Advocate Online

NEA Affiliates in Action

Organizing
The faculty at Florida State University have voted 736 to 33 to certify the United Faculty of Florida, an affiliate of the Florida Education Association, AFT/NEA, as the bargaining agent to represent professors and professional employees in collective bargaining. The vote in the unit of 1,532 represented a 96 percent vote for the union against a 4 percent vote for no agent.

The victory at FSU brings to 10 the number of institutions in the 11-campus public university system that have affirmed the faculty’s desire to be represented by UFF.

The union has been representing the employees for years, but was effectively decertified as a result of Governor Jeb Bush’s reorganization of the state’s higher education system last year.

Since then, eight faculty chapters have successfully sought voluntary recognition from their university boards of trustees and two more have won elections. The only remaining unit election yet to be held is at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

Contracts
Members of the University of the District of Columbia (UDC) Faculty Association, an NEA affiliate, have ratified their first new contract since 1993. Because of the District of Columbia’s fiscal crisis in the mid-90s, the subsequent reorganization of the university, and massive layoffs of faculty members, UDC’s faculty has worked without a contract since 1993 and without a cost-of-living adjustment since 1998.

The new contract provides salary increases of nearly 10 percent and added protection against firings and layoffs. Union members had previously rejected a contract offer that would have created a new tenure system that denied tenure to assistant professors, placing them on a three-year probation during which they could be fired without the right of appeal to the grievance process.

The contract ratified by the faculty includes assistant professors in the new tenure system and guarantees the continuation of existing job protection to current teachers who are ineligible for tenure.

Campus Activities
The Blue Mountain Faculty Association of Pendleton, Oregon, has come up a big winner in its 16-month negotiations war with the college and its recalcitrant president Travis Kirkland.

Beating back the president’s attempts to freeze faculty salaries, cut benefits, and eliminate workload language, the Association, which represents both full- and part-time faculty, won salary and benefits increases and preserved workload and job security protections in the contract for full-timers.

In addition, part-timers won salary increases of up to 70 percent in some cases, and, for the first time, part-timers will be paid for office hours. There are also new provisions for sick, emergency, and personal leave. The college proposal would have meant a nearly 10 percent reduction in compensation.

"The faculty won with its solidarity and major community organizing support,” said Oregon Education Association UniServ Consultant Doc Dengenis.

An arbitrator in California has ruled the California State University (CSU) system violated multiple sections of its collective bargaining agreement with the California Faculty Association (CFA) in its year round operations (YRO) during 2001, 2002, and 2003.

The decision means that virtually all of the thousands of faculty members employed in YRO programs during those years stand to receive salary, workload, service credit, and sick leave awards. CSU’s YRO programs are intended to make many state campuses year round operations to help students graduate faster.

CFA President John Travis said of the ruling, “We are very pleased that the arbitrator supported the faculty’s argument that if the summer term is to be considered a regular state-supported term of instruction, the collective bargaining agreement should apply to the work of the faculty. This is an important ruling for us today, and for the future.”

The arbitration ruling grew from a grievance filed by CFA in 2001 when CSU implemented terms and conditions of employment for year round operations on most CSU campuses without completing negotiations on the new work assignments with CFA.