{"id":22696,"date":"2019-02-05T15:12:07","date_gmt":"2019-02-05T20:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/?p=22696"},"modified":"2019-02-05T15:12:07","modified_gmt":"2019-02-05T20:12:07","slug":"strike-state-university","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/tartan-news\/2019\/02\/05\/strike-state-university\/","title":{"rendered":"Strike State University"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0Students at Wright State University are facing faculty changes and outright cancellations of their classes due to the ongoing strike between the University\u2019s unioned professors and the college administration.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0The roughly 560 members of AAUP-WSU have been on strike since Jan. 22. As of this writing, the strike has gone on for 13 days, the longest in Ohio history.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0The primary issues of the strike are related to health care policies, cut benefits, faculty taking on larger class sizes and teaching more courses and changes to employee contracts that include a furloughed clause, allowing professors to be cut as a cost saving measure.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0On Friday, Feb. 1, negotiations continued between the university and the union and an offer was made by the administration. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Wright State\u2019s new offer would maintain previous contract language when it comes to layoffs and workload. It would also limit possible furlough days to one a semester and includes a guarantee of up to a 2.5 percent pay raise for union faculty each year of the final two years of their contract. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0However, the caveat is that the union must agree to the uniform health plan for all employees. Professors would also be paid less for teaching summer classes. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Union members have stated that the increase in pay would still represent a pay cut when compared to the money lost in the health care plan. It would also eliminate their bargaining rights for health benefits.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0The administration has said that implementing a separate health care plan for unionized faculty has cost the school millions of dollars each year.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0On Feb. 3, the university\u2019s board of trustees voted to approve the contract offer, but the picketing will continue, as the AAUP-WSU did not agree to the terms.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0AAUP-WSU offers their side of the story on the Fighting for Wright website:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0\u201c…What you might not know is that the base salaries and benefits of the WSU faculty\u2014who generate almost all of the university\u2019s revenue\u2014account for just 17% of the university\u2019s budget,\u201d the site reads. \u201cBut, since early 2016, we\u2019ve suffered a net loss of 92 full-time teaching positions.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Wright State University has been in the midst of a budget crisis due to several years of overspending and lawsuits costing millions of dollars. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0A notable example of this was the university\u2019s bid to host the first presidential debate of the 2016 election. They were selected from 16 other schools to host, and spent nearly $3.5 million to renovate the Nutter Center. Later, they backed out, citing a lack of funds and issues involving security.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0These financial struggles have caused significant cuts to Wright State\u2019s budget, with $30.8 million slashed in 2017 and $53 million in the 2018 fiscal year.<\/span><\/p>\n

Henry Wolski<\/strong>
\nExecutive Editor<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0Students at Wright State University are facing faculty changes and outright cancellations of their classes due to the ongoing strike between the University\u2019s unioned professors and the college administration. \u00a0 \u00a0The roughly 560 members of AAUP-WSU have been on strike since Jan. 22. As of this writing, the strike has gone on for 13 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10416,"featured_media":22681,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2110,3],"tags":[94,2945,2000,1595,1621,2944,1193],"class_list":["post-22696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-tartan-news","tag-college","tag-fighting-for-wright","tag-henry-wolski","tag-local","tag-strike","tag-strike-state-university","tag-wright-state-university"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-5U4","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Screen-Shot-2019-02-04-at-1.58.10-PM.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10416"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22696"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22707,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22696\/revisions\/22707"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}