PrintThe plan was revealed Nov. 28, when the New York State Commission on Health Care Facilities for the 21st Century released its final recommendations. Its timing, just as the state Legislature was winding down its year’s work, came like a stealth attack. Under the state law that created the commission last year, the commission’s rulings were to take effect automatically on Jan. 1, 2007, if the governor and Legislature did not reject them in their entirety.
With few dates left in the legislative calendar, the AFT-affiliated New York State United Teachers
(NYSUT), the United University Professions (UUP) and the New York State Public Employees Federation (PEF) mobilized their members to testify at hearings around the state on Dec. 11, and to turn out by the hundreds at a rally on Dec. 13, the only day the Legislature met before the holiday recess.
“It’s like treating a heart attack by amputating a leg,” said NYSUT president and AFT vice president Richard Iannuzzi. “Privatizing vital healthcare services and eliminating physician training and education programs will only make New York’s healthcare problems worse.”
“Millions of New Yorkers have no health insurance,” said NYSUT executive vice president Alan Lubin, who is also an AFT vice president. “Privatizing and closing the very hospitals that provide them care could literally be a death sentence for some of these uninsured.”
“The mission of the State University hospitals in Brooklyn, Syracuse and Stony Brook is to provide high-quality healthcare to all—regardless of ability to pay,” said UUP president and AFT vice president William Scheuerman. “But if the hospitals were run by the private sector, their mission would be changed to nurturing a healthy bottom line, not healthy citizens.”
After the Legislature adjourned without acting, privatization opponents took some heart from the comments of elected leaders who indicated that the battle is not over.
Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno told the Albany Times Union that in 2007, the Legislature and incoming Gov. Eliot Spitzer could tackle the issues in the proposal “that need to be fixed.” On Dec. 11, Assemblyman Ronald Canestrari, who is chair of the Assembly’s higher education committee, predicted that the Legislature was not done with the plan yet.
The privatizations would affect 30 percent of the 32,000 professionals UUP represents, says the union. In addition, PEF represents approximately 900 nurses and other healthcare professionals at SUNY Upstate Medical Center, and an additional 2,000 healthcare professionals at SUNY Downstate and SUNY Stony Brook. If these facilities are privatized, the employees would lose their status as state employees, including the loss of their pension rights, union contract rights and civil service protections.
Further, N.J. academics are prohibited from using their institutional affiliation to identify themselves when they publish or in any way disseminate their work. If they publish a textbook, they may not use that book or have their institutions require its use in any class.
The gray areas at the margins of the law, known as the Uniform New Jersey Ethics Code, are wide. A year ago, the state Ethics Commission released a report that was to trigger the enforcement of laws put on the books in recent years because of political and financial scandals in the state. Yet, ethics liaison officers, the people on campuses who approve these matters, are hamstrung by inapplicability of the regulations to the academic setting and the territory they are charged to oversee.
Union officers, for example, may be in violation if they are compensated for their work through payment or release time. Those who consult to stay current within their professional field—psychologists, for example—must tread carefully, even if they don’t accept money. People who raise money on behalf of their institutions—development officers—may not use their titles when working with the foundations that exist to raise that money. Research university joint ventures in the realms of technology, the life sciences, renewable energy and nanotechnology, to name a few areas of innovation sanctioned by the state, are hampered by the code regulations.
“People are frightened by it,” says Michael Frank, a psychology professor at Stockton State University and president of the local chapter there of the Council of New Jersey State College Locals. “The penalties—such as someone being detenured—are potentially huge and frightening.” Academics in applied fields, he says, like his own or business, nursing or accounting, view their work in the field as a way to keep current. The code, although “a well-intentioned law,” he says, “makes it impossible for them to do their jobs.”
The state’s faculty unions and institutional administrations are working together to have the code changed. In October, CNJSCL president Nicholas Yovello, a librarian, testified before the N.J. Ethics Commission. He noted that the code’s “one-size-fits-all approach does not reflect the reality of academia” where many of the situations considered conflicts of interest in the rest of the public sector are the very stuff of practice for scholars, teachers and researchers. “The atmosphere is stymieing academic research,” he says.
At the same meeting, the state colleges’ ethical liaison officers submitted a detailed analysis of the way the code “makes New Jersey institutions less competitive than those of other states and hinders them in accomplishing their respective institutional missions.” The ELOs provided an extensive list of recommendations for modifying the law and directed commissioners to models in states like New York, Virginia and Washington.
The most recent skirmish took place on Dec. 11, when 12,000 demonstrators gathered outside the Trenton statehouse holding signs and shouting, “Negotiate, don’t legislate!”
The Legislature was hustling to meet a Jan. 1 deadline. New Jersey has the highest property taxes in the country and elected officials promised voters they would do something about it. Property taxes are the main source of education funding.
In looking for places to make cuts, some legislators decided that the pension plan is too generous and that public employees should absorb more of the costs of rising healthcare. Tax reform proposals on the table would raise the threshold at which employees qualify for pension benefits, reduce pension payouts and raise the age of retirement for those public employees who are in the state pension plan—a group that includes the teachers represented by the New Jersey Education Association and adjunct faculty represented by the Council of New Jersey State College Locals. Also, all public employees would see higher copays and reduced health benefits.
Public employees are outraged. They point out that the pensions and health benefits are the reason they have foregone adequate salary increases for many years. What’s more, they say, these are matters for bargaining, not tax reform proposals. The state’s major unions—the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; the Communications Workers of America; the AFT; and the NEA—are in an AFL-CIO coalition to fight for the preservation of workers’ benefits. Many public employee contracts expire this summer. The unions want negotiations over benefits to occur at the bargaining table, not in the Legislature.
Those are some of the questions the Faculty and Staff Federation/AFT of the Community College of Philadelphia has asked its employer. Three months after their contract expired on Aug. 31, members of the union have upped the ante in their quest for information and progress on negotiations. Dec. 8 was the kickoff date for a heightened contract campaign with the union asking the college administration to open its financial records to public review.
At a noontime demonstration, faculty and staff educated students and the public about their issues. At the same time, food venders in the square outside a central building agreed to display large signs on their carts. The same message circulated on a large mobile billboard that cruised around the campus and in downtown Philadelphia. It read: “Teachers and students open their books every day. Why won’t the administration at the Community College of Philadelphia open theirs?”
The college has proposed shifting employees to a new health plan with diminished benefits in the interest of saving $900,000, says Karen Schermerhorn, co-president of the FSF. The union asks if comparable savings couldn’t be found elsewhere; for example, in the college’s branding program, known as “The Path to Possibilities.” One clever part of the campaign was the cementing of rubber mats on the sidewalks stamped with branded CCP messages. Unfortunately, the mats became slippery hazards during wet weather, causing students to slip and talk of lawsuits to ensue. They were removed, but not surprisingly, the cost of the fiasco has come up at the bargaining table when the union is asked for givebacks.
“We’ve asked for information on waste, administrator salaries and other costs,” says Schermerhorn. “We can tell them how to save $900,000.”
FSF represents 425 full-time faculty, 225 classified staff and 700 part-time faculty, in three units. All are working under the terms of the old contract.
