NEA Affiliates in Action

Support for the California Faculty Association's campaign for a fair contract is growing.

NEA Vice President Reg Weaver recently went before the system's Board of Trustees to urge a settlement. Also showing support for the faculty union: Lois Tinson, president of the California Teachers Association and state AFL-CIO's secretary-treasurer Art Pulaski.

In addition, academic senates at 19 of the California State University campuses have passed resolutions of support for the union in negotiations.

The Massachusetts State College Association continues to resist efforts by the state's Board of Higher Education to dismantle their collective bargaining agreement.

MSCA President Bill Murphy told the Board recently that neither the union nor the faculty is the problem.

"We are willing and able to work with this Board to make the state colleges the best," Murphy said. "But this can't be done by scuttling the contract."

The Wisconsin Education Association has filed suit against North Central Technical College after the college changed the credentials requirements for general education faculty at the college. The move violated the Association contract.

The college maintains that the college's accrediting agency "imposed" the change and refused to process the grievance filed by the faculty.

The union is pointing out that the college is required to negotiate the change.

The Maine Technical College Faculty Association, one of five NEA higher ed affiliates in the state, and the technical college system are engaged in a collaborative effort that aims to restructure salaries and give the faculty a greater role in determining how decisions at the college are made.

"Essentially, the two parties are attempting to act as partners in decision making," notes Association President Ron LaRochelle.

The full- and part-time faculty at Goddard College in Vermont have become the first independent college faculty in years to vote for unionization in a National Labor Relations Board supervised election. The faculty voted 46-14 for representation by NEA's Vermont affiliate.

The college's Board of Trustees--respecting the faculty's decision to seek a union--did not invoke the 1980 U.S. Supreme Court Yeshiva University decision.

That decision allows many private colleges to legally avoid bargaining with faculty unions.

More than 50 adjunct faculty from union and nonunion campuses across Oregon met recently to discuss adjunct concerns and develop strategies for coping with those concerns.

Representatives from NEA- and AFT-affiliated campuses shared bargaining success stories and discussed bargaining-related issues.

Those attending then engaged in interactive discussions around the basic questions that confront faculty on all campuses, questions such as: Does the "finite campus pie" necessarily have to pit full-timers against part-timers?

Conference organizers are compiling what was discussed into issues for bargaining, legislative action, and organizing. They'll be seeking a voice for part-timers in the legislature and a move toward organizing the unorganized.

Nearly 50 percent of the graduate teaching assistants at the University of Minnesota have already signed cards supporting a union drive by Education Minnesota. The push for a grad assistants union continues with more card signing in January.

Education Minnesota is the new association of educators created by the merger of the state's NEA and American Federation of Teachers affiliates.