In Alaska, union resolve leads to strong contract
College of Canyons part-timers win in a landslide
Vermont part-timers say, Union Yes!
Baltimore faculty seek voluntary recognition
Long overdue pay raises flow to Mass. faculty
AFT protests repression in Zimbabwe
Milwaukee graduate assistants file complaint against Pick-a-Prof
State budgets: Bush policies will devastate local programs

In Alaska, union resolve leads to strong contract

The Alaska Community Colleges' Federation of Teachers/AFT announced Nov. 7 that it had reached tentative agreement with the University of Alaska on a three-year contract covering the unit of 315 faculty. The agreement was ratified unanimously by a mail-in vote of the union and approved by the University of Alaska Board of Regents on Dec. 3.

The settlement came just over a week after ballots were counted in a 202-44 strike authorization vote, and after 14 months of tough bargaining. "We are happy that students will not have their education interrupted÷always a paramount concern of faculty," said ACCFT president Bob Congdon.

The agreement provides 11.8 percent total salary increases over three years, retroactive to July 1, 2003, when the contract starts. It also provides increases for the healthcare plan sufficient to maintain the 90 percent/10 percent split of employer-employee contributions.

Furthermore, the faculty ensured that intellectual property rights and disciplinary practices that had been in place in past years were codified into the contract language.

The union was up against an administration that had specifically stated it was looking for a "management-friendly" contract. Translation: It wanted to take away dues check-off, agency fee, release time for union officials and the longstanding grievance and arbitration process. In addition, it was trying to hedge its obligation to cover the rising costs of the health insurance program.

What emerged as a priority in these negotiations, says Congdon, was setting the standard that would prevail in other state and university negotiations. ACCFT is a 30-year-old union that managed to withstand legal challenges to its existence when the community colleges were absorbed into the reorganized university system in the late 1980s. The union's strength helped serve as a model for those full-time faculty in the University of Alaska system not represented by a union to organize as the United Academics/

AAUP/AFT and for the part-time faculty to organize as the United Academics Adjuncts/AAUP/AFT. All are affiliated with the Alaska Public Employees Association/AFT, which also represents craft and trade workers on campus and is organizing administrative and professional staff as well.

ACCFT's contract was the first to be negotiated in a cycle that will include sister unions on the university's 14 campuses. "Management, other university unions, and other statewide unions were not shy about telling us that we were setting the stage and terms not only for other university unions, but for all state employees," says Congdon.

In the weeks leading up to the settlement, AFT secretary-treasurer Ed McElroy visited the Anchorage campus and AFT president Sandra Feldman sent a strong letter of support to the union. Additional support came from central labor councils in Anchorage, Juneau and Fairbanks, the state AFL-CIO, other unions and student and administrative groups. "In the end, we wouldn't have reached a contract without faculty members stepping forward and doing what needed to be done," said Congdon.

 College of the Canyons part-timers win in a landslide

One of the uglier battles for union representation in California ended in a landslide victory for the Part-Time Faculty United-AFT at the College of the Canyons. The Nov. 17 vote was 208 for the AFT versus 41 for no agent in a unit defined at about 390.

The part-time faculty, who make up two-thirds of all faculty teaching at the two-year college, have been trying to choose union representation for two years. First the full-time faculty union declined to include them. Then, when they were in the midst of organizing with the AFT, the district moved covertly to force them into the full-time faculty union. Despite two decisions from the Public Employment Relations Board and the State Court of Appeals supporting the PTFU-AFT, the district continued to use its extensive resources to try to impose its will on the part-time faculty. Yet, given a fair and legal election, the message was clear. "We stood for one overriding principle: dignity and respect," says Michael Ward, leader of the AFT organizing committee.

Part-time faculty have the same qualifications as full-time faculty but receive only 35 percent of the pay full-timers get for teaching the same classes. They are expected to prepare for class, grade papers and advise students, but are not compensated for it. They have no medical benefits and are not allowed to buy into the district plan or to use campus health facilities.

During the fight for a union, part-timers saw their classes÷if not their jobs÷taken away from them. "Many part-timers have taught for the district for 15 or 20 years or more, semester after semester, and this is how the college treats them?" Ward exclaims. "I have never seen a district fight so long and hard using public funds to prevent their faculty from exercising their free choice to select their own union," adds Linda Cushing, AFT national representative.

Now, the main issues before the union in contract talks are equal pay for equal work, paid office hours, medical benefits, job security, rehire rights and a fair dispute resolution mechanism decided by a neutral third party.

Vermont part-timers say, Union Yes!

Part-time faculty at the University of Vermont voted 41-6 in December to form a union jointly affiliated with the United Professions of Vermont/AFT (UPV) and the American Association of University Professors. The university has 201 part-time faculty, according to the institution's 2003 count. The Vermont Labor Relations Board, working with the university and the UPV, found that 88 were eligible to vote.

The unit joins United Academics, another AFT/AAUP local of full-time faculty that unionized in 2001 and got its first contract a year ago. There are two other unions on campus: police and maintenance and service workers.

"We are elated with this overwhelming victory, which brings collective bargaining rights to those in the academic workforce who are especially in need of representation," says Roy Vestrich, president of UPV. The new union will be focusing on pay equity, access to benefits, minimum standards for working conditions and compensation for time spent with students outside the classroom.

Baltimore faculty seek voluntary recognition

More than 100 faculty, librarians and counselors from the Community College of Baltimore County appeared before the college's trustees Dec. 10 to ask that the board voluntarily recognize the union as the CCBC Professionals/AFT. The workers were among 260÷or 73 percent of the unit÷who have signed cards indicating that they would like to engage in collective bargaining and to be represented by the AFT as their bargaining agent.

The group asked to be put on the agenda for a future board meeting to formally discuss collective bargaining. The trustees were unwilling to consider the request, with the board chair stating that, without a law specifically enabling bargaining for faculty, the board could not recognize the group. The AFT maintains that the law neither allows nor prohibits bargaining.

Regina Kronau Shea, an associate professor of accounting at CCBC's Essex campus, spoke for the group in laying out why its members want a union. (In addition to Essex, CCBC has campuses in Dundalk and Catonsville.) Their motivation centers on fairness, input and respect. Without more of a voice in college life, she says, faculty are not able to become a stabilizing factor in an environment that is selling students and the community short.

The faculty note that the college has been in a state of extended reorganization that has increased the size of administration and added to the nonteaching burdens on staff. Tenure was abolished in the mid-1990s and CCBC Essex was put on the American Association of University Professors' censure list in 1995 for the way it fired four faculty. Employees cite numerous examples of the administration's failure to follow principles of shared governance.

"As teaching faculty, we work directly with students and we know their strengths and weaknesses," says Shea. "Yet, every day, we have less input on curricula, classroom conditions and policies that affect how we teach and how our students learn."

Shea adds that the college has become a revolving door for younger faculty who must "work under the uncertainty of short-term contracts."

The organization will continue to pursue voluntary recognition, says Shea. "Fairness, input and respect mean better educational opportunities for our students," she notes.

Long overdue pay raises flow to Mass. faculty

More than 13,000 higher education faculty and staff in Massachusetts had a reason to cheer their unions last month when they received their first paychecks for 2004.  The pay reflected increases negotiated two years ago but not delivered because former Gov. Jane Swift reneged on a deal she had signed off on and pushed through the Legislature for funding. When the state tax revenues took a nosedive, she simply said the state could walk away from the agreements.

In December, the state Legislature passed and Gov. Mitt Romney signed a supplemental spending bill that made good on the previous deal. It provides $34.1 million in raises for about 11,000 teachers and support staff at the University of Massachusetts' Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth and Lowell campuses, and about 2,000 workers at other state colleges and universities.

No great friend to unions, the governor nevertheless agreed to the raises in a spirit of "fairness," he said. But he would not agree to retroactive payments and also vowed to seek pay cuts when the unions begin negotiating new contracts later this year.

The raises came after an unrelenting campaign mounted by a coalition of seven unions, including the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth Faculty Federation/AFT and the Massachusetts Federation of Teachers. The coalition, called Higher Ed Unions United, lobbied intensively, held rallies and demonstrations and put up informational picket lines.

"We stuck together in tough times over the past two years and never gave up," says Dan Georgianna, president of the UM-DFF.

He lauds the Democrat-led Legislature for respecting the importance of collective bargaining. "We now need to convince voters in the Commonwealth that only sufficient tax revenues will supply quality education and other state services that they want," he adds.

At the same time that state officials were putting together next year's budget, an organization called the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation released a report showing just how skewed the state's budget priorities have become.

In 2004, for the first time in decades, the state will spend more on prisons than on higher education. The state budget for campus appropriations and student financial aid will come to $816 million, compared with $830 million for prisons and jail.

The foundation asserts that the state's support for its 29 public college and university campuses has been "wildly inconsistent for decades."

Two periods of fiscal crisis÷in the late 1980s and again in the past two years÷have caused cutbacks that have left higher education in the state funded at the same level as 30 years ago.

AFT protests repression in Zimbabwe

AFT president Sandra Feldman has written to Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe expressing the AFT's "extreme dismay" over the deteriorating human rights situation in Zimbabwe, including the government's intensified repression of trade unionists.

Noting that the Zimbabwean government, through the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP), has disregarded international conventions guaranteeing freedom of association and collective bargaining, "Zimbabwe has an obligation not to obstruct trade unionists in carrying out their legitimate trade union activities," said Feldman in her Dec. 18 letter.

Not only have the trade unionists been repressed and arrested, the AFT has learned that they also have been violently attacked, said Feldman. Many of those arrested refused to pay fines and as a result were charged with "conduct likely to provoke breach of the peace" under the Miscellaneous Offences Act.

Despite the fact that all those concerned filed statements with the police saying they were participating in a legitimate trade union activity, the charges against them have been sustained.

"The AFT strongly urges you to intervene immediately so that all charges against those concerned, who were carrying out legitimate trade union activities, be dropped," said Feldman. "We also urge you to cease all interference into trade union affairs. We sincerely hope that you will intervene promptly to ensure that this latest situation is rectified and that your government will take steps to · ensure the respect of trade union rights."

Milwaukee graduate assistants file complaint against Pick-a-Prof

The Milwaukee Graduate Assistants Association filed a complaint with the U.S.  Department of Education against the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM). MGAA alleges that UWM violated the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) when it released the grading history and student evaluations of its teaching assistants to an online entity called Pick-a-Prof. The UWM Student Association contracted with the teacher evaluation firm to produce an off-campus public Web site with information on the job performance of teaching assistants at UWM. The union says the university's release of student comments to Pick-a-Prof is a clear violation of the graduate assistants' privacy rights under FERPA.

More than a quarter of its membership has made some type of complaint to the union concerning Pick-a-Prof, according to Richard Hay, co-president of MGAA, which represents over 800 project, program and teaching assistants at UWM. The union is not opposed to feedback or critiques, "but Pick-a-Prof makes that information public," says Hay. It becomes an issue of privacy for the graduate assistants, as well as job security.

MGAA is particularly concerned about the negative effects the public release of grades would have on international graduate assistants.  False charges about a teaching assistant's work, including his or her level of English proficiency, may affect class enrollment. If a specific level of enrollment is not met, the university cancels the class and the assistant is out of a job.

State budgets: Bush policies will devastate local programs

The Bush administration's overall strategy to permanently reduce the role of the federal government is likely to worsen the budget crises for states even if the economy begins to recover, say fiscal policy experts.

A variety of speakers delivered the bad news to public employee unions and other state budget experts gathered in Washington, D.C., in November for a conference on funding state services, which was sponsored by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).

Despite recent declines in the jobless rate, the much-touted economic rebound will not fill the gaps in state funding, they warned. With federal aid accounting for more than 27 percent of most states' general funds, the Bush administration's tax cuts and other cuts to discretionary programs÷particularly human services÷will shift more responsibility for services and programs to the states. CBPP estimates that policies enacted under the Bush administration will cost states $185 billion between 2002 and 2005.

Bob Greenstein, CBPP founder and executive director, referred to the strategy as "putting new architecture in place to shrink the federal government's role." Even as the current economic downturn ends, the federal deficit will reach $5 trillion (not including interest) over the coming decade if the U.S. continues its current policy, he said.

Further, if new tax cuts are enacted or if the existing Bush tax cuts set to expire over the next eight years are made permanent, Greenstein added, the federal deficit will stack up even higher.

The deficit's toll on state budgets will, in turn, put more pressure on state aid to localities, which accounts for more than 35 percent of local general revenues. State revenues to cities were cut by approximately $2.3 billion for fiscal year 2004, a 9.2 percent decrease from 2003, noted CBPP executive director Iris Lav.

Creating a permanent reduction in federal spending is just one part of the Bush administration's larger agenda, said John Podesta, former chief of staff for President Clinton and current president and chief executive officer of the Center for American Progress, a Washington, D.C.-based nonpartisan research and educational institute.

Other Bush administration priorities include eliminating taxation on investment income beyond capital gains and dividends, and restructuring entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

The tax-free savings and retirement vehicles that will be part of President Bush's fiscal 2005 budget proposal will chip away at state and federal tax receipts by providing tax shelters that would predominantly benefit wealthier individuals who have the disposable income to save. Moreover, such programs would "move the tax base to wage workers," Podesta noted.
 

MAKING THE CONNECTION FOR VOTERS

The challenge in informing voters about the Bush administration's role in the fiscal disaster for states, said CBPP's Iris Lav, is "connecting the dots" and translating the effect of federal policies on people's lives. To that end, CBPP will launch an outreach campaign in early 2004 to educate the public about the devastating effects÷short- and long-term÷the Bush policies will have on state and local programs.

"How do we quantify the balance between what people think they are getting in federal tax cuts with what they may be spending to make up for government cutbacks?" Lav asked, adding that parents must also be made aware that the reason they have "to pay a fee for their child to play sports or music is a combination of federal and state policies."

One issue that demonstrates this disconnect is the estate tax, which was a centerpiece of President Bush's 2001 tax-cut legislation.

"People are wildly enthusiastic about doing away with the estate tax," although 98 percent of people won't benefit from its repeal, said Larry Bartels of Princeton University.

A 2002 survey showed that 66 percent of respondents with family incomes below $50,000 supported repealing the estate tax, even though 68 percent wanted more spending on government programs and

68 percent said rich people pay less than they should in federal income taxes, said Bartels.

"Clearly, people aren't making connections between their values and economic situation and the estate tax."