Illinois grad employees have a union

By a vote of 1,188 to 347, graduate employees at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana pointedly brought to a close an eight-year campaign to achieve collective bargaining rights. On Dec. 3-4, the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board sponsored an election for the unit of 2,665 teaching and research assistants, who chose the Graduate Employees Organization/IFT/AFT over no agent.

It was a campaign marked by one challenge after another, which a determined group of graduate assistants rose to overcome. The most recent was the date the IELRB set for the election, a mere 30 days from the date of the board's announcement. It fell the week after the 10-day Thanksgiving break and in the midst of one of the heaviest work periods for the graduate employees.

Nevertheless, the graduate employees would not be denied. "They came out and overwhelmingly voiced how they feel," says Rosemary Braun, GEO co-president. No matter the logistical challenges of getting to an election, she adds, the issues at the heart of the drive have stayed the same. "We need better wages, healthcare and workloads and a voice in how decisions affecting us are made."

The Illinois graduate employees started to organize for better working conditions in the 1970s, but began in earnest to seek union representation in 1993. They affiliated with the Illinois Federation of Teachers in 1995, filed 3,226 authorization cards with the IELRB in 1996, countered the university's opposition before the board in 1997. The following year, a representation election sponsored by clerical and lay groups produced a 64 percent vote for the union.

The GEO would have to go all the way to the Illinois Supreme Court to get a decision affirming that the graduate employees were workers, not just students, and therefore had the right to unionize. Unfortunately, the IELRB threw another wrench into the works by defining the unit of roughly 5,000 teaching and research assistants down to roughly 300 graduate employees who were doing work outside their disciplinary specialization.

At that point, the GEO took to the streets, waging work-ins, sit-ins and a takeover of an administration building last spring. The university, with a new president at the helm, decided to negotiate with the union over the size of the unit, which led to the election in December.

Braun credits a large cast of activists in achieving the win. "There was tremendous dedication from the people still here and those who worked in years past knowing they wouldn't be here to see the fruits of their labor."

Many came back for the last week of the campaign. The final push to get out the vote brought back former GEO members and volunteers from AFT graduate employee locals both new and old. These included fellow graduate unionists from the University of Michigan, Wisconsin, Oregon, Temple, Kansas, the University of Pennsylvania and Penn State.

New union at CUNY

A group of employees who work at the City University of New York Research Foundation has shown the public university it can run, but it cannot hide from workers who want to be represented by a union. On Dec. 4, employees at the University Applications Processing Center voted to be represented by the Professional Staff Congress/AFT. The vote was 77 to 14 in favor of union representation for the unit of 100.

The UAPC is charged with processing all the undergraduate applications for admission that come into CUNY. The budget and workers at the UAPC are funded, not by CUNY, but by CUNY's privately operated Research Foundation (RF). While these workers manage the technical end of receiving and verifying the information in the applications, admissions counselors elsewhere on campus do the related work of processing the people.

The admissions counselors are called higher education officers. They are represented by the PSC and have rights guaranteed by state labor law. The UAPC workers fall under the National Labor Relations Act. What are the differences between the two groups?

"We make a whole lot less," says Robert Booris, an international student evaluator with the UAPC. "The leadership of the RF is the same leadership as that of CUNY. The two are indistinguishable. They are contracting out the CUNY work to RF people."

The Research Foundation was set up in the 1960s to administer grants. Over time, it quietly grew to encompass other university functions, but because it is privately chartered, learning exactly what the foundation is up to can be difficult, says Maggie Dickenson, a PSC organizer. This year, she says, the union started noting the large number of employees who were working under the RF. In September, the PSC got a call from Booris and some of his colleagues.

After a year of working for the UAPC, Booris had expected a raise, as promised when he was hired. But when no raise came despite positive ratings, he talked to other employees and learned that raises or even cost-of-living adjustments were not part of the culture of the RF.

Soon, Booris and his colleagues raised the possibility of unionizing. Longer-term employees of the UAPC were as disgruntled as the newcomers, and even more so when they learned that new employees were making more money than those veterans who had been there for 10 or 15 years.

A PSC representative talked to some of the UAPC employees and within five weeks, 80 percent of the workers had signed cards. They also learned a most heartening fact: A unit of RF workers who worked in the central office had already unionized under the PSC and were in the midst of negotiating an agreement that would amount to an 18.76 percent increase over five years.

After the rapid organizing drive, the local NLRB delivered a speedy election date. Now that the union is in place, says Booris, movement on a new contract looks promising--especially with the model of the central office chapter to serve as a guide.

N.H. faculty file cards at for-profit college

Full-time faculty at McIntosh College, a small for-profit college in Dover, N.H., filed a petition for a collective bargaining election with the National Labor Relations Board in December. The board, working with the college and faculty committee, quickly resolved unit definition issues and set a Feb. 13 election date.

McIntosh is a proprietary school that promises the students it recruits certificates or associate's degrees in fields ranging from business, information technology, paralegal studies to culinary arts. It has 1,135 students, many from disadvantaged or inner-city backgrounds, says Jim Rust, president of the New Hampshire Federation of Teachers. Students recruited to this idyllic New England town are promised the support they need to leave with degrees and land successful jobs. The faculty number 45.

McIntosh is run by the Career Education Corporation, an 8-year-old company that has 43 campuses in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates, the CEC Web site reports. "CEC has progressed rapidly toward the goal of becoming the world's leading provider of quality educational services," according to the site. "During 2002, we expect to generate the most revenue from brick-and-mortar campuses compared to any group in the private, for-profit postsecondary education industry," it gushes. CEC is the largest provider of culinary arts training and also owns nine Katharine Gibbs Schools.

"The faculty was just getting beaten up" by management, says Rust, and they  conducted an Internet search for help. This quickly led faculty to the NHFT Web site.

Although the college did not deliver on a raise promised for this past October, faculty say money is not their biggest issue. "They were concerned about a lack of academic freedom, a voice in governance," says Rust.

With private college organizing, unions always have to be concerned about Yeshiva challenges, Rust notes. In this case, however, the NLRB saw no indication that faculty operate as managers, thus their right to bargain collectively seems ensured.

Alaska faculty call university's bluff on ad campaign

While the University of Alaska touts itself in TV ads as an institution that "keeps the best minds here in Alaska," some of those best minds tell a different story. "Faculty morale is low, and good professors are either leaving Alaska or choosing not to come because of the poor compensation," says Bob Congdon, president of the Alaska Community Colleges' Federation of Teachers.

The ACCFT and the university are in the midst of protracted contract negotiations where the key issue is raises. The university has offered 1 percent across-the-board salary increases for each of the next three years to cover inflation. This, despite raising tuition by 10 percent in each of the next two years based on an inflation rate of 3.6 percent.

The union has conducted a national analysis of faculty pay and found that most UA faculty within the bargaining unit are paid $2,000 to $10,000 less than the average for faculty in their field. "You don't keep these faculty by paying them 10 [percent] to 20 percent below national averages, particularly when the three least expensive Alaska cities--Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau--are in the top 10 most expensive places to live in America," says Barbara Harville, chief negotiator for ACCFT.

The ACCFT contract expires June 30. Because of the rocky history of the university in negotiating with the 28-year-old union, the last contract stipulates that negotiations will take place from Sept. 1 to Dec. 1, after which, lacking a settlement, the parties are at deadlock.

On Dec. 1, the union had to declare an impasse and called for a federal mediator.

At the same time, the university started airing the upbeat ads. One features a student raving about his "incredible professors." Footage of United Academics/AFT member Gary Cohn fills the screen as the student gushes; "My journalism professor--he won a Pulitzer for investigative reporting!" The ad ends with University of Alaska president Mark Hamilton urging "Keep the best minds here, at home. To guide Alaska, we need a strong, statewide university system." One of the local CBS affiliates was so tickled by the disparate images of the breaking news story and the ad campaign, it devoted several minutes to the story.

AFT leaders hone politics, organizing

AFT leaders were assessing both the new political landscape and organizing trends as they gathered in San Diego, Calif., for the union's state federation presidents' conference Nov. 20-23.

AFT executive vice president Nat LaCour opened the meeting with an overview of how the union is working to continue growth throughout the AFT. "State federations are emerging as a powerful force for organizing within our union," he said, pointing to a new push among affiliates to dedicate substantial resources to organizing new bargaining units.

Also on the agenda was a special session on the role state federations will play in developing and implementing the AFT's Solidarity Fund, the political fund created by a dues set-aside approved at the union's convention in Las Vegas this July. AFT leaders also heard from CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider, American Prospect senior correspondent Peter Schrag, and University of California-San Diego political science professor Gary C. Jacobson at a special session on the impact and future implications of the November elections.

Topics for other scheduled workshops included fighting vouchers and tax credits, ESEA, cultivating future leaders, using technology for legislative and political capacity, negotiating quality healthcare and union-sponsored professional development.