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Grad student organizers are collecting bargaining authorization cards at
Florida State University.
 The graduate
teaching and research assistants want to become part of the United Faculty of
Florida. They're part of a nationwide wave of organizing among grad students
seeking to improve their salaries and benefits.
Notes FSU English
literature grad student Ed Lessor: "We also want to overcome the idea that
what we do isn't actual work. We teach the courses."
Graduate student organizing is also taking place at the University of
Minnesota, where the Minnesota Education Association and the Minnesota
Federation of Teachers have begun a joint project to organize the university's
4,000 graduate teaching, research, and project assistants, who teach a high
proportion of courses in many departments.
Education Support Personnel at Jefferson Community College are Ohio's
newest higher ed members.
Jefferson faculty have been
bargaining collectively since the 1970s.
Faculty at the University of Southern Maine found out recently that
their computer files could be subject to search and seizure by the police.
During the investigation of
a criminal complaint against a faculty member there, police asked for access to
the computer files of all faculty. The university said no. But it seems the
university had a legal right to the computer files and could have turned them
over.
The
incident raised a red flag for the Associated Faculties of the University of
Maine. "We need to address the issue of computer privacy rights," says
Association director Stew Kinley. "We need protection built into the
contract."
California Community College Association facilitators led a troubled
Palo Verde Community College through a Futures Search Retreat this fall.
With the college in danger
of losing its accreditation, stakeholders from the community and the campus met
for three days of future-planning. The result: more cooperation between the
college and the local Association and a commitment by everyone to solve the
accreditation problem this year.
The Minnesota Community College Faculty Association has a new two-year
contract with the state.
The settlement
came after a strike vote in which 96 percent of the 2,000-member Association
authorized a strike if talks failed. Nearly 95 percent of the Association's
eligible members voted.
The pact calls
for approximately 6 percent in increases over the life of the contract--in line
with increases for other state units--and addresses a multitude of issues
surrounding the system's conversion to a semester schedule from the current
quarter schedule.
A new pact between the Community College of Rhode Island Faculty
Association and the Board of Governors for Higher Education will provide faculty
there with a 6.5 percent salary increase over two years.
The contract also provides
for additional money for faculty development, an increase in the summer school
pay rate, additional funds for merit pay, and a joint committee to study hiring
rates.
The Shawnee State University faculty in Ohio have also won a new
two-year contract after a long struggle.
The local NEA affiliate
fought off attempts by the employer to increase the faculty workload and deny
them a salary increase. The new agreement provides for 3 percent increases in
each year of the contract.
The California Faculty Association is gearing up for a December start to
contract negotiations with the 22-campus California State University.
Among the pressing issues for CFA: improving salaries that have fallen more
than 10 percent below comparable institutions, reducing faculty workload, and
revamping the university's unfair performance-based pay system. The Association
will also try to increase the number of tenure-track positions.
NEA member Roger Wess of the State College Education Association in Nebraska
has taken a semester sabbatical to serve as the state representative for the
Western Governors University.
The governors university is
the massive cyberspace venture launched by 15 Western governors to expand access
to higher education.
Notes Wess, a long-time Association supporter: "WGU is just a symptom.
Tremendous changes in how higher education is delivered are coming. You either
get on the train, get out of the way, or get run over."
Cyberspace education can be
a threat to faculty, he notes. But cyberspace can also be a source of quality
education.
Faculty, Wess believes, need to ask: Are we providing quality education now and
do we provide enough support for our students? "If we're not doing the
job," he says, "someone else will."
Wess sees a faculty role in
preserving quality education in cyberspace. "We have been watching the
quality of publications and courses for decades," he notes. "We need
to extend that vigilance to the Web."
Have questions? Check the
Nebraska site at:
cybered.csc.edu/wgu_web/index.html or E-mail
Roger Wess at rwess@csc1.csc.edu.
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