Chicago union defends due process

The board of trustees of the City Colleges of Chicago voted in March to eliminate academic counseling at the seven colleges in the two-year college system. The day the board took the vote, it was hard to tell who was more distressed about the change--the 19 counselors who were about to get pink slips, the faculty who depend on counselors to act as academic conduits to students, or the hundreds of students who have used counseling as their academic lifelines.

All groups were out in force March 7 to protest the trustees' plan. The groups formed a picket line outside the main City Colleges administration office and were joined by city aldermen and members of the Cook County College Teachers Union, which represents the counselors. But despite their efforts, the trustees' minds already were made up, says CCCTU president Norman Swenson.

Last year, the board began acting on a mission to privatize services and academic functions at the city colleges. It contracted out the nearly $300 million financial services and data processing operations of the colleges. At the time, the board said it would be considering contracting-out possibilities for academic departments.

After asking employees to help assess the performance of such departments as business teaching, library services and academic counseling, the administration decided to leave the first two alone. But instead of privatizing counseling, which was having difficulties in its management, the colleges decided to kill the program.

Now, in place of $66,000 counselors, who, by state statute are considered faculty and have advanced degrees and years of experience dealing with students' school, work and personal challenges, the colleges are hiring "registration specialists" at half the salaries of their predecessors, Swenson says.

The change violates the contract on two fronts, says Swenson. "These people are entitled to due process before they are fired," he argues.

Also, with each passing week, the job descriptions of the registration specialists sound more like those of the counselors. The contract states that "because of newly created or changed job titles, no positions in the bargaining unit shall be eliminated where there is not substantial change in job duties or responsibilities."

CCCTU has filed a grievance with the City Colleges board and asked for expedited arbitration to have a decision within the next few months.

In the meantime, the union is working to ensure that the affected counselors have remedies. Those who are qualified will seek teaching jobs in the colleges. Six have retired. Seven people don't yet know what they will do.

The students know they've been shafted, however. "We are really distraught," says Claudia Trevoria, a student at Wilbur Wright College. "We are seeking an audience with Mayor Daley but are having no luck. This will have a detrimental effect on us."

New Jersey council fights layoffs

The faculty union at Rowan University is up in arms over the administration's plan to lay off 18 faculty and staff. Like the eight other public institutions in the New Jersey system, Rowan must deal with a 5 percent cut from its budget to help the state address a $2.8 billion budget shortfall. Unlike the other institutions, however, Rowan's president is the only one who is sacrificing people to make the cuts.

"The question I ask," says Nick Yovnello, president of the Council of New Jersey State College Locals/AFT, is "Why is the richest of the nine institutions the only one resorting to layoffs? The others have said they'll get through the cuts with no major traumas."

Rowan University, formerly called Glassboro State College, began the decade with a gift of $100 million from the donor for whom the college was renamed. It is in the midst of a $250 million building boom. Just weeks prior to the president's layoff announcement, the Rowan board approved a new contract that included a salary hike for the president and granted generous bonuses to some administrators.

Despite problems with the state's funding picture, no one was expecting Rowan president Donald Farish's announcement that the university would shut down four well-established institutes (including the thriving Glassboro Center for the Arts) and fire long-term employees. In doing so, the administration skirted both its normal academic governance process and the union contract.

"The university made cutting jobs a priority, instead of working with campus groups to set priorities. We could have helped frame the questions. And [the administration] violated a clause in the contract that requires consultation with the union," says Rowan CNJSCL chapter chair Nick Diobilda. "We've filed a grievance. We want answers as to how they determined [the people] to cut." The union also wants to ensure that the university follows the contract's specified procedures for recalling terminated employees.

Mostly the faculty want to understand why the university is departing from its past practice of consultation. "Morale is very low because of this," says Yovnello.

Spirits dipped again April 4, when Farish announced 19 percent tuition hikes.

More Calif. part-timers affiliate

On March 1, a local of part-time faculty at Allan Hancock College that had severed its affiliation with the Communications Workers of America, voted to affiliate with the California Federation of Teachers and the AFT. The local, which represents 400 people, has a first contract that ends in 2004 but is beginning to negotiate salary reopeners with the help of its new union.

With more than one choice for affiliation, the Allan Hancock Part-Time Faculty Association chose to affiliate with the AFT because it was a "less traditional union," says Mark Miller, president of the AHPTFA. "We like autonomy," he adds. "We tell CFT what we want. That means something to us."

Negotiating the AFT way is as "different as night and day at the bargaining table," Miller says. "We're asking the right questions. It's a more professional, experienced approach."

The Allan Hancock part-timers join the growing list of part-time locals that have become part of the CFT/AFT in the past two years, notes AFT national representative Linda Cushing.

These include part-timers in North Orange County, and at Palomar, Citrus and San Jose/Evergreen colleges.

Feldman heralds gains in Pennsylvania

Graduate employee activists who are in the midst of a union membership drive at Pennsylvania State University got a boost when AFT president Sandra Feldman met with them on March 25 and lauded their efforts at an afternoon rally. "We are committed to making things better at Penn State," she told members of the Graduate and Fixed-Term Employee Organization, "but to do that the university has to recognize the rights and dignity of graduate employees!"

A week earlier, the university had announced that it would begin providing the same healthcare coverage to the graduate assistants and their families as it provides to faculty and staff. This breakthrough is widely viewed by campus stakeholders to be a result of GFTEO pressure, and Feldman noted that in her remarks. However, the university also has to address other aspects of the employees' working conditions, she said, such as their access to offices, phones, reasonable workloads--and a voice in academic affairs.

Feldman was on the campus to deliver the Philip Murray Memorial Labor Lecture, co-sponsored by the Penn State Department of Labor Studies and Industrial Relations, and the United Steelworkers of America. The lecture is named for the first president of the steelworkers union.

The AFT president's lecture focused on the future of the American labor movement and on the plight of the growing number of contingent workers in all industries--but especially in higher education. Hearing some of the personal stories of Penn State graduate assistants "angered and appalled" Feldman. "When this great university nickels and dimes its part-time instructors and researchers, it is also shortchanging its students," she charged.

"This is dead wrong. We in the AFT will fight to make it right," she promised.

As pleased as the GFTEO is with the university's plans to provide health benefits, the organization is not sure of the details and would have preferred to be included at the table discussing the plan. The organization will be using the offer as both a sign of the power of people coming together and the reason why all of their fellow teachers must gear up for a card campaign and more organizing next semester.

The graduate employees at the University of Pennsylvania, Graduate Employees Together-UP/AFT, have finished hearings before the National Labor Relations Board on the composition of their unit. GET-UP is awaiting an NLRB ruling and preparing for a fall election.

The Temple University Graduate Students Association/AFT has just reached an agreement on its first contract as this issue of AFT On Campus went to press. For more details go to www.tugsa.org/.