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Academic freedom protected at Harper

Usually, money and health insurance are the stumbling blocks to a contract settlement. This year, the negotiating team for 216 full-time faculty at William Rainey Harper College in Illinois faced a management attempt to restrict academic freedom. For the Cook County College Teachers Union/AFT, that issue was non-negotiable. By Oct. 9, it had brought the college to the brink of a strike.

“The board had wanted the right to determine who will teach, when, what and how,” says Perry Buckley, CCCTU president and chief negotiator of the contract at the Harper chapter. “We said we’d spend forever on the picket line” to fight these board power plays, “and we’ll have every colleague in the state with us.”

To settle the last contract, in 2002, Harper faculty mounted a 12-day strike—the first in the union’s 30-year history. This time around, faculty stood ready to do it again.

In the end, not only did the union preserve the protections faculty already had, the board gave them more. The four-year contract, which runs from Aug. 15, 2006, to Aug. 14, 2010, has language guaranteeing the board powers and duties granted by public law, “except as limited by the written provisions” of the agreement. In addition, the contract affirms the faculty’s right to participate in shared governance and to “choose their own teaching strategies and course content.”

The contract gives salary increases of 4.3 percent per year and retains significant pay increases for promotions. Retirement issues were also a tough point in the bargaining, and the union was able to retain an early retirement incentive through 2010 and assure retiree health insurance coverage under the state plan.

Other features of the contract: Faculty maintain their role in the promotions process; they set office hours; they earn extra for developing distance learning classes and they participate more fully in the department chair selection process. Release time for union officers and faculty senators is guaranteed.

Buckley says that faculty were unfaltering in their efforts to secure a fair contract, dressing in red to show solidarity and showing up for rallies. It paid off: Four years to the day after the Harper faculty took to the picket lines for the strike of 2002, they assembled to learn the details of their new settlement. “The ovation was overwhelming,” says Buckley.

AFT opposes Iraq war

Among the issues that voters will be taking into account when deciding who to vote for on Nov. 7 is the war in Iraq. With both American and Iraqi casualties mounting and the looming threat of a civil war, polls show that Americans are increasingly edgy about the war and the Bush administration’s failure to articulate a clear strategy for winning, establishing peace and bringing our troops home.

In July, AFT convention delegates passed a resolution that, while expressing continued support for American troops, urges the AFT to “oppose the war in Iraq and call upon our country’s leaders to withdraw all troops, bases and military operations in a rapid and timely manner.”

In 2003, on the eve of U.S. military action in Iraq, the AFT executive council passed a resolution noting “the dangers posed by the regime of Saddam Hussein to world peace and security.” It expressed support for the United Nations resolution requiring Saddam to abandon the country’s weapons of mass destruction program. “AFT supports the U.N. resolution with the hope that war can be avoided, but with the sober recognition that military conflict may become unavoidable as a last resort.”

Delegates to the 2004 AFT convention adopted a resolution pointing out that the political missteps and strategic mistakes by the Bush administration have “left Iraqis in a state of insecurity, further isolated the U.S., and squandered much of the good will felt by Iraqis and Americans at the fall of Saddam.”

The 2006 resolution calls on the AFT to support an AFL-CIO resolution on the war and “actively encourage its state and local affiliates to join the AFT in working with the AFL-CIO to end the war in Iraq and bring the troops home rapidly.”

The AFL-CIO resolution says the “American people were misinformed before the war began and have not been informed about the reality on the ground and the very difficult challenges that lie ahead.” Citing the legal obstacles to Iraqi workers’ efforts to form independent labor unions, the AFL-CIO resolution calls on the Iraqi government to recognize International Labor Organization standards that call for protecting the right of workers to organize free from all government and employer interference.

Compton hands over reins to sister institution

If there’s ever been proof of how central teaching and learning is to the college experience, it’s at Compton Community College, where despite administrative scandal and subsequent loss of accreditation, faculty have ensured their students will continue to learn and grow. For the coming year, Compton is borrowing the accreditation of El Camino College, so that it can continue to offer courses to the students in its low-income, heavily minority district.

Compton’s accreditation was withdrawn last year, following allegations of corruption and mismanagement at the board of trustees level. The loss came swiftly—without even the customary six months’ opportunity to make changes that would help the school meet accreditation requirements. The reasons for the lost accreditation had nothing to do with curriculum or the ability of the faculty—and everything to do with power and greed. One former trustee faces prison plus more than $1 million restitution for diverting public funds to his own accounts. But the students in the Compton district are the real losers.

Which is why faculty have agreed to work under El Camino, says Compton College Federation of Employees/AFT president Rodney Murray. “We’re happy in this sense: We’re able to provide the students education in Compton.” However, he adds, “the devil is in the details.” Faculty are still employees of the Compton Community College district, which is still their collective bargaining partner, but they teach El Camino classes. And policies regarding provisions like class size, and particularly when to cancel a class because of underenrollment, are muddied when the bargaining agreement says one thing, but El Camino policy says another.

There are other areas of confusion, says Murray, who complains that El Camino is making decisions without communicating to the faculty and staff. “We’re just hopping mad about some of the things they’re doing,” he says. “It looks a lot like a takeover.”

But at least the doors are still open. Enrollment has plummeted by 50 percent, but Murray hopes the school will recover and regain accreditation after the required two-year wait. “We would like to remain an independent district,” he says.

Clashes in Mexico, Zimbabwe raise concern

Two international situations involving trade unionists have sparked increasing concern from the AFT this fall. In October, AFT president Edward J. McElroy wrote to Mexican president Vicente Fox about escalating violence in Oaxaca, where a teacher strike that began in May has pitted the union and local citizens in clashes with both city and state police.

The AFT “deplores these violent confrontations” between the groups, wrote McElroy, and the union “strongly believes that the only way to end this crisis is to urge legitimate representatives to pursue true dialogue and negotiation.” He emphasized that “every effort be made to avoid the use of excessive military and police force in the Oaxaca area as a means of resolving the crisis.”

The union also has protested the arrest in September of hundreds of trade unionists and other civilians during peaceful demonstrations in Zimbabwe. Many protesters were beaten and allegedly tortured by police, according to press reports, including Wellington Chibebe, secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions and recipient of the AFL-CIO’s 2003 George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award.

“These unprovoked arrests and harassment are a continuation of your government’s failure to abide by internationally recognized human rights and labor standards,” McElroy wrote in a letter to Zimbabwe Ambassador Machivenyika Mapuranga.

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Beware pension hybrids

Much of today’s debate over pension plans centers around schemes to dump solid traditional plans in favor of riskier 401(k)-type plans. But there is a third kind of pension. It’s called a “cash-balance plan” and it bears watching—particularly because recent legal and congressional decisions could make this retirement hybrid more attractive to employers.

Here is how the three basic plans work:

Defined-benefit plan: These are traditional pensions in which employers promise to pay retirement benefits based on an employee’s years of service and final average salary. The investment costs and market risk are borne by the employer.

Defined-contribution plan: These are 401(k)-type plans in which employers provide employees with individual investment accounts and promise to contribute a certain amount to the accounts (for example, 4 percent to 8 percent of salary). Employees can also contribute to their accounts and decide how the assets are invested. Investment management fees are paid by the employee’s account, reducing the funds available to pay benefits. At retirement, the employee’s benefit is paid solely from the contributions and investment earnings that have accumulated.

Cash-balance plan: In a typical cash-balance plan, employers still contribute a certain amount to individual accounts. The employer also promises a rate of return on the assets in these accounts. Increases and decreases in the value of the plan’s investments do not directly affect the benefit amounts promised to participants. The investment risks are borne by the employer, who also keeps any profit in excess of the guaranteed rate of return.

The cash-balance plan is sometimes called a hybrid, because it combines elements of the other two plans. It provides regular fixed contributions to an individual account, much like a defined-contribution plan. And, like a defined-benefit account, it holds employers responsible for returns on investment.

New cash-balance plans are legitimized in the federal law passed this summer covering private pensions—legally inoculated from the kind of age-discrimination lawsuits that have plagued these plans in the past. Usually, it’s mid- and late-career employees who go to court, charging that companies shortchanged their years of service when they converted from traditional plans.

But even younger employees need to ask hard questions about cash-balance plans. They typically fail to offer disability and survivors’ benefits, which are crucial components in the safety net for employees under most defined-benefit plans. And cash-balance plans’ guaranteed rates of return are frequently below what traditional pension plans have generated in years past. Any “surplus returns” under this hybrid go right into employers’ pockets.

“You have to look at cash-balance plans on a case-by-case basis, but the benchmark is always the same—and that’s the traditional pension,” advises AFT pension specialist John Abraham.

These hybrids are “only as good as their ability to maintain employees’ standard of living and lifestyle into the retirement years,” Abraham adds. “We know that traditional pensions meet this standard. The jury is still out on whether cash-balance plans are up to the task.”

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