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Rutgers University unit votes for joint affiliation
with AFT
Faculty, graduate employees and counselors at Rutgers University in New Jersey voted overwhelmingly to extend their American Association of University Professors affiliation into a joint affiliation with the AFT. The vote among the membership was 575 for joint affiliation versus 222 against. It came at the end of March, a month after a 19-3 vote for affiliation by the AAUP chapter’s executive council. The affiliation brings more than 4,000 academic professionals under the AFT banner.
The affiliation was well vetted, with meetings taking place on all three campuses of the university system—Camden, Newark and New Brunswick. Beginning in January, list-serv dialogue also animated the discussion and featured contributions from other AFT-AAUP joint affiliates, including the University of Alaska, University of Vermont and Wayne State University in Michigan. With the referendum, which drew a 72 percent plurality, “the faculty have spoken,” notes AFT director of organizing Phil Kugler.
“We’ve been considering the matter carefully over the last five years,” says Rudolph Bell, president of the 30-year-old Rutgers AAUP chapter. “This joint affiliation was initiated by us. We anticipate a much more effective political presence in Trenton once we are allied with AFT colleagues. When the AFL-CIO makes its presence felt in the political arena, the AFT is at the table,” and the Rutgers chapter wants to be there too, he adds. “And on the home front, we count on the professional support of the AFT in strengthening our positions in bargaining.”
Bell notes the positive relationship that has evolved with other AFT locals in the state and especially with the Council of New Jersey State Locals. “This vote reflects the good relationship between the AAUP and the AFT in New Jersey that will only be strengthened by this affiliation.”
The AFT is looked upon as an important resource for the 1,700 graduate employees who are part of the unit; ongoing organizing is imperative in an environment where the membership is constantly turning over. “In this hostile national labor climate,” says Scott Bruton, a teaching assistant and a member of the Rutgers AAUP executive council, “AFT’s organizing structure and philosophy will hopefully aid us in solidifying our own.”
The national AAUP is scheduled to consider the affiliation this summer.
New federal personnel system 'a sham,'
union leader says
AFT overseas affiliate fights stripping of bargaining rights
The AFT has voiced strong opposition to a new U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) personnel system that would eliminate the civil service protections of the more than 8,000 educators charged with teaching the children of military personnel.
The National Security Personnel System limits the collective bargaining rights of unions representing DOD teachers, including the AFT’s Overseas Federation of Teachers (OFT), which represents educators working in DOD schools in Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Bahrain, Greece and Italy.
“The claim that employees’ rights and protections will be maintained under the new system is a sham,” asserts OFT president Marie Sainz-Funaro. “The bargaining power of unions in almost all areas will be severely curtailed. In essence, unions will be reduced to making suggestions that management can accept or reject at their discretion.”
Under the new personnel system, managers will have much broader powers to hire, fire, promote and discipline workers. In addition, a DOD official will make the final ruling on employee appeals—rather than an unbiased third-party arbitrator, which is now the case under OFT’s contract with DOD.
The AFT is working with a coalition of unions including the American Federation of Government Employees, the Laborers Union and the NEA to educate members of Congress about the Bush administration’s efforts to bust DOD unions and strip employees of their most basic civil service rights.
The coalition has filed a lawsuit in federal court charging that DOD denied the employee representatives the opportunity to meaningfully participate in the process of writing the new rules.
Rogers: A life devoted to literacy
Education Minnesota member slain in shooting rampage
Education Minnesota member and English teacher Neva Rogers, 62, was among the people who were killed in a shooting rampage by a teenage gunman at a school on Red Lake Indian Reservation in March. An Education Minnesota member since 1998, Rogers taught English at Red Lake High School.
She loved books and poetry. “She was always trying to come up with new ways to encourage kids to read,” says her colleague, special education teacher Patty Stomberg. Rogers was a stickler for good grammar. “She liked to correct us when we used incorrect words or grammar,” adds Stomberg.
In addition to Rogers, the gunman shot and killed five students and a school security guard, as well as his grandfather and his grandfather’s companion, before killing himself. Seven others were wounded.
“I cannot even begin to imagine the feelings of sadness and devastation being experienced by the more than 180 members who teach in the district, along with the other members of the Red Lake community,” said Education Minnesota president and AFT vice president Judy Schaubach.
Immediately following the shooting, the Minnesota Department of Education sent a crisis response team to Red Lake to help with grief counseling. Education Minnesota, a merged state affiliate of the AFT and NEA, offered its assistance to the school, its staff and the local union.
