In a move unprecedented in Massachusetts history, acting Gov. Jane Swift vetoed raises for 13,200 employees in the University of Massachusetts system that all the parties had negotiated and finalized over a year ago. In the week before the legislature wrapped up its summer session, Swift announced she would rescind $29.6 million of the university's budget that was to cover contractual obligations to faculty, administrators and support staff in five unions in the system. Some of this money was to cover raises owed retroactively for the 2001-2002 year. Dan Georgianna, president of the University of Massachusetts (Dartmouth) Faculty Federation/AFT, said his members are angry and frustrated at the betrayal. "We have a contract we worked hard for," he said. "We did all the right things--worked with the legislature, worked with the governor, wrote letters to the editor, went on talk radio." In the end, "having friends is insufficient. We were a target." "What the governor did was unconscionable," said an outraged Kathy Kelley, president of the Massachusetts Federation of Teachers, who spearheaded an eleventh-hour scramble to convince the Democrat-controlled Legislature to override the veto. She said its failure to do so was also "unconscionable."  [Trish Gorman]

[August 8, 2002]