Fee increases rile graduate employees

Seth Young doesn’t have time to visit the $140 million recreation center at Ohio State University. He’ll never scale the climbing wall, swim the three pools or play indoor golf, and he doesn’t want to foot the bill for this “flashy new facility.”

That’s why Young, president of the Graduates and Employees Student Organization/OFT/AFT, organized a protest to waive student fees for graduate employees. Fees have risen from $9 in 2001  to $100 per quarter next year, due to $76 levied for the new facility; a bus fee ($9) and a student activities fee ($15). Graduate stipends have not increased accordingly, so the fees amount to a pay cut.

Graduate employees, like faculty and staff, should be exempt from student fees, says Young. Tuition is waived, and fees should be part of that package. “This is the back door where the university can get tuition money,” he says.

GESO, still working toward recognition as the graduate employee representative, already has gathered 600 signatures on a fee protest petition. In 2003, a similar petition won 75 percent healthcare coverage, up from 42 percent. “These are the direct results of having a union,” says Young. “With a lot of numbers on the [current] petition, we’ll get some results.”

At Rutgers, that’s exactly what the union got. Rutgers AAUP/AFT won a 10 percent pay increase for 2004-05 and a waiver on student fees, plus a refund for fees paid in 2003-04. The Graduate Employees’ Organization/AFT at the University of Michigan got the international student Sevis fee waived, and capped the registration fee at $80.

Florida graduate employees are not so lucky. Todd Reynolds, president of the Graduate Assistants Union/AFT, pays $342 a semester in fees; other employees pay $456 in this per-credit system. Fees cover, among other things, bands to play on campus. “I would much rather use that money to pay for groceries,” he says.

Temple University Graduate Student Association/AFT (TUGSA) also will negotiate fees that Andrew Dixon, TUGSA co-president, considers part of tuition. Says Dixon, “If you’re charging us fees, you’re not giving us a full tuition waiver.”

“Fees are an end run around tuition increases for undergraduates and graduate students,” says Chris Goff, former president of the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation at the University of Oregon and liaison for the AFT Alliance of Graduate Employee Locals. “Graduate employees are the victims of a bait and switch—the institution promises to take care of them, but they are slapped with hundreds of dollars in fees when they arrive on campus.”

W.V. moves to 'meet and consult'

This fall, 12,000 higher education personnel in West Virginia moved a giant step closer to gaining a voice and power in their work and academic relationships. The Governor’s Commission on Public Sector Employment and Employee Relations on Oct. 31 sent its recommendation to Gov. Joe Manchin that the state’s almost 44,000 public employees should be allowed to “meet and consult” about working terms and conditions. The employees  hope the Democratic governor will release an executive order to that effect soon.

When the governor’s order comes, faculty and classified staff in the state’s 22 public colleges and universities are ready to have an expanded say in their work lives and the operations of their institutions.

Since the 12-member commission was created last year—with six labor appointments, including AFT-West Virginia president Judy Hale, organizing has been under way on every campus, reports Robert Morgenstern, who heads the effort for AFT-West Virginia. The union has identified leaders and organizing committee members on most campuses.

At Marshall University, for example, a committee for faculty and one for classified staff meets every two weeks. At Fairmont State, the union has signed up 37 percent of classified staff and 27 percent of faculty for the union. At West Virginia University in Parkersburg, “we have cards on 35 percent,” says Morgenstern, “and 24 percent have signed up at West Virginia State University.”

The compelling issues are salaries—which have not increased in three years on many campuses—inadequate spending on academics and faculty’s lack of voice in academic life, even as West Virginia sees more students going to college and recognizes higher education’s essential role in economic development.

At Fairmont State University, faculty recently were taken aback over a new sick leave policy that, in its initial form, would knock people off the payroll after their fifth consecutive sick day. The organized AFT group is working toward a reasonable compromise, says its leader Sue Kelly, a professor of language and literature. “People are angry,” she says, about an accumulation of abuses.

Faculty at West Virginia State University are upset about the ballooning size of administration, says Chuck Smith, professor and chair of political science, and also about the exploitative use of adjuncts, who now make up 38 percent of faculty. “It cheats the people they hire as adjuncts and cheats the students,” he notes, adding, “Our long-term interest is to improve academic integrity and the quality of the university.”

Compton rises above corruption

When the Western Association of Colleges and Schools’ Accrediting Com-mission for Community and Junior Colleges yanked Compton Community College’s accreditation last summer, the Compton College Federation of Employees/AFT kicked into high gear. Already it had called on the state to help the union shake up a negligent board of trustees. When the commission withheld accreditation, the union rallied faculty, staff, students and community members to form the Committee to Save Compton College.

This fall, members were working to elect a new board member in November, beginning a process of renewal among trustees sullied by corruption, negligence and mismanagement. Faculty walked the streets with billboards and fliers to support their candidate. They’re also organizing a recall of two board members whom they hope to oust in an election next June. They’ve sent letters to the commission protesting the movement to close down Compton, and they stand behind the administration’s appeal, now under consideration. They’ve even attended student-organized rap rallies to assure the community that Compton is still viable and its accreditation intact through this appeals process. The college has been a lifeline for a low-income community that depends upon Compton as a route away from poverty through education. “We’ve done everything that we can,” says Rodney Murray, CCFE president. “We want to make certain that this school, like the phoenix, will rise up better than before.”

Irrefutable evidence that Compton was due for a change came in October, when former trustee Ignacio Pena pled guilty to diverting more than $1 million in public funds to his own accounts. Pena faces four years in prison plus $1.12 million in restitution for creating false college courses and siphoning money.

With such shenanigans in the past, Murray is “guardedly optimistic” about a re-accreditation, hoping for probationary or show-cause status for Compton. Meanwhile, the school has a new state-appointed trustee, a new interim president and a union determined to see this calamity through. “These people need to have Compton Community College,” says Murray. “It’s the institution that helps them transcend.”

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