Advocate Online

NEA Affiliates in Action

Organizing
A massive organizing effort throughout the Florida State University system by the United Faculty of Florida (UFF), a joint NEA-AFT affiliate, has produced the largest membership increases in the union’s history.

Faced with an attempt by the governor and state legislature to dissolve the statewide collective bargaining agreement and force the United Faculty of Florida to negotiate separate contracts on each campus—in Florida’s tough “right-to-work” environment—Florida’s faculty responded by flocking to the UFF in record numbers.

Now that the governor’s attempt to dismantle the state’s higher education system has been curtailed by Florida voters in the November elections, it’s no longer clear how bargaining will take place in the state. But UFF is prepared for any eventuality.

“With the success of the organizing campaign, we’re in the catbird seat,” said UFF Executive Director Llona Geiger. “Want to bargain locally? Fine. Want to bargain statewide? Fine. We have majority status.”

Contracts
The Southern Illinois University at Carbondale Faculty Association has voted to authorize the Association president to call a strike on February 3, 2003—or at an earlier date set by the Departmental Representative Council—if there is no agreement on a new contract. The Association took the strike vote action after months of unproductive negotiations with the university.

James Kelly, chair of the Public Relations Committee, said faculty members don’t want to strike but “have to have a fair contract.” SIUC faculty pay is 28 percent below that of peer institutions—though salary is not the only issue in dispute.

Program elimination, faculty workload, layoffs, and shared governance are some of the issues the union wants addressed. The Association is asking for a three-year pact with raises totaling 21 percent, which would not only benefit current faculty, says the union, but help attract highly qualified new faculty.

Association members have been working without a contract—or raise—since July 1.

Campus Activities
After a four-year court battle, Pikes Peak Community College in Colorado has settled a lawsuit brought by NEA higher ed member Katherine S. Sturdevant, who charged that college officials retaliated against her for her activities as president of the Pikes Peak Community College Faculty Association, an NEA affiliate.

In that capacity, she had led a survey-style evaluation of top administrators. She also claimed that the administrators retaliated against her for supporting a colleague who satirized ethnic-studies programs.

The agreement reinstates Sturdevant as the history department’s chairwoman and guarantees her three years of employment as such and as a faculty mentor. The college also agreed to give her a lump-sum payment of $75,000 and a merit raise of $1,371 a year. Pikes Peak also agreed to fund Sturdevant’s attendance at a retreat in California next year for heads of academic departments.

California Governor Gray Davis has signed the California Faculty Association’s (CFA) Lecturers’ Retirement Bill, AB2549 into law. The measure allows CFA to negotiate CalPERS retirement benefits for lecturers teaching at least six units. Previously, the law excluded retirement for many lecturers from the collective bargaining process.

"The provisions of AB2549, once bargained, will further improve working conditions of lecturers who are more than half of the faculty in the California state universities,” said Elizabeth Hoffman, CSU Long Beach lecturer and CFA associate vice president for lecturers.

Also in California, a finance professor known for his tough course requirements has won a legal battle against California State University at Chico, which had demoted him because he wouldn’t change his teaching style.

The Third Appellate District of the California Court of Appeal found that the business school dean could not order the professor to develop an “improvement plan.” The CFA collective bargaining agreement allows for reviews of tenured professors that include “suggestions for improvement,” the court said, “but not commands or orders.”