Portland State University (PSU) may be planning to flout an arbitrator’s order to reinstate 10 laid-off faculty members.
An arbitrator ruled Nov. 6 that PSU violated its contract with PSU-American Association of University Professors (PSU-AAUP) when it laid off faculty members in June without going through a process it had agreed to under the contract. The arbitrator directed PSU to reinstate the faculty members and make them whole, meaning pay them for the income and benefits they lost.
In a Dec. 10 statement, PSU said it disagreed with the arbitrator’s interpretation of the collective bargaining agreement but decided not to challenge “the underlying decision,” meaning the arbitrator’s determination that the university violated the contract.
“That said, we believe one part of the remedy ordered by the arbitrator was improper,” the university said in a statement provided to the Labor Press by university spokesperson Katy Swordfisk.
In a Dec. 4 letter to PSU-AAUP’s attorney, an attorney for the university pointed to a provision in the union’s contract that says an arbitrator “does not have the authority to direct that a bargaining unit member be reappointed, promoted, or awarded indefinite tenure.” The attorney told PSU-AAUP that PSU did not believe it was obligated to reinstate the workers, but a university spokesperson told the Labor Press that PSU is still determining how to implement the arbitrator’s decision.
PSU-AAUP President Bill Knight said the contract allows reinstatement as a component of being made whole, and that reinstatement had been part of make-whole remedies at PSU in the past without any objection.
“I don’t see a way for their argument to work out for them, and in the meantime, what our colleagues who were reinstated confront is a great deal of pain, frustration, and delay,” Knight said in an email to the Labor Press.
In binding arbitration, the arbitrator essentially acts as the judge, but unlike a judge’s ruling in court, the arbitrator’s decision can’t be appealed through a standard process.
PSU-AAUP says if PSU refuses to obey the arbitrator’s order, that could introduce significant instability to Oregon’s public sector labor legal landscape.
“We expect these 10 non-tenure-track union siblings to be reinstated immediately, per the binding arbitration ruling, and we urge PSU to stop wasting scarce public higher education dollars on pricey outside legal counsel,” AAUP President Todd Wolfson said in a press release.
