Advocate Online

NEA Affiliates in Action

Organizing
Graduate assistants at Southern Illinois University Carbondale will vote in September on whether they wish to be represented for the purposes of collective bargaining by Graduate Assistants United, an affiliate of the Illinois Education Association (IEA)-NEA.

GA United filed a petition for the union representation election back in April, hoping for an election during the spring semester, but the university stalled the process, claiming that the bargaining unit sought by GA United—graduate assistants, teaching assistants, and research assistants—was too broad. The university argued that some of those included in the petition were students and didn’t qualify for collective bargaining.

Over the summer, GA United is working with the IEA-NEA to keep as many graduate assistants in the unit as possible. The 1,500 GAs would join three IEA-NEA affiliates already at SIUC—tenure/tenure track and non-tenure track faculty, and civil service.

More information about GA United and the election can be found at www.GAUnited.org.

Campus Activities
After almost a year of grievance and arbitration hearings, Youngstown State University (YSU) has been ordered by an arbitrator to reinstate Christine Domhoff, president of the YSU Association of Classified Employees (ACE), OEA-NEA, and an administrative assistant at the college, until her position was eliminated during a contract battle that led to a strike at the university in August last year.

The university claimed Domhoff’s position was eliminated when the external funding for the program she worked in was cut. Domhoff and the union claimed her position was internally funded, so she was protected by the collective bargaining agreement. The arbitrator agreed with the union. Domhoff has worked at YSU since 1982.

A labor-management review panel appointed by the university president following the strike recommended in January that Domhoff be reinstated as a step toward improving labor relations, but the university rejected that recommendation. YSU ACE represents over 400 university staff members.

Contracts
Faculty members at Eastern Washington University have reached agreement with the university administration on their first contract settlement since voting to unionize under the state’s new collective bargaining law passed in 2002.

The new contract provides full-and part-time faculty members with a 10.5 percent salary increase over two years and other compensation improvements. It also addresses faculty workload concerns.

United Faculty of Washington State is affiliated with the Washington Education Association; AFT Washington; the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO; and the National Education Association.

Professional staff in the University of Maine system have ratified a new contract after months of campaigning for fair treatment.

Members of the Universities of Maine Professional Staff Association (UMPSA), an NEA affiliate representing academic staff, and their supporters conducted rallies, spoke at Board of Trustees meetings, and worked on legislative action to get the university more money for staff compensation.

UMPSA members will receive a 3.5 percent increase for fiscal year 2005–06 and a 3.5 percent increase for fiscal year 2006–07, with some increased premiums for healthcare insurance. The agreement also preserves a lump-sum retirement benefit and severance pay for soft-money employees.

Adjunct faculty at Prairie State College, a two-year institution in Chicago Heights, Illinois, have reached agreement on a first-ever collective bargaining agreement that will provide three 6-percent salary increases over the next three years for faculty teaching credit-bearing undergraduate courses, as well as instructors teaching non-credit courses in the college’s adult education program.

The contract between the Prairie State College Adjunct Instructors United, part of the Illinois Education Association, an affiliate of the National Education Association, and the Prairie State College Board of Trustees runs from 2006–07 to 2009–10, with a portion of the raises retroactive to January 2006.