NEA Affiliates in Action

Organizing
After a 13-day strike, the University of Hawaii Professional Assembly and the State of Hawaii reached a tentative settlement. Faculty returned to work April 18th, pending ratification of the agreement.

The settlement includes a flat dollar amount of $2,325 for all faculty the first year of the settlement and a 6 percent across-the-board increase in the second year, plus 1 percent in each year of the contract for merit increases based on the existing contractual procedures.

In addition, the agreement includes pay increases for lecturers and addresses workload issues at the state's community colleges—two of the most contentious issues in the negotiations—provides compensation for overload work necessary to complete the semester, and provides new, innovative language on intellectual property rights.

The strike, the second and longest in university history, had the support of 90 percent of the faculty. Visit www.uhpa.org for more on the strike and the settlement.

Contracts
Clerical and technical employees at the University of Maine have won another major contract victory in their battle for fair treatment.

Building on a landmark contract settlement in 1998 that paved the way for a fairer pension plan, the Associated COLT Employees of the University of Maine, an NEA higher education affiliate representing clerical, office, lab, and technical workers at the university, has won pension parity.

As of July 1, 2001, the university pension contribution to an employee's TIAA-CREF account will reach 6 percent, with an additional employer match of employee contributions of up to 4 percent that could bring the employer contribution to 10 percent.

"We sent letters to the university community, the press, the legislature. We let them know the university could afford what we were asking for," notes Susan Robinson, an administrative assistant at the University of Southern Maine-Portland. "The university community backed up our demands."

Campus Activities
The Florida legislature's decision to dissolve the state university system's Board of Regents in favor of separate boards on the state's 11 campuses means collective bargaining by the United Faculty of Florida on behalf on state university faculty may well be occurring in a new and decentralized arena.

To prepare for the new bargaining climate, the UFF, a joint affiliate of NEA and the AFT, has launched a comprehensive strategic planning project.

The plan includes gathering data on concerns, perceptions, and expectations of faculty across the state, building the UFF presence on each of the state's campuses, and strengthening the relationships between the union and the campus faculty senates.

Faculty at Minnesota's community and technical colleges have joined forces in the Minnesota State College Faculty, a new affiliate of NEA and Education Minnesota representing two-year faculty in the Minnesota State College and University system.

The new union, with about 4,000 members at the 45 two-year campuses in Minnesota, was formed by a merger of the Minnesota Community College Faculty Association and United Technical College Educators.

Consolidating the unions strengthens the hand of faculty in the legislature and at the bargaining table, union leaders said.

The new organization has already begun work in the state legislature to create a single bargaining unit. Also well under way: preparations for contract negotiations that will create a single contract for the faculty.

Well over 100 women faculty members of the California Faculty Association, plus CFA staff, friends from other unions, and two state legislators, attended the first-ever CFA statewide women's conference in March.

The activists generated dozens of ideas for an action agenda to promote equity and supportive policies in the California State Universities for faculty members and their families.

Organizers plan to sift through the recommendations and ideas produced in each of the 11 conference workshops to develop a draft "Agenda for Change."