Category Archives: Campaigns & Contracts

New Hampshire Union Leader: UNH union rejects contract report

DURHAM – Members of the University of New Hampshire faculty union soundly rejected a fact finder’s report on a new contract Thursday, even as school officials sought to expand the voting window and who could participate.

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Chicago Tribune: City teachers OK contract

Chicago Teachers Union members Monday approved a 5-year contract that gives them a 4 percent increase each year and a freeze on insurance costs for three years.

Substance: Breaking Story: Chaos at the CTU Meeting

Marylin Stewart (pictured center, at right) made the unprecedented decision to not hold a role-call vote at the August 31, 2007 Chicago Teacher’s Meeting. The chaos that ensued was caught on video, and shows a throng of teachers and union members in the crowd booing the newly proposed contract.

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University, faculty association reach two-year agreement

University of Toronto faculty and librarians will receive a three per cent across-the-board salary increase plus benefits improvements as part of an agreement announced on Sept. 5.

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WCAX: UNH accepts factfinder report in faculty contract dispute

There is a break in the impasse in contract talks between faculty and the University of New Hampshire.

The university’s negotiating team has accepted an independent factfinder’s report that recommends a compromise in the contract dispute.

Negotiations have been underway since the spring of 2006, and have been stuck on wages and benefits.

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Sun-Times: Teachers union: That raise won’t be enough

The Chicago Teachers Union came out charging Wednesday evening, saying a deal announced this week of 3 to 3.5 percent yearly raises for non-teaching Chicago Public School workers isn’t enough for teachers.

“[CPS] will have to change for us,” CTU President Marilyn Stewart told reporters after she briefed CTU members on contract talks.

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AP: ESU faculty union urges teachers to reject contract

HARRISBURG — Leaders of a union that represents 5,500 faculty members at Pennsylvania’s state-owned universities, including East Stroudsburg University, have withdrawn their endorsement of a tentative contract and are urging professors to reject the four-year pact, the union president said Wednesday.

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New Journal: Pa. university union leaders now oppose faculty pact

Leaders of a union that represents 5,500 faculty members at Pennsylvania’s state-owned universities have reversed their position on a tentative contract agreement and are urging professors to reject the four-year pact, the union president said today.

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Philadelphia Inquirer: 14 Pa. schools, faculties close to agreement

The 14 Pennsylvania-owned universities and their faculty appear to be close to a tentative agreement on a four-year contract.

Neither union officials nor state officials late last night would confirm details from the 12-hour bargaining session yesterday, but both said classes for about 25,000 summer school students, including those at West Chester and Cheyney, would convene today.

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St. Petersburg Times: USF, union agree on faculty raises

The University of South Florida and its faculty union have agreed on a 4.5 percent salary increase for the 2006-07 school year that will provide retroactive pay from October for faculty members and professional employees.

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The Capital Times: UW faculty union rights overdue

By Dave Zweifel

Although the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Finance has taken the proposal out of the budget, there’s still a decent chance that faculty and staff in the University of Wisconsin System will finally get what other public employees in Wisconsin have — the right to decide whether they want to have a union.

Under current law, the faculty and staffs at UW campuses are forbidden from forming unions to bargain for pay and benefits, a law that goes back to a day when university employees were thought to be above the “common people’s” need for such blue collar institutions. Attempts to change the law have been beaten back for decades.

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Workday Minnesota: Crookston, Duluth faculty reject contract offer

Faculty members at the University of Minnesota’s Duluth and Crookston campuses have voted to reject a contract offer.

The offer was turned down last week after an overwhelming majority of the Crookston faculty rejected the local provisions for the Crookston campus. The contract would have covered faculty at both campuses.

In its offer, the University had refused to drop a demand to give the administration authority to unilaterally change parts of the contract addressing Crookston-specific issues at any time, without faculty input, according to leaders of the faculty union, the University Education Association (UEA).

The offer also failed to adequately address other key contract issues for Crookston, such as tenure and workload. The University has indicated that it needs flexibility regarding the direction the campus goes in the future, said Mark Keränen, president of the Crookston UEA local.

The Crookston faculty, which unionized in February 2005, has been working under a stop-gap agreement that covered their salaries and gave them a grievance procedure. It expired July 1, 2006.

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Toledo Blade: Eastern Michigan faculty approves 4-year contract

Eastern Michigan University faculty overwhelmingly approved a new contract Friday after working seven months on an expired pact.

The agreement with the school’s administration passed 326-11, the American Association of University Professors said in a release. Eastern Michigan’s Board of Regents is expected to vote on the proposal soon, union officials said.

The agreement calls for salary increases of 3.5 percent, 4.06 percent, 3.75 percent, and 3.88 percent over four years. Faculty would get an added 1 percent contribution to retirement plans spread out over the last three years of the contract.

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Baltimore Sun: Lecturers to get benefits

Regents to require colleges to provide health, retirement coverage to long-term teachers

The University System of Maryland agreed yesterday to require its colleges to provide traditional benefits to long-term contractual lecturers, who occupy an expanding second tier of the state’s teaching work force.

The Sun reported in December that nearly 300 full-time instructors at five colleges were not eligible for retirement and other benefits. At Coppin State and Frostburg State universities, some lecturers who had been in their jobs for more than a decade weren’t even getting health insurance.

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Telegraph Forum: North Central State College may unionize

The North Central State Faculty Association has filed a petition with the State Employee Relations Board to form a collective bargaining unit.

About 60 full-time faculty members will vote soon on collective bargaining, according to Beth Franz, president of the college faculty association. The association is a chapter of the American Association of University Professors.

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The Chronicle News Blog: Tentative Deal on Faculty Contract Is Reached at Eastern Michigan U.

Eastern Michigan University has reached a tentative contract agreement with its faculty union, following seven months of failed negotiations and a 12-day strike that rang in the academic year. According to the Eastern Echo, a campus newspaper, the administration and the union used an independent fact finder’s report, released last week, as their guide toward reaching the agreement. Following the fact finder’s recommendations, the tentative contract largely meets the union’s salary demands, but it satisfies one of the administration’s conditions by requiring union members to pay more of their health-care costs. Members of the union, a chapter of the American Association of University Professors, are scheduled to vote on the tentative contract on April 20. The university’s Board of Regents must also approve the deal for it to become official. —John Gravois

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California Faculty Associations’s summary of the agreement and salary report can be found here.

Inside Higher Ed:

The California State University System and its faculty union, a branch of the National Education Association, announced a tentative four-year contract Tuesday, just days before the union has threatened to start rolling strikes. The contract will increase base salaries by 20.7 percent over four years, plus additional funds in various other category. An analysis from the university system said that the average salary for a tenure-track faculty member would increase from $74,000 to $90,749 over the life of the contract.

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The Chronicle: California State U. and Faculty Union Reach Tentative Pact, Averting Strike
The California State University system has reached a tentative agreement on the terms of a four-year contract with its faculty union, thus averting what might have been the largest job action in higher-education history.

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Daily Mining Gazette: Judge rules in favor of union

HOUGHTON — A Lansing judge has ordered Michigan Tech University administration and Tech’s faculty union to head back to the bargaining table. …

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