deal done so that we can all come back to school.

Norcross: When does negotiations start again? Do you know?

Hill: We’ve got some offers that we’re passing back and forth to the mediator today, but our next in-person mediation will be tomorrow.

Norcross: OK, more to come. Aaron Hill, thank you so much for this. I appreciate it.

Hill: Thank you.

Norcross: Aaron Hill is an interim vice president for finance at Portland Community College. We also heard from Ben Cushing who is the president of PCC Federation of Faculty and Academic Professionals.

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