NEA Affiliates in Action

Organizing
The New York regional office of the National Labor Relations Board has denied the teaching faculty at the Sage Colleges in Albany legal protection in its efforts to create a faculty union.

The Region 3 Director of the NLRB, relying on a 1980 U.S. Supreme Court decision involving Yeshiva University, ruled that the faculty at the Sage Colleges are managerial and so ineligible to petition the board for a secret ballot union vote.

The Sage Faculty Association, an NEA affiliate, is appealing the ruling, while at the same time taking steps to strengthen the SFA/NEA relationship around issues other than collective bargaining.

Three staff units at New Jersey's Gloucester County College voted in September to affiliate with the New Jersey Education Association.

The three units—clerical, facilities, and academic professionals—voted 57-1 in favor of affiliation.

Contracts
Full-time faculty at West Hills Community College in Coalinga, California have tentatively agreed to a new three-year contract that will bring them salary increases totalling nearly 25 percent over three years.

"The membership mobilized," is how WHCCFA President Faye Mendenhal explains the phenomenal turn around for the small San Joaquin Valley community college faculty that had been 69th out of 71 California community colleges in salary. "We kept our members and the entire community informed all the way," notes Mendenhal. "That's what made the difference this time."

Roger Williams University faculty have reached agreement on a new contract that provides a 4.5 across the board salary increase in each year of a three-year contract. The agreement also increases professional development/travel funds, provides a reduction in course load for faculty teaching graduate courses or engaging in research, and improves intellectual property rights.

Campus Activities
The California Faculty Association is sponsoring a series of teach-ins October 16-25 on all 22 California State University campuses. CFA, the NEA higher ed affiliate representing 22,000 full and part-time professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors, department chairs, and coaches in the university system, is concerned about increasing class sizes, a declining proportion of permanent faculty, and non-competitive salaries for professors.

The "Teach CSU" events have the support of state legislators, higher education experts, and other state political and community leaders.

"CSU administrators have chosen to pick a fight with the faculty, when they should be joining with us to ensure that record numbers of students will receive a quality college education," said CFA President Susan Meisenhelder, an English professor at CSU- San Bernardino.

The CFA and the administration have been deadlocked in contract negotiations over these issues since the beginning of the year.

Nearly 200 female professors in the University of Maine system are getting pay raises thanks to the efforts of the Associated Faculties of the University of Maine, an NEA affiliate, and the university.

A statistical analysis created as part of the 1999 collective-bargaining agreement turned up salary inequities between male and female professors. Of 451 female professors in the seven-campus system, 199 of them were found to be underpaid. The underpaid women will get immediate raises that average about $2,000 a year, although some will receive increases as high as $6,000.

The California Faculty Association also recently settled a federal lawsuit requiring the San Francisco State University to make significant improvements in disability access.

The settlement, approved by the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, requires the university administration to hire a coordinator of disabled programs, submit a plan for major accessibility improvements, and carry out those improvements over the next seven years.