AFT's academic staff unions chart the way for campus professionals seeking respect and security through collective bargaining

By Virginia Myers Kelly

The day Twana Lindsay got both an unsatisfactory performance evaluation and a letter of non-reappointment was the day she went to her union. Something was wrong, she told them. She’d received a favorable review two months earlier, and the deadline for the college to reveal a non-reappointment was long gone.

Now, two and a half years later, thanks to a successful grievance process and arbitration, Lindsay, assistant bursar at Queensborough Community College, is back on track. An arbitrator ruled that deadlines for non-reappointment notice must be kept, demotions or firings must follow the disciplinary process outlined in the contract, and evaluations must be prepared after meeting with the employee—not before. Lindsay, who says her negative evaluation came after she missed an impossible deadline involving financial aid, credits the Professional Staff Congress with giving her a chance “to give my side of the story ... I’m very happy to have had the union there for me.”

This is how a contract is supposed to work. “Our members rely on us to hold employers responsible. They deserve fair treatment and respect, and we will work tirelessly to ensure they get it,” says United University Professions/AFT president William Scheuerman. To meet that commitment, AFT recently published its report, “Standards of Good Practice for the Employment of Professional Staff,” to outline due process and other policies that best support professionals like Lindsay. As admissions officers, guidance counselors, campus architects, tech support personnel and others, professional staff are the glue that holds institutions together. The report recommends they be treated with respect by providing them with job descriptions, performance evaluations, job security, fair and equitable salaries, professional development and a full voice in university life, as well as ensuring their recognition within the union (see sidebar, opposite page).

Spurred to action
When Ellie Sullivan, now secretary-treasurer for University Professionals of Illinois/AFT, began work in graduate admissions at Chicago State University some 30 years ago, she and every other staff member served “at the pleasure of the president” and could be fired at will. One administrative assistant, she recalls, came in one morning shortly after a new dean had taken over to find rekeyed locks on the doors and a note to report to Human Resources, where she was told her position had been eliminated. Sullivan almost experienced the same fate: After she moved to the testing office, where she became coordinator of examinations, a new president disapproved of her program and almost closed it. “One of the reasons I helped organize [academic staff] is because I had nothing to lose,” she says.

Since that time, 1985, things have changed dramatically. Now, “If there’s a problem, you can grieve it. You have the guarantee of continued employment. There are clear performance standards. We have annual evaluations.” The list goes on. Sullivan was the first academic support professional (ASP) to apply for and receive a new educational leave benefit. Though it took five years to get her leave, the grievance process finally brought her application to the attention of the board of trustees, who granted it. “It was a valuable lesson for the ASPs,” she says. “We have a contract and we can enforce it.” That particular benefit is especially valued: a kind of sabbatical for staff, it consists of a six-month leave for professional development. Sullivan used hers to develop computerized testing, something she never could have accomplished during regular work hours.

Vermont is going through now what Sullivan did 20 years ago: Vermont State Colleges United/AFT signed its first contract in October, after three years of negotiations (see story, page 9). Upon hearing AFT’s list of best practices, Jo Anne Edwards, VSCU executive vice president, explains, “One of the reasons we organized is that we have none of those things.”

Since the contract was signed, Edwards and other staff members have a voice on campus through labor management committees, one on each of the Vermont State Colleges’ four campuses. Annual appointments have been replaced with a probationary period and long-term contracts now contain a clear procedure required for discharge or layoff. The contract “was a major victory for us,” says Edwards. “It’s making a big difference.”

Continuing to struggle
If Vermont is brand new to its contract and Illinois is an old hand, the City University of New York (CUNY) lies somewhere in the middle. Although the Professional Staff Congress/AFT (PSC) has represented staff there since its inception in 1972 (and staff representation began in 1969 under the PSC’s predecessor, the Legislative Conference), the union has been wrangling over renewal of a contract that expired in 2003, and a host of differences must be settled before it is finally signed.

“For us, the main issues are promotions, workload and respect,” says Iris DeLutro, vice president of the cross-campus unit that represents professional staff in the union and a member of the AFT Higher Education professional staff advisory committee that wrote the standards. “We want to be treated as the professionals that we are.” DeLutro explains that while professional staff have position categories, much as faculty have associate, assistant and full professor titles, to move from one category to another they must appear before a board-appointed committee stacked with management. “There should be higher education professionals sitting on these committees,” says DeLutro. So, the Queens College PSC leadership drafted a resolution to change the committee, and the president agreed to appoint two higher education officers (or HEOs, CUNY’s term for professional staff) and make the director of human resources, affirmative action officers and a college labor designee nonvoting members. DeLutro also would like to see benchmarks similar to those the faculty use for promotions. Currently, promotions often are made based on how many people one supervises, rather than on other responsibilities.

By contrast, William Patterson University, whose professional union is affiliated with the Council of New Jersey State and College Locals/AFT (CNJSCL), has a model system of promotion involving a staff committee to review candidates’ portfolios and a peer committee to make recommendations. “Our union really negotiated a good policy,” says Shari Selke, a CNJSCL professional staff co-officer who helps guide colleagues through the process.

Professional development
Selke, a stage manager, also has had the opportunity to attend an annual theater festival as well as AFT conferences as part of her professional development. For other university staff, development opportunities vary; CNJSCL is working on making those opportunities more equitable.

This is an area where the PSC shines. In its latest contract, the PSC bargained for and won an annual professional development fund of $500,000 to be administered by a PSC committee, and each year, professional staff members are eligible to apply for $2,000 grants. For Ralph Giordano, an architect in the campus planning office at the College of Staten Island-CUNY, that means help keeping his professional registration current with 36 hours of continuing education credits every three years. Giordano also praises the contract for establishing the 35-hour work week, which has allowed him to leave work at a reasonable hour and use his free time to teach history and write books (he has published one and two more are scheduled for release this spring).

At SUNY College at Plattsburgh, Jeff Jones uses professional development resources established through the United University Professions/AFT to keep another kind of license: his boat captain’s license. Jones, a research assistant and lab manager for the Lake Champlain Research Institute, drives the research vessel that takes scientists out to collect water and bottom samples.

While Jones is grateful for the opportunity to keep his marine skills sharp, he also recognizes the union for helping him attain permanent status in a job that’s been on annual contract for 10 years. “As a temporary employee, you’re subject to dismissal any time,” he says, plus he’s had to submit to performance reviews twice a year. Now he has job security as well as the recognition of faculty who rely on him to guide students in the lab.

Perhaps the mother of all professional development is the sabbatical, usually reserved for faculty members. At the Fashion Institute of Technology, professional staff, called “nonclassroom faculty,” also get full sabbaticals as well as tenure after three years. The United College of Employees of FIT/NYSUT/AFT represents professional staff together with support staff and faculty in a wall-to-wall unit. Juliette Romano, president of UCE and a nonclassroom faculty member in career services, took a sabbatical to go back to school and study labor relations.

Romano is also proud of the recognition nonclassroom faculty enjoy at FIT. “The people who do the nonacademic jobs really have something to bring to the table in terms of the education of the students,” she says. “We’re full partners with the academic side of the house.” Nonclassroom faculty participate in collegewide committees, including curriculum, tenure and promotion. Romano credits retired UCE president Lou Stollar and others for having the foresight to include nonclassroom faculty in collective bargaining when it was set up in 1970.

“We have a voice because the union has supported our position as nonclassroom faculty,” agrees Phil Milio, FIT student activities counselor. “It really does promote a high spirit of morale.” It also benefits students: “We’re networking all the time because we’re on faculty committees,” says Milio. Because classroom and nonclassroom faculty sit together on committees, an enthusiastic political science student may be referred to student government, for example.

At SUNY-Plattsburgh, the UUP also has guaranteed a voice for professional staff. Al Mihalek, assistant to the dean of arts and sciences in Plattsburgh, helped choose the university’s president on a search committee two years ago, and professionals participate in the faculty senate on a regular basis. Richard Kelder, co-director of the New Paltz Center for Teaching and Learning at SUNY-New Paltz, sits on the board that determines curriculum. “UUP has worked very hard with the campus administrators to develop a culture here so that they know that professionals are faculty, they’re just nonteaching faculty,” says Mihalek. Also in place at New Paltz is a process to appeal negative evaluations to a committee that includes staff. “Professionals on this campus aren’t second-class citizens,” says Mihalek.

At the same time, John Marino, UUP vice president for professionals, has one concern with the local: Professional staff don’t always take advantage of the policies for which the union has fought. “My goal is to educate members so they can take advantage of everything we have,” he says.

Ultimately, says Kelder, it comes down to having professional faculty committed to their careers and “constantly willing to develop and grow.” Having the union in place and spreading the word about the opportunities it’s made possible helps that professional ambition flourish.