“Personally, I’m optimistic. But that shouldn’t be construed as a recommendation to the membership — that’s just how I feel about the tentative agreement,” said CMUFA President Brigitte Bechtold.

The university and CMUFA bargaining teams met at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday and reached a tentative agreement at about 12:15 a.m. Wednesday, concluding an almost six-hour session.

Details of the agreement are being withheld pending ratification by the CMUFA and approval by the CMU Board of Trustees.

The evening was capped with a handshake, pending agreement on the wording of the agreement, said Guy Newland, CMUFA Bargaining Team co-chairman.

Conversations between members of both bargaining teams will continue throughout this week and next week to agree on the wording.

“(The meetings) are not bargaining sessions. But, there is a lot of work to do, in terms of getting things into shape to present to the (CMUFA Board of Directors),” he said.

According to the CMUFA’s constitution, the bargaining team is required to create a digest — a synopsis of everything that is new in the contract.

“It’s a lengthy document — not as long as the contract itself — but it has to identify and summarize the new economic and non-economic issues,” he said. “We have to generate that, but it is underway.”

The two bargaining groups have been meeting since May, when the Faculty Association’s contract ended. The CMUFA agreed to extend its previous contract throughout negotiations.

“It took as long as we needed to go,” said Mike Silverthorn, Public Relations and Marketing executive director.

The meeting took place with state mediator William Borushko, administration and the CMU Faculty Association, resulting in a tentative agreement on a new contract for the years 2002-2005, said Newland and Robert Martin, Faculty Personnel Services director.

Bechtold said she is pleased that a tentative agreement has been reached.

“Before the contract would be ratified or not, would be no earlier than November,” said the, sociology, anthropology and social work professor. “The tentative timeline — and this is the most optimistic timeline I can foresee — is that the Faculty Association Board of Directors would meet Thursday, Oct. 24.”

The board then has to decide whether it would send the agreement to the membership, and in what form. The next step would be a summary of the tentative proposal to be made available in written form to all members.

“The membership meeting will be set within a week of the board meeting. Oct. 31 would be the soonest,” Bechtold said.

At the meeting, the membership will be briefed with a more detailed analysis of the agreement, and be able to ask questions of the CMUFA Bargaining Team. It also will decide if and when a ratification vote would take place.

Newland said the bargaining teams were in separate rooms, with a mediator shuttling between the groups. For a portion of the night, the two teams conversed directly with one another to speed the process along, and he said the result was positive.

“It’s something that both sides have agreed to, and the bargaining team will take it to the executive board. It is something we support,” he said. “There is a constitutional process that the Faculty Association has, and there isn’t any way that it can be done any faster than what the constitution allows.”

Under the Faculty Association constitution, when the association is considering to enter a legal and binding agreement with CMU, the president of the association and members of the bargaining team are authorized to find such an agreement on behalf of the membership upon completion of the following procedure:

• It must call a general membership meeting, and at meeting have an agenda with four items — the presentation of a written digest of the proposed agreement; a report and recommendation by the bargaining team; a report and recommendation by the CMUFA Board of Directors; and a determination by the members in attendance by majority vote of the method of ratification of the proposed agreement.

“The method of ratification would include how many days members have to vote, where the voting stations will be set up ... practical issues like that,” Bechtold said.

The ratification methods try to set up a situation where every member of the FA will participate in the vote, she said.

Silverthorn said the university is pleased there is a tentative agreement.

“We had been talking since May, and early on we made great progress on non-economic issues ... we’re hopeful it gets ratified and are just looking forward to moving on.”