NEA Affiliates in Action

Organizing
Michigan State University faculty members have begun looking into the feasibility of organizing a union, after the university proposed eliminating fully funded, health care benefits for the faculty.

Professors met with the Michigan Education Association recently and have formed a committee to gauge faculty interest in collective bargaining. Faculty are concerned about health care benefits and a number of other issues.

"The faculty is not going to be able to change things much until they organize as a bargaining unit," said John Van Dyken, higher education consultant at the Michigan Education Association. "If there's enough interest among the faculty, we'll mount a full-blown organizing campaign."
The MEA, an affiliate of NEA, represents four state university faculties in Michigan.

If the organizing campaign among the university's 3,000 tenured and tenure-track faculty is successful, the union would be the first faculty union in the Big Ten.

Contracts
The California Faculty Association has announced a tentative agreement on a new contract covering California State University's 19,000 faculty members.

The agreement reflects a major turnaround after almost a year of negotiations and a series of teach-ins this past fall, escalating in February to demonstrations and most recently, preparations for a strike vote.

Key elements of the new agreement include an end to a divisive merit pay plan CFA had battled against in the past three contract negotiations. The pact provides 4 percent in general salary increases and additional increases of nearly 8 percent in salary step increases.

In another breakthrough, CFA won increased job security for all lecturers and improved health insurance eligibility for half-time lecturers that will eventually add 2,500 to 3,000 part-timers to the health insurance rolls. Additionally, the state university has committed to conduct 1,200 searches for tenure-line faculty over the next year.

Campus Activities
The Massachusetts Society of Professors, NEA's higher education affiliate representing faculty at the university's flagship campus at Amherst, joined with students, university staff, grad assistants, and others to mount a massive campaign to fight budget cuts planned for higher education in the state.

Against the backdrop of campus-wide teach-ins and rallies in early March, upwards of 10,000 students, with the backing of more than 400 faculty and staff, wrote letters to hometown legislators to let them know what severe budget cuts are doing to the university.

In February, an administration-faculty union report showed a decline of 15 percent in tenured and tenure-track faculty between 1987 and 1999 as the result of successive budget cuts. The 15 percent decline may be duplicated in the next six months, the report noted, as nearly 100 tenured faculty opt for an early retirement program.

"This will constitute the biggest single decline in full-time faculty for any major institution for higher education at least since World War II," faculty union president Ronald Story told the student newspaper.

You can keep abreast of the campaign on the coalition Web page: www.saveumass.org.

The faculty at Victor Valley College in the high desert of Southern California not only has a new contract, it has a new college president, a new director of human resources, and 325 new part-time faculty members who will be affiliating with their chapter. How did they pull it off?

Working with the campus's staff union, the Association organized a political action program and won two seats on the college's Board of Trustees, creating a faculty-friendly majority.

"We very much attribute all this to the election," said Debby Blanchard, of the Victor Valley College Faculty Association. "It has really put a whole new face on our campus."

As a result of the new board majority, the Association obtained a new contract with a 6.44 percent raise. The new board has also terminated the president and given the faculty Association approval to fold the 300 part-time faculty into the Association.