Protecting faculty rights is NFA’s top priority.
- We remain steadfast in pushing back against administration’s tactics like:
- Re-interpreting the Collective Bargaining Agreement to exclude previously negotiated provisions
- Redefining leadership roles in an attempt to classify department chairs as partial administrators
- Interfering with CSN-NFA’s ability to communicate with all bargaining unit members
- Reducing commitments to non-discrimination
- Controlling how NFA stewards help faculty with grievances by diminishing the time and resources available
What is CSN administration’s seeming path forward?
- Centralize all power in the hands of administrators and expand administrative supervision of academic faculty
- Undermine the CBA and remove its protections for faculty
- Strip authority away from department chairs
- Redefine leadership roles
- Erode hard-fought protections already in the CBA
- Remove academic faculty from shared governance and leadership decisions
CSN academic faculty stand united in protecting our rights and in maintaining Department Chairs as part of the bargaining unit! Department Chairs already exist in the CBA. However, the administration is attempting to discount the 2016 vote of Department Chairs.
- NFA wants to maintain Department Chairs as academic faculty protected by the bargaining unit. Chairs should schedule all courses, recommend course assignments, and serve as the subject matter expert evaluator of faculty.
- Administration wants to redefine Department Chair positions and protections in the CBA, hold Chairs accountable as administrators when carrying out functions of the Department Chair position, reduce Department Chair compensation, and hire new administrators to complete faculty evaluations and scheduling.
CSN-Administration has proposed: (Interested in NFA proposals? Skip to the bottom)
- Removing language requiring good faith negotiations (Preamble)
- Allowing General Counsel to facilitate all contract interpretations (Preamble)
- Removing all references to Department Chairs as members of the bargaining unit (Recognition)
- Removing CSN’s commitments to NOT unilaterally alter working conditions or invalidate provisions of the CBA (Savings Clause)
- Restricting information that NFA can obtain from CSN (Information & Data Requests)
- Restricting NFA, or its representatives, from using office equipment including the internet on campuses to advocate for faculty, going above and beyond NSHE policy (State Resources)
- Limiting NFA’s ability to assist faculty for periods of longer than 30 minutes at a time, and requiring official leave requests to represent faculty (State Resources)
- Removing NFA’s ability to post relevant materials to faculty offices or departments or schools, limiting it to allocated bulletin boards and a three-ring binder for all faculty (State Resources)
CSN controls the allocation of funds college wide.
CSN’s discussions about newly available funds, due to administrative reorganizing, is not subjected to any shared governance process. Faculty across the college have been left out of decision-making, while funds have dwindled in departmental/school budgets. However, our information requests show MILLIONS leftover in Covid funds (that continue to grow through investments,) growth in summer semester revenues, and leftover funds in the President’s accounts.
Did you know that CSN returned $236,000 to NSHE last year?
There is no record of funds reverting back to the state for FY23, FY22, or FY21 (Board of Regents financial reports on 12/2024).
The year-over-year budget for CSN grew from $159,935,497 in FY24 Actual Expenses to FY25’s Budgeted Expenses of $171,131,376.
CSN will receive approximately $20 million in additional funding in the upcoming biennium (FY26 & FY27) through NSHE funding formula changes.
This is why NFA has proposed reinstituting the salary step system at CSN, offering a guaranteed 2.5% increase per year to all academic faculty in addition to merit and COLA. In our current contract, CSN and NFA mutually agree to support the integration of a step system (CBA, Article 7, Section 5). With the changes to the funding formula, CSN now has the funds to sustainably commit!
NFA will NOT ratify a contract that strips away our hard-fought rights and protections. Rest assured that this fight for your rights is happening at the bargaining table every Friday. Academic faculty will fight for a fair contract for as long as it takes!
Interested in NFA’s proposals? Here are some highlights:
- Implement step system increases of 2.5% per year for all academic faculty, tied to CSN’s increase in funding beginning FY26
- Provide $5,000 professional development stipends in Year 1 & 2 of the contract, tied to CSN’s hoarding of Covid-related federal funds allocated for Academic Instruction and Academic Support
- Minimum COLA of 3.1% on July 1, 2025
- Including arbitration with binding third-party decisions to enforce the CBA
- Expanding protections for non-discrimination
- Defining seniority
- Increasing safety by requiring police presence on all campuses 24/7
- Expanding free speech protections in alignment with AAUP
- Raising overload rates and tying those rates to COLA increases
- Raising summer teaching rates & simplification of compensation calculations, tied to automatic fee rate increases for summer courses
- Maintaining all academic leadership positions & compensation levels
- Offering guaranteed discounts for Child Care at the ECE Lab
- Minimizing furlough reductions to faculty compensation
- Offering 100% FTE retirement payouts for 1-year
- Capping nursing course faculty-to-student ratios, for the safety of faculty, students, and patients
- Providing reduced workloads for all new faculty, with professional development
- Clarifying rules around nepotism for instructors
- Guaranteeing NFA representation for all bargaining unit members
- Protecting sabbatical compensation levels
- Maintaining strict levels of confidentiality and management of records for all bargaining unit members
We will keep you informed regularly of the status of negotiations on the CSN-NFA website for Bargaining Updates (https://nfa-csn.org/wp/bargaining-updates) and through emails to members. If you have any questions, please reach out to any of your Collective Bargaining Council representatives: https://nfa-csn.org/wp/cbc
This update is from your CSN-NFA Negotiating Team. We represent all CSN full-time academic faculty at the bargaining table. We want to hear from you, and we need your support to succeed together!