MI
Adjunct faculty at Henry Ford Community College filed cards with the Michigan Employment Relations Commission on Dec. 10 to seek an election for collective bargaining. By a ratio of 3-to-1, the part-timers outnumber the full-time faculty on the campus-who have been represented by the HFCC Federation of Teachers for 42 years. The adjuncts are among the lowest paid in the Dearborn area.

Mary Beck is a psychologist who has been in private practice for 30 years. She has been teaching as an adjunct at the college for the past five years. She decided to push for a union, she says, "because I thought the pay was insultingly low." She earns $1,700 a class-the top of the scale for all adjuncts. "If I averaged out not only the hourly pay for teaching but the time I put into preparing my class lectures, it would be minimum wage."
One boon to the group of adjuncts, who number approximately 600, is the support of the AFT full-time faculty locals. When the administration sent out a letter with "veiled threats," says Beck, HFCCFT president John McDonald followed with a strong statement of support for the adjuncts that enumerated the benefits a union would bring to its members as well as to the college and community.

The Wayne State Union of Part-Time Faculty/AFT, which won certification as the bargaining agent for the university's part-timers in April 2007, is in the midst of bargaining a first contract for the 900 people it represents. The unit priorities are job security and seniority rights, in addition to salary improvements, and health and retirement benefits. UPTF bargaining chair Tom Anderson says the team looks to the gains achieved by the Lecturers' Employee Organization at the University of Michigan for a model of how to achieve longer-term employment security.

FL
The Graduate Assistants United at Florida A&M University/AFT/NEA reached a tentative new three-year collective bargaining agreement on Jan. 8, 2008. This negotiation was particularly arduous because of political reorganizations in the state of Florida. The GAU bargained its last contract with the state board of regents, and it expired in 2003. The new contract is with the FAMU board of trustees and covers 400 graduate employees. It provides full health benefits for the first time, a $1,000 increase in stipend minimums and a 2 percent across-the-board increase. It maintains the employees' tuition waivers.

NJ
The 1,700 nonteaching administrators at Rutgers University, who gained recognition via card check to form the Union of Rutgers Administrators-AFT last spring, voted to ratify their first contract on Dec. 17. The four-year agreement provides a compounded raise of 9.3 percent, with 4.5 percent in the first year. The contract ends the employees' status as "at-will," guaranteeing no termination without just cause. In addition, it provides improved sick and vacation leave, tuition remission for dependents attending Rutgers part time (the prior benefit was for full-time attendance only), and flexible work schedules so URA unit members can take Rutgers classes during working hours.

OR
More than 21,000 paraprofessionals and school-related personnel represented by the Oregon School Employees Association have voted to affiliate with the AFT, marking the largest affiliation of an independent union in AFT history.

The vote tally for mail-in ballots counted Feb. 4-5 by the League of Women Voters was 5,121 to 885, demonstrating that the OSEA school employees overwhelmingly endorsed a recommendation by OSEA's leaders and seven-member study committee to support affiliation. "Our organizations share the same values and priorities," says AFT president Edward J. McElroy. "This affiliation will make OSEA and the AFT better and stronger."

The vote caps a decade-long process in which the AFT made a deep commitment to OSEA members in Oregon, including workers at Portland Community College. "It formalizes what has always been a close relationship between our unions and allows us to take our partnership to a new level," says OSEA president Merlene Martin.

WI
A bill that would allow academic staff and faculty at the University of Wisconsin the right to vote on whether to be represented by a collective bargaining agent is wending its way through the state Legislature. On Jan. 9, the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Higher Education recommended passage of Senate Bill 353, the Collective Bargaining Rights Bill. The "rights are currently enjoyed by academic staff and faculty in the public universities of each of Wisconsin's border states," says Mark Evenson, president of the Association of University of Wisconsin Professionals/AFT. Extending them to UW academics will allow the system "to gain in recruitment and retention."

The bill is on its way to the full Senate for a vote and then goes to the Assembly for committee referral.

CA
The community college funding initiative known as Proposition 92 went down to defeat on Feb. 5. The measure, supported by the California Federation of Teachers, would have created a dedicated funding stream for the state's 109 community colleges, not associated with K-12 enrollments. It also would have reduced student fees to $15 per credit with increases linked to costs of living.