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Part-time faculty at Columbia College in Chicago began voting January 22
on whether they will be represented for collective bargaining by NEA's Illinois
affiliate.
 Almost
500 faculty are eligible to vote in the mail election. Ballots will be counted
February 4. You can visit faculty organizers at: www.pfac.org.
An Association survey has
found that yearly income for Columbia college part-time faculty---from all
sources---averages $20,000.
The California Faculty Association will launch a "Faculty Action
Campaign" this spring, to highlight collective bargaining issues.
CFA begins bargaining this
month for a successor contract with the California State University system. The
current agreement expires June 30.
CFA members plan to take a
personal holiday (a right under the current contract) to show support for the
Association in the upcoming negotiations.
Many chapters are planning
activities---such as informational picketing, teach-ins, and forums---during
these personal holidays.
A decision allowing part-time instructors in Wisconsin's technical
college system to participate in the state's retirement system could have
far-reaching effects for all faculty.
In finding the part-timers
eligible, the retirement board and a circuit court judge ruled that the
technical colleges must count all of the hours part-timers work not just the
hours they spend in the classroom.
The instructor who brought
the case kept track of the hours she spent grading papers, attending meetings,
and meeting with students. She documented 567 hours of work-related activities,
in addition to 313 hours she spent in class.
A ruling by the Alabama State Supreme Court allows part-time faculty in
the state's two-year colleges to achieve tenure.
Part-timers can now achieve
tenure after working three years, even if they hold a series of different jobs
and the employment is not continuous.
The executive director of
the Alabama Education Association said Monday that the Supreme Court decision "reinforces
what the state board intended."
After a massive statewide campaign, University of Maine clerical workers
have won a guarantee of retirement equality.
The agreement
calls for a joint labor-management committee to develop a plan to phase in a
retirement program over the next five years that will bring the employer
contribution for clerical workers into line with that for faculty.
Before the agreement, the
university contributed 10 percent of full-time professional staff and faculty
salary to TIAA-CREF and 1.25 percent to another plan for clerical employees.
Chief negotiator Suzanne
Moulton, who refused to take no for an answer, and her Associated Clerical,
Office, Lab, and Technical Staff of the University of Maine colleagues visited
every campus in the state to drum up support.
Faculty members at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale will have
more input into high-level university appointments under an agreement that
settled an unfair-labor charge leveled by NEA s affiliate there.
The SIUC Faculty
Association, bargaining for its first contract, has won an agreement that
ensures at least one member of the faculty union will be appointed to any search
or screening committee for deanships or posts above that rank. A five-member
committee of the faculty union also will interview candidates.
The College of the Desert Faculty Association in California recently won
an 8.5 percent salary increase.
The Faculty Association and
the community college district worked together for two years to find enough new
revenue sources and savings in the college's budget to bring salaries to the
state median level. Among the savings: $90,000 from the electric bill and
$325,000 from eliminating classes with too few students.
The California Faculty Association and other concerned groups have forced a
delay in California State University's plan to turn its inter-campus computer
and telecommunication system over to a private consortium.
The postponement, called for
by CFA last fall, was announced during legislative hearings in January. Many
questions still surround the university's becoming a partner with large private
corporations, key legislators noted.
Under the plan, four
corporate partners---Fujitsu, GTE, Hughes Electronics, and Microsoft---would pay
for improving the university's technology infrastructure in exchange for a
degree of exclusivity in providing the CSU's software and hardware.
Objections to the plan
center on involving public funds in a commercial business, as well as the limits
the project might place on creativity and innovation.
Proponents say the plan
would bring $300 million in funds for the university to upgrade computers,
equipment, and support services.
The venture, called the
California Education Technology Initiative, a limited liability corporation,
would be a for-profit partnership projected to generate over $3.12 billion in
revenues over the next 10 years, in part from a captive market of an estimated
half million CSU students, faculty, and staff annually.
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