NEA Affiliates in Action

Negotiations heat up in California as faculty await a factfinder's report.

California State University has served notification of their intent to terminate a contract extension the parties agreed to abide by during negotiations. The university's move came in December as factfinding hearings began.

After January 25, 1999, if there is no settlement between the parties on the basis of the factfinder's report, the CSU has the right to impose their own terms and conditions on the faculty. At that time also, the California Faculty Association has the right to engage in concerted activity, including a strike.

After almost two years of negotiations, Lansing Community College faculty vote in January on a new contract. The package reduces workdays from 211 to 190 and increases salary by 7½ percent over four years. Part-time faculty will get salary increases of 13 percent over 4 years.

The college withdrew a plan for a two-tier wage system for some faculty.

Illinois Education Association higher education director Hazel Loucks has been appointed the state's first deputy governor for education by incoming Governor George Ryan.

Loucks, formerly on the faculty of the College of Education at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, directed the successful unionization campaign there in 1996, as well as a recent union election win for adjunct faculty at Columbia College in Chicago. She is a former teacher and principal and the author of numerous works on effective teaching.

The United Faculty of Florida has undertaken a study of the implications of the widespread use of part-time and adjunct faculty on the role and programs of academic unions.

UFF, with the help of the NEA Office of Higher Education, will survey and interview bargaining unit members at Florida Gulf Coast University.

Florida Gulf Coast is the experimental "tenure-less" campus of the Florida State University System.

United Faculty of Florida members at Florida International University are providing support and encouragement as their colleagues at Miami-Dade Community College try to negotiate a first-time collective bargaining agreement with a recalcitrant Miami-Dade administration.

The college responded to the faculty's pro-union vote last year by disbanding the faculty senate and locking up their files. Since then, the college has denied the new union meeting space and use of campus mails and refused to meet with the Association bargaining team during the work week.

Despite these tactics, more than 70 percent of Miami-Dade's faculty have joined the faculty association.

UFF has provided meeting rooms and other logistical and moral support. UFF members have also acted as observers at negotiations. At one session, FIU chapter president Betty Morrow spoke about the productive relationship between the UFF and the FIU faculty senate.

Faculty at Illinois State University have taken the first steps to assess faculty interest in unionization there.

Campus organizers will begin shortly reaching out to their colleagues to determine the level of interest in pursuing affiliation with the Illinois Education Association, NEA's affiliate in the state.

The major faculty concern at Illinois State: The erosion of shared governance and the effect this has had on the quality of the academic program. You can offer encouragement at: www.iea-higher-ed-website.org/isufa

NEA New Hampshire is exploring the possibility of unionization for adjunct faculty at Keene State College, despite a decades-old state supreme court decision that classified adjuncts--some with many years of service--as not having a continuing employment relationship with the college.