NEA Affiliates in Action

Organizing
Acting on the recommendations of a special task force studying part-time faculty in the state's colleges, the Michigan Education Association has called for a major commitment to organizing and bargaining for adjunct faculty in the state.

Nearly 47 percent of higher education faculty are now in part-time or non-tenure positions. The task force calls on the MEA to actively organize part-time faculty in unorganized institutions and those colleges where the full-time faculty will support the organizing efforts of their non-union colleagues.

The task force recommends that the MEA lobby the state legislature to pass bills and funding that give state colleges and universities incentives to hire more full-time faculty, noting that creating more full-time teaching positions is an educational quality issue.

The task force also recommends local Associations bargain salaries for part-timers that are indexed to full-time faculty salaries.

Campus Activities
The California State University Board of Trustees has once more circumvented the collective bargaining process with the California Faculty Association and unilaterally imposed salary and other working conditions for the state universities' 20,000 faculty for the second time in as many negotiations.

The CSU Trustees took this action, despite a recommendation from a neutral factfinder that could have served as the basis of a settlement of the negotiations

Find out more at www.calfac.org.

Rosie Webb Joels, president of the United Faculty of Florida, is this year's winner of the Virginia Hamilton Essay Award for an outstanding publication in the field of multicultural literature for youth. Her article, "Weaving World Understanding: The Importance of Translations in International Children's Literature," appeared in 1999 in Children's Literature. The award honors Virginia Hamilton, the first Black American to win the Newbery Award for children's literature.

Contracts
After a solid year of negotiations, the faculty at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale have ratified a new two-year contract providing an 11 percent salary increase and shoring up the faculty's role in shared governance.

"We didn't get everything we wanted," notes Southern Illinois University Faculty Association president Morteza Daneshdoost. "But the contract does solidify gains we've made in the past and breaks some new ground."

Among the breakthroughs: An agreement that arbitrary and capricious merit pay decisions can be resolved through the contract's grievance and arbitration procedure.

The contract also provides, for the first time, clear, objective criteria for salary equity adjustments and strengthens the faculty role in tenure, promotion, and merit pay decision making at the department level.

In addition, the university has agreed in a side letter to a procedure for faculty evaluation of administrators.

A crucial issue for SIUC faculty—the preservation of faculty lines—will be addressed by a committee. The university has agreed for the duration of this contract to not reduce college funding to pay for salary increases.

For details on the settlement visit www.siucfa.org.

The University of Nebraska at Kearney Faculty Association, an NEA higher education affiliate, has reached agreement with the university on a new two-year agreement that increases the faculty salary pool by 6.87 percent each year.

Included in the pact were increases in promotion pay, the merit pool, a one-time payment of $350 to cover increased health insurance costs, and money to address salary inequities.

Also in Nebraska, the Nebraska State College Education Association and the state colleges have agreed to a new two-year contract with salary increases of 5.5 percent across the board each year of the contract.

The agreement includes increased funding for health insurance, pay for developing Internet classes, and a commitment to study and fund gender equity salary adjustments.