Shop Talk

Higher education staff and leaders, as well as our members, are interested in what happens on the local level. Telling The Advocate about your contract negotiations and settlements, grievances and lawsuits, and other campus activities can introduce your colleagues to new concepts in bargaining, warn them of pitfalls you've encountered, or begin a discussion around an issue of importance to a number of campuses.

Here's the Shop Talk from the March 1997 issue.

: Contracts; Grievances/Lawsuits; Campus Activities

Contracts

Faculty members at the University of Hawaii will have exclusive rights to their own intellectual property under an agreement reached recently between the University of Hawaii Professional Assembly and the Board of Regents of the university. The issue is addressed in a number of ways by a new clause in the collective bargaining agreement. First, the agreement provides that when work is prepared under the faculty member's own initiative, for professional or educational purposes, the faculty member "shall be exclusively entitled to the benefit of any royalties derived therefrom." Recognizing that a number of interests---the faculty member, the university, the general public whose taxes support the university, and sometimes sponsoring agencies---might be involved with work done at the university, the contract also stipulates: "Rights, royalties, and other net profits shall be shared fairly amongst the parties."

In addition, the new UHPA contract also protects faculty on distance learning questions. The university is free to use instructional or performance events or materials produced by faculty in a distance learning project, provided the faculty member receives an equivalent reduction in classroom assignments or overload compensation for performing the work. But, under the contract, the employer cannot sell or re-transmit the material in future semesters without a written agreement providing the faculty member with a 50 percent interest in the net profits from the sale or rebroadcast. The parties also created a committee to periodically review issues related to intellectual property.

Grievances/Lawsuits

The National Labor Relations Board has formally charged Yale University with illegally intimidating graduate instructors involved in efforts to organize a union. The labor board has set an April 14 hearing date. The complaint charges that Yale, through its president, provost, deans, department chairs, and some senior faculty, threatened employees with loss of future teaching assignments if they took part in a work action.

Colleges in California will continue to use affirmative action principles in admitting students for next fall. The decision follows a U.S. District Court preliminary injunction barring implementation of Proposition 209, which would have ended affirmative action. College officials say admission decisions would be completed by the time courts could rule on the constitutionality of the measure.

Two students, barred from competing as freshmen at Division I colleges by NCAA eligibility requirements, have sued. The two students claim the requirements violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by discriminating against minority students whose socioeconomic backgrounds have left them underprepared for college.

Campus Activities

By a narrow, 26-vote margin, faculty at the Twin Cities campus of the University of Minnesota have rejected unionization, at least for the time being. The vote was 692-666 against representation by the University Faculty Alliance in an election held February 11 and 12 at the Twin Cities campus. Campus union leaders say this story is far from over, but the union must wait a year for another election. The faculty had originally pursued unionization after an attempt by the Board of Regents to impose a new tenure code. The vote against bargaining leaves unilateral authority to the board on tenure questions.

The Massachusetts Teachers Association and the Massachusetts Community College Council have joined a statewide coalition working to restore access to education and training for welfare recipients. Last year, the Welfare Education and Training Access Coalition came close to overriding a Governor Weld veto of a bill that would allow welfare recipients to substitute education and training for the welfare reform bill's work requirement. This year, with a larger and stronger coalition, they hope to win. Higher education is the most effective way for low-income women to get off and stay off welfare, according to the group.

New York's Board of Regents has ousted 18 members of the 19 member Adelphi University Board of Trustees, including the university president. The action culminates a long battle by the Committee to Save Adelphi, a group of faculty, students, alumni, and former trustees who charged that the board and the president benefited themselves at the expense of the university.

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