Advocate Online

NEA Affiliates in Action

Organizing
Graduate Assistants United-IEA/NEA of Southern Illinois University Carbondale wound up a two-year organizing campaign September 13 with an impressive two-to-one margin of victory in its union representation election. More than 400 graduate assistants cast ballots, with 248 in favor of GA United and 112 opposed. The voting unit totaled 982 GAs and challenged ballots did not affect the outcome. The campus depends on its GAs for teaching and research, as well as work in non-academic areas. The bargaining unit will include up to 1,200 or more GAs per semester.

“This will improve the lot of the many grad employees who make this place work. That is why this is good for SIUC,” said GA United co-chair Marinus van Kuilenburg, a teaching assistant in political science.

The Illinois Education Association/NEA has represented tenure-line faculty at SIUC since 1996 and civil service staff since the 1970s. A year ago, the university’s full- and part-time non-tenure track faculty voted in their own IEA/NEA affiliated local.

Campus Activities
After a 60-day campaign by Florida’s public university faculty to convince the state’s legislators that they deserved a pay raise, the United Faculty of Florida (UFF) has emerged from the state’s recent legislative session with a significant victory.

Governor Jeb Bush’s state budget, submitted at the beginning of the session, provided no raises for university faculty and graduate assistants—even though the Florida Board of Governors requested raises.

But, at the end of the session, the governor signed a 2006-07 budget with a 3 percent across-the-board salary raise for faculty and graduate assistants effective October 1 that, coupled with salary increases gained through campus-based negotiations, brought total increases of from 4.1 to 5.0 percent in contracts for academic year 2006–07.

What changed? An aggressive and systematic campaign to contact legislators in their district offices—and to make clear constituents favored the raises—tipped the balance, says UFF president Tom Auxter.

Contracts
Down-to-the-wire negotiations averted a strike in September, when the Ferris State Faculty Association in Big Rapids, Michigan, reached agreement on a new contract with the university hours before the strike was to go into effect.

“This was no bargaining ploy,” said Association president Mike Ryan. “The faculty began preparing 14 months before the contract was to expire. We wanted a fair contract and were ready to strike to get it!”

The four-year contract provides base salary increases of 2 percent in the first year and 3 percent in each of the remaining three years—and for most faculty members, annual base salary market adjustments equal to an additional one percent of base salary, distributed by rank in each year of the contract. Those raises, plus substantial increases in the university’s contribution for health benefits, satisfied the faculty.

“It’s not what the faculty deserve,” said Ryan, “but, given the economic conditions in the state, it was the best we could do. It should have come easier. The faculty was disappointed that the president forced them to make the difficult decision to authorize a strike in order to gain a fair settlement.”

The Associated Faculties of the University of Maine System (AFUM), an NEA affiliate representing the state university full-time faculty, has reached a tentative agreement with the university on a new two-year contract that will provide an 8 percent salary increase over the life of the contract.

The new contract will also hold the line on health insurance costs, thanks in part to a grant from the NEA Collective Bargaining/Member Advocacy Department that enabled AFUM to bring in a consultant to review the University’s health care plan and its costs.

AFUM and its sister locals, the University of Maine Professional Staff Association (UMPSA) and the Associated COLT (Clerical, Office, Lab, and Technical) Staff of the University of Maine (ACSUM), have spent more than a year in contentious contract fights—including complaints to the Maine Labor Relations Board and rallies and demonstrations around the state—with the university. ACSUM is still without a contract.