Advocate Online

NEA Affiliates in Action

Organizing
The University of District Columbia Faculty Association, the NEA local at UDC, has joined the AFL-CIO, the Maryland State & District of Columbia AFL-CIO, and the Metro Washington Labor Council as of April 16.

Last year, the AFL-CIO and NEA approved a groundbreaking deal allowing for local affiliates of the NEA to affiliate directly with the AFL-CIO. The UDC Faculty Association is among the first to receive such a certificate of AFL-CIO affiliation.

Blue Mountain Community College in Oregon must pay back wages to six instructors after an arbitrator decided a grievance in favor of the college faculty association.

The dispute centered on the definition of a “contact hour,” the amount of teaching time that equals an hour of work. At issue was the fact that the college unilaterally increased the workload of the faculty members teaching at a correctional institution by lengthening their contact hours to 60 minutes from 50.

Campus Activities
Two tenured university professors accused of flouting a state ethics law have filed a lawsuit to reverse a decision that threatens their jobs. At issue is an ethics training program that, says the state, they completed too quickly.

In September, mathematics professors Marvin Zeman, president of Southern Illinois University–Carbondale Faculty Association, and Walter Wallis passed the 10-question quiz and received certificates from the Illinois Executive Inspector General stating they had successfully completed the training. In November, they were notified by the state that their certificates were invalid because the training program was completed too quickly. The pair was ordered to complete an additional training program for non-compliant employees and sign a new certification form. Failing to comply could lead to discipline, including possible termination.

“The lawsuit is intended to stop the state from arbitrarily imposing rules on our members and all state employees,” said Zeman.

Contracts
The California Faculty Association and the California State University administration reached a tentative contract agreement in early April, narrowly averting a strike. The pact, which was based on a fact-finder’s recommendations, came after nearly two years of negotiations, and includes agreements on all the key issues related to the negotiations, including a salary increase of nearly 25 percent over the life of the four-year contract.

The union’s Board of Directors voted unanimously to postpone rolling walkouts pending a ratification vote later this month. Earlier, an overwhelming majority of the union’s members voted to authorize a strike if there was no settlement. If the tentative agreement is ratified by the CFA membership, it will go to the CSU Board of Trustees for approval.

“We believe that the tentative agreement will be good for the CSU, good for our students, good for the faculty,” said CFA President John Travis. “Through this agreement faculty will make real progress toward closing the pay gap between us and our colleagues in other states and it, therefore, will help the CSU retain and attract quality faculty.” Details of the agreement are at www.calfac.org.

Faculty at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC) will receive better pay and more input on promotion and tenure decisions under a new contract between the the SIUC Faculty Association and the university.

SIUC Faculty Association President Marvin Zeman called the contract, which took eight months to negotiate, historic because, for the first time in the 10 years since the Faculty Association started bargaining with SIUC, agreement was reached in less than a year of negotiations.

“Administration and faculty need to work together as a university community to bring SIUC back to its proper place as one of the nation’s great universities,” said Zeman.

The faculty association ratified the agreement in March and the Board of Trustees on April 12. Find out more about the SIUC faculty association at www.siucfa.org.