Vermont faces double impasse

Things are looking grey in the Green Mountain State. Just as the full-time faculty at the University of Vermont declared an impasse over negotiations for their second contract, the part-time faculty found themselves declaring an impasse of their own—this one on their first contract.

The full-time faculty of United Academics/AFT/AAUP are facing three roadblocks: salary, benefits and workload. Job security is another sticking point.

“We’re just a long way apart,” says UA president David Shiman. The university offered a 2 percent salary increase for each of the three years of the contract; UA is asking for about 8 percent. Health benefits have never been negotiated because the union’s first contract, which expired in June, had to cover so many other issues. Negotiations center on increases in co-pays, reduced coverage and a general increase in costs for faculty as well as reduced benefits for retirees. Workload, the third prong of negotiations, is threatened by “enrollment creep,” says Shiman, who cites the university’s intent to boost the budget by increasing enrollment. “We see some indicators of classes increasing in size without increase in faculty,” he says, adding that a trend toward more nontenure-track and part-time hires could undermine the quality of education. Regarding job security, UA wants a renewal structure for lecturers whose contracts are limited to one year or one semester.

For part-timers, also members of the UA local but required by law to negotiate separately, job security is the primary issue. Unit members live in fear from semester to semester that they will not be rehired, reports Michele Patenaude, chief negotiator for part-time faculty, noting that the system allows even veteran part-time faculty to be dismissed at any time for any reason. “We would like to focus on teaching and students, not on holding on to our jobs and finding the resources to do our jobs.”

Most of the 85 members of UA’s part-time unit have taught at Vermont at least seven years; some have been there for 30. Fourteen teach full time but are kept out of the full-time unit because the administration does not count continuing education courses toward full-time status. What’s more, says Patenaude, the university treats part-timers as dilettante workers who are not dependent on university income and work to “earn a little extra money.”

Part-timers also want to negotiate raises (pay has been frozen since 2002) and access to prorated benefits.

Since UA reached an impasse, mediation was scheduled for late September for the full-time unit and expected to begin shortly thereafter for the part-time unit. The last contract for full-time faculty was settled in mediation.

Philadelphia college told to stick to the rules

A Pennsylvania arbitrator has decided that the Community College of Philadelphia cannot make up its own rules for how it counts full-time and part-time faculty to meet union contract guidelines. In finding for the Faculty and Staff Federation of the Community College of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania arbitrator Jay Goldstein was upholding a section of the contract negotiated 30 years ago, which stipulates both what the ratio of full-time to part-time faculty must be (60:40) and how they shall be counted.

The federation, which is affiliated with the AFT, represents about 425 full-time and 600 part-time faculty. Its language on maintaining the ratio was a model for community colleges when it was negotiated, and it continues to be.

Recently, the college has been consistently failing to meet that ratio. It determines the figure by counting the total number of credit sections taught in the prior three academic years and how many of those are taught by full-time faculty and how many by part-timers. Since 2002, the deficit has been growing. By fall 2004, the deficit was 109 sections. The union has filed and won grievances obliging the college to remedy the situation.

In June 2004, the college notified all faculty that it was reactivating a little-used provision in the contract requiring them to provide six hours of unpaid academic advising.

Faculty reacted with concern, noting that the college’s paid advisors were better skilled to deal with the complicated challenges many of the students’ academic plans and schedules posed. In fact, without the union’s blessing, 80 faculty declined to do the advising in the spring 2005 semester.

But faculty were astonished to learn when the 2004 semester began that the full-time/part-time faculty ratio deficit had become a surplus of 287 or more sections. Why? Because the college had decided it could count each six-hour-per-
semester advising requirement as a section.

“It was entirely bogus,” says Karen Schermerhorn. In neutral language, the arbitrator seemed to agree. As the college “did not obtain any right through the bargaining process to count the [advising] hours toward the ‘Ratio’, it can not do so unilaterally now.”

University of Florida forced to negotiate

The United Faculty of Florida/NEA/AFT secured a tremendous victory in September when the University of Florida at last recognized the local chapter of the statewide union. Administrators have begun talks with union reps in preparation for negotiations that faculty have worked toward for three years.

The final piece of this Florida labor story fell into place after a Sept. 9 Public Employees Relations Commission (PERC) order forced the university, the last holdout among Florida’s 11 state institutions, to recognize the union and agree to collective bargaining.

The ruling reverses PERC’s original decision, which declared that a shift in collective bargaining responsibility from the statewide board to individual college boards absolved the state from recognizing the union. After a district court decisively struck down that decision, declaring that the state cannot “unilaterally terminate its obligations under a collective bargaining agreement simply by reorganizing the executive branch,” PERC agreed that the university’s board is a “successive employer” and must abide by the union agreements already in place until a new contract can be negotiated.

Kim Emery, vice president of UFF, says the decision “demonstrates that even when the state’s most powerful politicians pull out all the stops, they don’t have the power to decertify our union or to void the contract that protects our rights.” UFF president Tom Auxter adds that the fight to preserve the union and the newly localized contracts have boosted interest in the union. “Two years and 252 days later, Jeb Bush’s devious plan has not only failed, it’s generated huge membership gains on all campuses,” says Auxter.

New chapter president Connie Shehan welcomes the chance to craft a local contract tailored more to the needs of UF faculty than the old statewide contracts. “We’ve waited more than three years to negotiate this contract and we’re optimistic about the opportunities that local bargaining will bring,” she says. “We intend to make the most of it.”

Negotiators will focus on improvements that should lift the university to the top tiers of research institutions in the country: a “real sabbatical system;” meaningful salary increases to improve competitive stature; better benefits; clearer and more consistent tenure and promotion criteria; and enhanced intellectual property protections. “Above all, we are committed to protecting the academic integrity of our university and safeguarding core academic principles from political interference,” says Emery.

The decision, she adds, has national implications and potentially historic significance. “Our experience shows that even under this kind of concerted assault, faculty can rely on collective bargaining to guarantee the fundamental rights that make our work possible.”

Union chapters at Florida’s 10 other state colleges and universities already have been recognized and are in various stages of negotiations. At UF, negotiations are expected to begin in October.

New York's PSC still has no contract

In a powerful display of determination this fall, the Professional Staff Congress/AFT drew more than 1,200 faculty and staff to a “milestone” event directed at settling a contract with the City University of New York. CUNY faculty and staff have been working without a contract for three years and without a raise for four; the meeting was intended to present an action plan to move the contract along at last.

AFT executive vice president Antonia Cortese and AFT vice presidents Alan Lubin and Randi Weingarten (president of the United Federation of Teachers) came to the meeting to voice solidarity with the PSC’s struggle to win a fair contract.

The union already has participated in more than 40 bargaining sessions and numerous protests, pickets, petitions and rallies, trying to draw public attention to the crisis at CUNY. “We will continue to do everything we can to reach an agreement at the bargaining table,” said PSC president Barbara Bowen. “But we refuse to accept an austerity contract.”

The union and management are wrangling over salary increases, an insufficient welfare fund and deteriorating working conditions.

Management offers raises that fall short of inflation: no increase the first year, then 6.25 percent over the next three years plus another 1 percent the fourth year, based on a “productivity increase.” The union wants at least 10 percent plus an $800 cash increase to base salaries, and a $500 boost for longevity.

Management also is insisting on the exclusion of department heads from PSC membership and full-time faculty annual leave that would end Aug. 22.

By Nov. 3, PSC leaders will determine whether they have the framework for a good settlement. If not, they will decide on that date whether and when to conduct a referendum on a job action.

In the past, postcard campaigns, pickets, rallies, leafleting, weekly calls to the chancellor and board chair, and even TV ads and the declaration of a “state of emergency” resulted in small gains from CUNY, but it hasn’t been enough.

Besides the injustice of low salaries and poor benefits, PSC members worry that the exploitation of faculty and staff is part of a movement to dismantle the public sector. CUNY traditionally serves the working class, people of color and new immigrants to New York. Bowen commented: “The poet Audre Lorde said about black people in this country: ‘We were never meant to survive.’ Our fight at CUNY is so hard—and so important—because in a certain sense, our students were never meant to survive, either.”