Advocate Online

NEA Affiliates in Action

Organizing
Two more part-time community college faculties in Illinois have voted for collective bargaining with NEA and the Illinois Education Association (IEA). In March, the Harper College Adjunct Faculty Association, IEA/NEA, was elected the collective bargaining representative for adjunct faculty at William Rainey Harper College in Palatine, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. The new union won the representation election by a vote of 75 for the union to 16 for no union.

On the heels of the victory at Harper College, credit and non-credit adjunct faculty at Triton College in River Grove, Illinois, another Chicago suburb, voted 89-68 to be represented by the Triton College Adjunct Faculty Association.

Next on the agenda: Southern Illinois University Edwardsville has dropped its objections and agreed to a fall vote on union representation for its non-tenure-track faculty. Approximately 80 instructors and 250 lecturers will vote together on whether they will be represented for collective bargaining by IEA/NEA.

Campus Activities
An arbitrator has ruled in favor of the Southern Illinois University-Carbondale (SUIC) Faculty Association, finding that the dean of the library violated both the library’s operating papers and the university’s collective bargaining agreement that require merit evaluations to be based on merit criteria.

The dean’s decision to reduce a merit pay increase, the arbitrator noted, was unfair, arbitrary, and discriminatory.

The SIUC faculty collective bargaining agreement requires that merit pay criteria and guidelines listed in departmental operating papers be followed and provides for arbitrators to assess penalties if they are not.

Faculty members at Corning Community College became the final group of professors in the 64-college State University of New York higher education system to vote to join a union, when they voted this winter to be represented by the Professional Educators of Corning Community College, an affiliate of NEA/NY, in bargaining with the college.

Contracts
The University of Hawaii Professional Assembly (UHPA) reached a six-year agreement with the University of Hawaii in April, narrowly avoiding what would have been the union’s second strike in as many contracts.

UHPA won a series of salary increases between July 1, 2003, and July 1, 2009, that will result in a compounded salary increase of 34.8 percent over the life of the contract. In addition, the new contract guarantees that the state will pay health insurance premiums for faculty at the highest rate of reimbursement allowed for state employees.

Adjunct faculty at the City Colleges of Chicago, members of the City Colleges Contingent Labor Organizing Committee, an affiliate of NEA and the Illinois Education Association, have ratified and signed their first contract with the community colleges. The new pact provides salary increases of between 20 and 40 percent, from a minimum of $100 per contract hour up to $175 per contract hour for some instructors, and a new salary step system. The contract also provides for one day of excused absence a semester and strong seniority language that can protect a part-timer’s job for up to two years. The new contract is accessible online at www.cccloc.org.

After more than a year of contentious negotiations, the board of trustees of the Community College of Beaver County, Pennsylvania, and the faculty and staff unions have approved new contracts for the school’s faculty and support staff.

The four-year faculty contract calls for pay raises of $1,600 in the first year and $1,700, $1,800, and $1,900 in following years. Starting salaries for entry-level faculty were raised from $28,000 to $35,000 and per-credit pay from $495 to $700 in the contract’s final year.

The four-year support staff contract includes pay increases of 45 cents an hour in each year and a move to the same health insurance plan as the faculty. Both faculty and staff will contribute to the premium cost for health care coverage, 5 percent by the end of the contract for faculty and 2.5 percent for staff.