Advocate Online

NEA Affiliates in Action

Organizing
Continuing a trend among Illinois's four-year public universities, Southern Illinois University Carbondale's non-tenure-track (NTT) faculty will soon vote on the question of union representation by NEA's higher ed affiliate, the Illinois Education Association. More than 500 faculty at the Carbondale campus stand ready to follow organized colleagues at Illinois State University and SIU Edwardsville who voted for union representation in 2003 and 2004.

Using interest-based bargaining, the Illinois State NTT Faculty Association bargained an excellent first contract bolstering job security and pay. SIUE NTT faculty began bargaining this spring, also using the interest-based approach to negotiations.

If successful in their organizing effort, the NTT faculty at SIUC will join 700 tenure/tenure-track faculty who have been represented by the SIUC Faculty Association-IEA/NEA since 1996.

In early May, a petition for an SIUC vote was submitted with well above the number of authorization cards required by the state for a union vote.

Campus Activities
After weeks of intense discussions, the California Faculty Association and the California State University (CSU) system have reached agreement on three memoranda of understanding on Year-Round Operations.

The memoranda cover working conditions and payment for summer school teaching for 2005 and provide for retroactive payments of more than $6 million in salaries to faculty members who taught summer classes in 2001, 2002, and 2003 on regular CSU campuses. For details, visit www.calfac.org.

The Texas Faculty Association (TFA) filed a lawsuit against Texas A&M University-Kingsville on behalf of a TFA member who was denied the right to grieve an annual evaluation from the chair of her academic department in 2003. The lawsuit asserts that the university violated the right to grieve under a state law that grants public employees the right "to present grievances concerning their wages, hours of employment, or conditions of work either individually or through a representative."

Contracts
After months of difficult negotiations, the United Faculty of Florida (UFF) chapter at Florida International University (FIU) has reached a memorandum of understanding with the university that provides a 4 percent across-the-board salary increase, effective last March, the largest increase FIU faculty and librarians have had in many years.

The memorandum also provides that members receiving promotions last year receive a 9 percent increase in their base salary retroactive to the first pay period of this academic year.

The agreement on salary was reached even though the FIU administration declared bargaining to be at an impasse on negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement. According to UFF, the impasse in this, the first locally bargained agreement at FIU following the break-up of the state university system last year, revolves around the university's attempt to gut the agreement.

"The issues are much larger than the money on the table," said United Faculty of Florida chapter President Alan Gummerson. "The union is in the midst of a fight to defend rights and protections that have been in the state-wide collective bargaining agreement for nearly 30 years and that the university wants to remove from the contract."

Members of the Massachusetts Community College Council (MCCC), NEA's affiliate representing faculty and professional staff in the state's 15 community colleges, continue to work without a contract and without a pay raise for the third year in a row.

Employees at other public colleges and universities in the state received a retroactive pay raise after the legislature overrode a veto by Republican Governor Mitt Romney of nearly $30 million in higher education raises. But the community colleges were dropped from the override. The contract in question was for 2002–03 and had been negotiated and agreed upon by the union and the state Board of Higher Education.

Members of MCCC began a "work-to-rule" action in the fall—the only collective action that's legal in the state—and have also demonstrated, picketed, rallied, and lobbied in support of their contract.