Advocate Online

NEA Affiliates in Action

Organizing
Nontenure faculty at Illinois State University have voted overwhelmingly to become NEA’s newest higher education collective bargaining unit. By a vote of 131-79, full-time and part-time faculty said yes to unionization after a persuasive campaign by the Illinois Education Association.

Sharon MacDonald, an adjunct faculty member in the history department and a leader in the organizing drive, said, “We’re very pleased with the outcome. Our support held firm, in spite of a last-minute barrage of misinformation from union opponents. It didn’t sway our membership.”

ISU spokesman Jay Groves said the university is ready to work with the union. Issues raised by faculty members seeking union bargaining rights include salary, job security, a formal grievance procedure, and benefits.

As to the new union’s future, history professor MacDonald quoted Winston Churchill: “This is not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning.”

Contracts
Adjunct faculty at Keene State College in New Hampshire have a tentative agreement on their first contract. Final agreement awaits approval by the college’s Board of Trustees and ratification by the union membership in late June.

The pact, which comes after years of persistence through organizing campaigns and court cases lost and won, provides for an 18.8 percent salary increase over two-and-a-half years, with the raise retroactive to the beginning of the spring semester.

The new contract also provides for arbitration of contract disputes, just cause for dismissal within a semester, appeal rights for non-reappointment or non-renewal of contracts, and other benefits and protections.

The negotiating team was led by Keene State Adjunct Association President Ellen Moynihan, a longtime adjunct leader at the college, and enjoyed the support of the full-time faculty union, also an NEA affiliate, which provided a liaison to the adjunct negotiating committee.

Campus Activities
A massive effort by NEA, the American Federation of Teachers, and their joint affiliates, the United Faculty of Florida and the Florida Education Association, has restored collective bargaining to seven Florida State University system campuses formerly covered by a statewide bargaining agreement.

That statewide agreement was invalidated earlier this year when Florida Governor Jeb Bush and the state legislature devolved contract-negotiating authority to the state’s 11 individual four-year campuses.

An average of 66 percent of eligible faculty members on campuses across the state signed cards naming the United Faculty of Florida as their collective bargaining agent. So far, seven campuses have authenticated the cards and agreed to recognize the union.

Recognition at one other campus, Florida International University, is pending, and three campuses—the University of Florida, Florida State University, and the University of West Florida—have called for the state labor board to conduct secret ballot elections. The first of these elections will take place by mail at the University of West Florida this summer.

More than 5,000 Massachusetts public higher education advocates rallied in front of the State House in Boston, April 29, to demand that the legislature “Stand Up for Public Higher Education.”

The rally was sponsored by Higher Ed Unions United, a coalition that supports adequate funding for public colleges and universities, and calls on the governor and legislature to honor higher education collective bargaining agreements that the state agreed to and then refused to fund. The unions also oppose Governor Mitt Romney’s attempts to reorganize higher education in the state.

The coalition is made up of a number of unions, including the higher education affiliates of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, which represent faculty and staff at the state’s community colleges; four-year comprehensive institutions; and the four campuses of the University of Massachusetts.

Speakers at the rally included University Staff Association President Donna Johnson, who exhorted legislators to “support public higher education.”