Advocate Online

NEA Affiliates in Action

Organizing
A few dissatisfied faculty members at Southwestern College in California lost in their bid to take the Southwestern College Education Association out of the hands of the Community College Association, an affiliate of the California Teachers Association and NEA.

In a decertification election supervised by the state labor board, the faculty voted overwhelmingly to keep its affiliations. The Southwestern College Education Association CCA/CTA, which represents the college’s full-time and part-time faculty, received 431 votes, while the Independent Faculty Association, with no ties to a statewide organization, received 76 votes. Only 19 faculty members voted for no representation.

Graduate Assistants
Graduate Assistants United, an affiliate of the Illinois Education Association and NEA at the University of Southern Illinois-Carbondale representing more than 1,650 teaching, research, and administrative grad assistants, has reached agreement on a first contract with the university.

The graduate assistants will get salary increases of 13.5 percent over three years, retroactive to July 1 of this year.

The contract, which is based on peer comparables with other grad assistant contracts at the Universities of Massachusetts, Michigan, and Illinois, also includes binding arbitration and provides language protecting academic freedom for graduate assistants when performing their duties.

In addition, the pact ensures that students with half-time assistantships are limited to working 20 hours per week, a rule GAU president Ron Fields said was in place before but was not always enforced at the departmental level.

Contracts
The Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville Non-Tenure Track Faculty Association, an IEA-NEA affiliate representing 250 full-time and part-time non-tenure track faculty, has reached agreement with the university on its first contract.

The agreement provides a 3 percent increase in each year of a three-year contract for full-time instructors and a 9 percent increase over three years, configured differently, for part-time lecturers. The pact also addresses workload and job security issues that concerned faculty. “The contract will supercede department operating papers to ensure all members are treated fairly,” said Alan H. Shiller, a speech communication instructor and president of the Association.

Faculty at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, have reached agreement on a first contract after 18 months of negotiations. “We’re feeling excited. We’re feeling good,” said Kelly Wyatt, the faculty bargaining team chair. “I thought it was a real fair process.”

The contract includes an average pay increase of 8 percent for faculty, a continuation of current health and dental benefits, annual pay step increases of close to 2 percent, a professional development pool, and clear definitions of policies and procedures. The pact calls for negotiations on a successor agreement to begin by April 1, 2008. “The contract isn’t perfect,” Wyatt said, “but we’ll fix it in April.” UCC’s full-time faculty voted to join the Oregon Education Association in March 2006.

Also at Umpqua Community College, classified employees, who joined OEA/NEA within a month of the faculty, reached agreement on their first contract a few weeks following the faculty.

The classified employees will receive a 3 percent pay increase. In addition, part-time employees working more than 20 hours per week will receive sick pay and paid holidays for the first time.