NEA Affiliates in Action

Organizing
Nearly 90 percent of the continuing-education faculty at the University of Massachusetts-Boston have voted to join the Faculty Staff Union, an NEA higher ed affiliate currently representing full-time faculty at UMass-Boston.

The new unit has about 400 members. The Faculty Staff Union and its sister union, the Massachusetts Society of Professors, had previously won voluntary recognition for 180 regular faculty members who teach in the continuing-education program.

The part-time faculty at Blue Mountain Community College in Eastern Oregon has voted by a 94 percent margin to join colleagues at a number of Oregon colleges who are already represented by NEA-affiliated faculty unions.

Next fall, part-time and full-time faculty at the college will vote on merging their two organizations. If the merger goes through, the new unit will be the largest community college Association local in central/eastern Oregon.

Campus Activities
The California Faculty Association collected more than 2,000 signatures on petitions of support at the NEA Representative Assembly in Los Angeles this summer in its efforts to promote quality public higher education and win a fair contract. The Association represents faculty, coaches, and librarians at the 22 campuses of the California State University.

The petitions being circulated to university staff, students, labor and community leaders, as well as NEA delegates, "are a way to communicate with supporters about the crisis facing public higher education," says CFA President Susan Meisenhelder.

The Association's bargaining proposals include a demand for more tenure-track faculty, better job security for long-term lecturers, and closing the compensation gap between CSU and its peer institutions.

The Association has already declared impasse in negotiations and is planning a series of activities, including teach-ins in the fall. Visit www.calfac.org to find out more.

Contracts
The Long Beach (CA) Community College Association won its largest one-time salary increase in 17 years when Association members ratified an agreement with the Long Beach Community College District this summer for the 2000-01 and 2001-02 contract years.

Long Beach CCA President Gene Goss called the agreement a major victory for both the faculty and the college as a whole and praised Association negotiators for keeping onerous, so-called "productivity" items out of the agreement.

Faculty received an 8 percent increase effective January 1, 2001, the largest single increase since 1984, another 3 percent retroactive to July 1, 2000, and a 5.9 percent increase effective July 1, 2001, for a total of 13.9 percent over the life of the contract.

The Lansing Community College Faculty Association has reached a tentative agreement with the four-year college that will introduce a faculty salary schedule for the first time and create a Voluntary Employees Benefits Association to provide some health insurance benefits for adjunct faculty.

The proposed new contract also sets a cap of 25 students in most virtual classes. "Virtual classes, because the instructor is on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, quite simply require more work than traditional face-to-face classes," notes Lansing Faculty Association President Sally Pierce.

After two years of intensive bargaining, the University of Maine Professional Staff Association finally has a new contract. The total compensation in the pact, which covers 1999 to 2001, is 8 percent, including equity adjustments.

One-half percent of salaries is earmarked for an equity fund that will be distributed according to a plan derived from an outside consultant's review of salaries. The new contract also calls for a procedure to create a new, comprehensive salary structure.

"We fought for a fair salary increase, fair health insurance premiums, and real money for salary equity," notes UMPSA chief negotiator Bruce Littlefield.