Advocate Online

NEA Affiliates in Action

Organizing
Faculty members at Evergreen State College in Washington State voted in October for union representation by the United Faculty of Evergreen (UFE), a chapter of the United Faculty of Washington State (UFWS). The vote in favor of unionization was 113 to 91, with more than 80 percent of the eligible faculty voting. This was the fourth election in the state college and university system since passage of a collective bargaining law in 2002.

The new chapter, comprising full- and part-time faculty, joins Central, Eastern, and Western Washington universities in choosing UFWS representation. UFWS, an affiliate of AFT Washington, the Washington Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and the NEA, represents nearly 2,200 instructors, who educate 34,000 students.

“UFE ran a positive campaign based on Evergreen traditions of collaborative discussion, debate, and deliberation, and we pledge to continue listening and working with all our colleagues,” says Jose Gomez, who teaches constitutional law at the college.

Campus Activities
Two members of the United Faculty of Florida, the NEA-AFT higher education affiliate in that state were elected to the Florida House of Representatives in the November 2006 elections with the strong support of their colleagues in UFF.

Bill Heller, a professor of education and a former dean at the University of South Florida, and Keith Fitzgerald, an associate professor of political science at New College of Florida in Sarasota, were elected to seats from the St. Petersburg and Sarasota areas, respectively. Both candidates ran as Democrats and highlighted the state’s crisis in funding and quality affecting higher education, among other issues.

Also in Florida, a UFF member from Broward Community College in Fort Lauderdale, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, who was elected with UFF support to both the Florida House and the Florida Senate in past elections, was re-elected by voters in Florida’s 20th Congressional District to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Contracts
Faculty at Hartnell College in Salinas, California, finally have a new contract, though it took a four-day strike to get it. After three years without a salary raise—even as the trustees gave their college president an 83 percent boost—the Hartnell College Faculty Association had enough. Members of the Hartnell College Faculty Association walked off the job on October 20 in California’s first community college strike since 1980.

But with support from their students, the Salinas community, and NEA colleagues in the Community College Associations (CCA) the California Teachers Association and the California Faculty Association, they were back at work four days later with an agreement that provides a 23 percent increase in salary and benefits from 2003 through 2007.

“There was a lot of solidarity out there and I think it did make a difference,” said HCFA President Christine Svendsen. “A win for one is a win for all and a loss for one is a tremendous loss for all.”

With collective bargaining between the California Faculty Association and the California State University system at formal impasse and job actions looming, mediation mandated by state public employee law began Nov. 8.

While the negotiators talk, CFA’s Stop the Ripoffs campaign will give Chancellor Charles Reed no respite until he responds to the union’s demand that the university negotiate fairly and in good faith with CSU’s faculty and student-services professionals.

On November 15, more than 1500 CFA members and supporters, including a large contingent of students, gathered at a CSU Board of Trustees meeting at Chancellor Charles Reed’s office in Long Beach to protest increases in student fees and the stalled contract talks.

CFA members and students were also protesting executive pay policies of Reed and the Trustees. “I am here because the CSU administration is taking us in the wrong direction,” said Jennifer Faust, a philosophy professor at CSU Los Angeles.

Visit www.csicsu.org/content/ to support CFA and keep abreast of the Stop the Rip Offs campaign.