NEA Affiliates in Action

Organizing activities by adjunct faculty are underway at a number of Chicago campuses, following a precedent-setting contract settlement earlier this year at the city's Columbia College.

At Roosevelt University, the International Academy of Merchandising and Design, and Logan Community College part-timers have joined an NEA- supported, city-wide campaign to raise standards for adjunct faculty.

Graduate student teaching and research assistants at the University of Minnesota have turned down union representation by Education Minnesota, the joint NEA-AFT affiliate in the state.

Charges by the administration that unionization would create an adversarial relationship, coupled with a formidable campaign by some anti-union grad students, produced enough votes to defeat the union.

Details at: www.tc.umn.edu/~gradsoc/.

The College of DuPage Faculty Association in Illinois has helped elect an educator and Illinois Education Association Board of Director member to the college's Board of Trustees.

The Faculty Association's political action committee worked with Illinois Education Association K-12 locals to endorse pro-education candidates and get out the vote.

The college's Board of Trustees was trying to micromanage the college, says DuPage's Chuck Ellenbaum: "It was time for a change."

A new partnership between the California Teachers Association and OnlineLearning.net, the leading online supplier of continuing higher education courses, will provide CTA members 24-hour a day access to more than 100 continuing higher education courses developed by UCLA Extension. For more information visit: www.cta.org.

A statewide campaign of campus activism has produced a new tentative agreement between the California Faculty Association and the 22-campus California State University system.

The pact rescinds a contract imposed by the university after the CSU faculty rejected an earlier agreement because of concerns about being left out of university decision making.

CFA leaders attribute the turn around in negotiations to an intensive campaign for a fair contract at the campus level. The proposed contract addresses a number of issues raised by CFA and creates a merit pay system that makes faculty full partners. In addition, the contract provides a new level of job security for 3,000 lecturers.

"This is the first step, and a giant step, in what we hope will be a new relationship with the Chancellor," notes CFA President-elect Susan Meisenhelder. For more information, visit the CFA Web site at www.calfac.org.

The Massachusetts Society of Professors and the Faculty Staff Union, NEA's affiliates representing full- and part-time faculty at the Amherst, Boston, and Lowell campuses of the University of Massachusetts, have completed work on a post-tenure review policy that was part of the settlement of their 1998-2001 collective bargaining agreement.

Half of the 15 percent salary increase in MSP's new contract is tied to a post-tenure review plan.

The union conducted a semester-long study, complete with Web site surveys, campus forums, and all-faculty meetings, to gather opinions about whether to agree to, and how to design, a post-tenure review policy.

The product: The Periodic Multi-Year Review, which provides a voluntary, nonpunitive, faculty development vehicle. For details, visit the MSP at: www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~msp2/.

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