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In the Feb. 13 issue of the Reporter, UB President William Greiner addressed these problems in a position paper entitled "President's statement on issues of State-UUP stalemate." We are happy to see that he has now taken a clear public position on the contract dispute. We are also happy to hear him say that, if he believed that the State were "mounting an assault on faculty tenure by insisting on a contracting-out provision," he would "recommend against it, forcefully and in the strongest possible terms." We are writing him and the rest of the campus community to assert (1) that the State has launched precisely such an assault, (2) that President Greiner's response does not yet fully recognize or respond to the threat, (3) that permanent appointment for professional staff deserves the same protection as faculty tenure, and (4) that a successful resolution to this crisis depends on concerted resistance to GOER's proposal by all those committed to SUNY's future, including the president of its flagship campus.

The negotiations have run aground on the State's apparently non-negotiable demand for an outsourcing article in its new contract with UUP. What is "outsourcing"? A contract with an outsourcing provision would allow State or campus management to "contract out" the work of professionals and academics to private bidders, or to "contract in" their work to non-unionized SUNY- or UB-owned and managed internal corporations such as the Research Foundation or the UB Foundation. With the unlimited outsourcing article proposed by GOER, SUNY managers in Albany or UB managers in Capen Hall could terminate all the professional employees in a university office and contract out their work to a private bidder. Or they could terminate all academic employees in a department, contract in their work to a new division of the Research Foundation, and offer lower-paid, non-unionized, and non-tenure-track lectureships in that division to a few former professors.

Is "contracting in" a compromise position? Far from it. It poses an even greater threat than contracting out, for it offers managers eager to break union power all the advantages of contracting out without its disadvantages-namely, a cheaper, non-unionized, and more "flexible" (which is to say, "fireable") labor force with no loss of management control. Consider what happened to Anne Cornelius and Michelle Acevedo, two longtime employees of the Research Foundation. One day last summer, after contacting union organizers of the Communications Workers of America, they distributed fliers complaining that non-unionized Research Foundation employees are paid less than their unionized counterparts in the rest of the SUNY system. Two days later they were fired.

In his position paper, President Greiner says that all observers with whom he has talked believe that the real sticking point in the negotiations is the status of the 7,700 UUP members on staff or in State employment at the three teaching hospitals. We fear that his information may be incomplete or out of date. Tom Matthews, our UUP Negotiations Chair heard the same rumor, but when he asked GOER to submit for discussion some specific language limiting the demand for outsourcing to the hospitals, it consistently declined to do so, insisting on the right to outsource all UUP jobs. Furthermore, the fate of the hospitals now seems to have been completely detached from the ongoing contract negotiations, for the state legislature is currently discussing their separation from SUNY.

We are concerned about some of the hints President Greiner has dropped in recent weeks about the sort of contract he would like to see. In his Dec. 10 address to the Faculty Senate, he suggested that, with regard to tenure, questions of job security (which must remain flexible) might reasonably be separated from questions of intellectual freedom (which must remain protected). He also suggested that certain professional staff jobs might reasonably be outsourced in the future, and he repeated this suggestion in his Jan. 28 address to the Faculty Senate. But we simply cannot imagine how intellectual freedom could survive separation from job security. And of course, we cannot view as friendly any attempt to break down UUP solidarity by trying to divide academics from professionals.

If UUP gives in to such divide and conquer tactics-if we divide hospital from non-hospital staff, campus from campus, questions of intellectual freedom from questions of job security, and academics from professionals-we will be left without a leg to stand on. And in the recent past, when push has come to shove, we should remember that those shoved have tended to be academics. Last year, campus managers retrenched the physical education department at New Paltz, retrenched and illegally outsourced the German Department at SUNY Albany, retrenched and illegally outsourced the Program of American Music, Dance, and Theatre at Old Westbury. If the State is willing to engage in such actions, and if moreover it is willing to withhold our benefits in direct defiance of PERB rulings, how far would it be willing to go if it had the legal, contractual power to outsource?

Linda Angello, director of GOER, has written many UUP members telling them "Employees should not be misled by rhetoric designed to incite and needlessly scare them into believing that the State plans to contract out on a wholesale basis, eliminate tenure, and abolish academic freedom. This is simply untrue." President Greiner sounds a similar note in his statement. But as is usual in contract disputes, good intentions and pleas of "trust us" are not enough, for new State-created budgetary "crises" might produce new intentions. And in the long run, the mere threat to outsource might damage SUNY just as much as actual outsourcing, for it would give management a trump card in every new dispute. For instance, departments might be told to choose between being outsourced and "voluntarily" accepting an increase in work load. It is only too easy to imagine the chilling effect on academic and intellectual freedom.

President Greiner contrasts UUP with three other unions which have signed contracts allowing limited outsourcing: Council 82, the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA), and the Public Employees Federation (PEF). He has publicly praised these unions for agreeing to State demands for out-sourcing. In his statement, he calls the limited outsourcing language in their contracts a "benchmark" for any new UUP contract, and says that the State is willing to provide UUP with similar limitations on outsourcing. But GOER has never proposed to UUP negotiators any such limitations, or explained why it wants to outsource UUP work in the first place, or demanded any outsourcing language in the contracts of two other major academic unions: CUNY's Professional Staff Congress and SUNY's Graduate Student Employee's Union.

Furthermore, we have some difficulty seeing why UUP, with 21,200 members, all of them SUNY employees, should follow the lead of three unions with many sorts of state workers and only 15,600 SUNY employees. The Feb. 14 issue of The Spectrum reports President Greiner as saying that these other three unions resent UUP's "special treatment" in not having submitted to outsourcing. We hope that his words have been misinterpreted, but if not, we would appreciate hearing some evidence for this remarkable claim. When we talk to our SUNY colleagues in the other unions, we hear precisely the reverse. Terri Menkiena, President of CSEA at UB, says that her members feel no such resentment, regret the outsourcing article in their contract with SUNY (which they have long attempted, unsuccessfully, to have removed), and are deeply concerned about workplace safety and the quality of work at UB worksites, such as the new Fine Arts Center, where CSEA services have been outsourced to low-bid contractors.

And when we examine the specific language in the Council 82, CSEA, and PEF contracts, we are far from encouraged. The State promises only to consult with Council 82 when it lays off members and outsources jobs. The CSEA contract (PEF's has similar language) appears to protect the jobs of current CSEA members, but not the jobs of future members or CSEA work as a whole. However, the article then goes on to describe the procedure to be used when permanent appointment jobs are, in fact, about to suffer layoff (subcontracting/retrenchment). If UUP accepts the CSEA contract as a model, we still would not be protecting permanent appointment or tenure. We would be ceding to Management the right not only to subcontract any or all current positions, but also diminishing the job security of new UUP members, and the right to begin transferring UUP work to non-unionized, non-UUP employees.

We would like to be able to join President Greiner in his parting call for a "spirit of compromise" in resolving the dispute, but in all contract disputes, some issues are simply not open to compromise. Justice doesn't always lie in the middle. Everyone involved in this debate should address at some point the question of whether or not it is just for the State to claim the right to destroy the jobs of UUP members and weaken their job security by outsourcing. We assert that present and future UUP members, both academics and professionals, have a right to a secure job, free from the threat of outsourc-ing, and we will never support any contract that undermines or compromises their job security. We believe that this is why UUP members at UB polled in 1996 favored no new contract by a three-to-one ratio over a new contract with an outsourcing provision. We cannot agree to any contract giving the State outsourcing privileges in black and white in exchange for fuzzy gray promises of good intentions, "consultation," or "retraining." We call on President Greiner to state unequivocally his opposition to any outsourcing at all for all UUP members, whether academics or professionals, and for all UUP unit work. And we call on him to do all he can to convince his fellow campus presidents, the Trustees, the Chancellor, and GOER that UUP should never and will never accept any contract with provisions for outsourcing.

We thank President Greiner for the thoughtful tone of his statement. We second him in encouraging all members of UUP to communicate their opinions on the ongoing contract discussions to their elected UUP chapter and statewide representatives, and to the GOER representatives appointed by the Governor. Moreover, we encourage them to continue communicating with Chancellor Ryan, the trustees, and especially with President Greiner, whose support may well prove crucial to our efforts in coming months. We cannot make ourselves believe that he would want to be remembered as the UB president who stood by while outsourcing destroyed his colleagues' job security and further weakened our great university system.

SUNY at Buffalo UUP Chapter Board
Jean Dickson, President
Lorna Arnington
Harvey Axlerod
David Ballard
Tonnalee Batchelor
Alice Bergmann
Milton Carlin
Jane DiSalvo
Albert Ermanovics
James Holstun
Richard Kucharski
Bertha Laury
James Lawler
John Meacham
Joel Rose
Roosevelt Wardlaw
Dorothy Woodson
Patrick Young
Paul Zarembka