Category Archives: Campaigns & Contracts

Newsday: SCCC faculty agree to 6-year deal

Full-time faculty at Suffolk County Community College would get a 16.5 percent wage increase over the life of a six-year contract, according to a labor agreement announced yesterday.

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Oroville Mercury-Register: Professors seek a funding boost for CSU

A bid by professors to increase state funding for the California State University system was still alive Monday, according to a spokesperson for the California Faculty Association. The plan to add $75.7 million to the CSU budget was presented Friday to the Budget Conference Committee. The panel’s six members include Assemblyman Rick Keene, R-Chico. John Travis, president of the association, said he hoped the addition to the budget would ultimately win approval.

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Free New Mexican: NMSU employees favor union

New Mexico State University employees have voted to join a union.

Unofficial results from a mail-in election that began May 4 showed 559 of the university’s nonexempt employees voted in favor of representation by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME. Some 302 workers opposed unionization.

The school’s labor relations board did not count 25 challenged ballots; 37 other ballots were ruled invalid because the instructions were not followed.

Some 1,290 nonexempt employees at the main campus, NMSU extension offices and branch campuses were eligible to vote. The results were counted and verified over a seven-hour period Wednesday.

The election will be certified on June 8 to allow five working days for any objections to be filed.

“I am so happy,” said Genevieve Bauer, a library specialist who sat through the vote count with about 60 other union supporters. “It has been a lot of work.”

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bangordailynews.com: Faculty, staff of UMS rally for new pacts

Unresolved contract negotiations took up the better part of the University of Maine System board of trustees’ meeting Monday as faculty and staff members from campuses around the state took turns at the microphone to protest an 18-month stalemate.

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SooToday.com: LSSU, Steelworkers reach agreement on labour contract

Board of Trustees has approved a new contract with University employees who are represented by the United Steelworkers of America.

The former contract, which includes LSSU clerical, maintenance and food service workers, expired in August 2003.

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Daily News: Teachers rally for smaller classes

BY ERIN EINHORN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Seventh-grader Raven Marcano talks with teachers union President Randi Weingarten at PS 126 on the lower East Side.

Kids and their parents arriving for school yesterday were greeted all over the city by chanting teachers waving picket signs.

The teachers aren’t on strike – just striking a political chord for the smaller class sizes that they say are necessary to improve education.

“It’s common sense,” said reading teacher Denia Walters, who rallied with students and colleagues outside Public School 126 on the lower East Side yesterday. “The most important thing you can do for a child is address their individual needs … That can only happen in small classes.”

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Peach Arch News: Teachers walk away from employers’ offer

B.C. Teachers’ Federation cancelled three days of contract talks this week after seeing the employers’ offer they termed “an insult.”

The B.C. Public School Employers’ Association had not received a formal response to the offer or a date for talks to resume as of Thursday, BCPSEA’s Deborah Stewart said.

BCTF local presidents met Wednesday to decide a response to a raise offered at eight per cent over four years and benefit improvements.

The teachers want 24 per cent over three years.

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The Jackson Citizen Patriot: Profs have tentative deal

Jackson Community College has reached a tentative contract agreement with its faculty union after professors worked the entire academic year without one.

“We’ve been at the table for a year,” said JCC Faculty Association President Chris DeMarco, who declined to discuss contract details.

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Inside Bay Area.com: UC initiates logo sweatshop policy

The University of California has agreed to participate in a student-initiated program to curb the sale of logo apparel made in overseas sweatshops.

In a letter sent last week to campus chancellors, UC President Robert Dynes said the university will participate in the Designated Suppliers Program developed by United Students Against Sweatshops, a national organization that urges campuses to purchase goods only from suppliers that enforce minimum working standards.

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CommonDreams Newswire: Victory for Janitors at University of Miami is Second Win in a Week for Service Workers Uniting for Improvements at Major U.S. Campuses

WASHINGTON – May 2 – Coming on the heels of a similar victory for janitors last week at Georgetown, 450 poverty-wage janitors at the University of Miami won an agreement yesterday that gives them the right to form a union and raise living standards for their families.

The agreement came after a two-month strike by hundreds of service workers at the UM, a 17-day hunger strike by 10 UM janitors and 6 UM students, and an outpouring of support from students, faculty, and religious leaders, as well as national leaders like former U.S. Senator John Edwards.

In a major national outreach effort to university faculty, nearly 1,000 professors from nearly 200 colleges and universities across the country – from UCLA to Yale, UT-Austin to the University of Michigan — signed a petition to UM President and former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala.

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SignOnSanDiego.com: Palomar College faculty union optimistic about contract talks

A new labor contract for faculty at Palomar College may be in sight after several fruitless negotiations about benefits proposals.

Yesterday, for the first time, Palomar administrators offered additional funds beyond the 4.23 percent retroactive raise, which was approved this week, said Shannon Lienhart, a member of the faculty’s bargaining team.

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Professional Staff Congress CUNY Contract Settlement

The New York Sun: CUNY and Faculty Union Reach Tentative Contrac

City University of New York has reached a tentative contract agreement with leaders of its faculty union, signalling an end to a contentious dispute that dragged on for more than 3 1/2 years.

The president of the 20,000-member Professional Staff Congress, Barbara Bowen, announced the deal in an e-mail message to her membership yesterday morning, a day after she learned that she had staved off an aggressive electoral challenge for control of the union.

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The News-Review: UCC staff reacts to union vote approval

Four years ago, Susie Navarro didn’t want to join a union.

She fought a move by classified employees at Umpqua Community College to join the Oregon Education Association, and her group won. Two-thirds of the employees voted against joining.

“I was totally against the union because I trusted management,” she said. “At that time the board said that they would have meetings with us, that they would listen to our concerns, and so I really believed that they would.”

This time around, only 13 percent of the full-time classified staff voted against the union, and Navarro wasn’t one of them. In fact, she was on the organizing team.

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Lexington Herald-Leader: Union effort not swayed by raise

Two leaders of a drive to unionize staff members at the University of Kentucky say that UK’s decision to give staff a little more money next year won’t halt the effort.

UK’s Staff Senate has scheduled for its May 11 meeting presentations of both pro- and anti-union positions. The meeting will be at 1 p.m. in the William T. Young Library auditorium.

“Right now, the majority of staff want more information” about what it would mean to join a union, said Terry Olson, a Staff Senate member.

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AP Wire: University of Kentucky staff members still want a union

Some University of Kentucky staff members say a revised proposal for salary increases won’t stop them from trying to unionize.

President Lee Todd last week announced a revised plan to pay under which staff members would receive a higher merit pay raise. Non-faculty employees had complained about the initial proposal, which would have given faculty members nearly double the raise other employees would get next year.

But some staff members still think the pay-raise plan is unfair and want to explore the idea of forming a union.

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U.S. Newswire: Western Michigan University Teaching Assistants Vote ‘Yes’ for Union

Teaching assistants at Western Michigan University voted overwhelmingly today for union representation, giving themselves the right to negotiate health insurance, salary, tuition waivers, and other conditions of employment with the university administration. The vote, 290 in favor, 14 against, certifies the Teaching Assistants Union (TAU) as a collective bargaining agent affiliated with AFT Michigan, AFL-CIO. Eligible to vote were approximately 700 graduate students who work teaching, grading, and tutoring on the university’s Kalamazoo campus. The election was conducted yesterday and today by the Michigan Employment Relations Commission (MERC).

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Oregonlive.com: WOU teachers ratify contract

Faculty at Western Oregon University overwhelmingly approved terms of a new contract that makes up for lost steps from a 2 1/2-year salary freeze.

The vote was 90-5, the school announced Monday.

“It’s comforting to know that when you recommend something that the people believe you,” said philosophy professor Mark Perlman, president of the faculty union. “Basically, the bargaining team was recommending that the agreement be passed. We wouldn’t have done that if we didn’t think it was reasonably good.”

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CBS5.com: SCHOOL DISTRICT, TEACHERS’ UNION REACH TENTATIVE AGREEMENT

There was palpable relief at the San Francisco Unified School District headquarters today as representatives from the district and the United Educators of San Francisco announced they had reached a tentative agreement early this morning that narrowly averted a teachers’ strike

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AP: Agreement reached to avert faculty walkout at Western Oregon

Teachers and administrators at Western Oregon University agreed to contract terms Monday to avert the first faculty walkout in the state’s higher education system.

Details of the contract were not immediately released.

Faculty members had scheduled a strike for Wednesday.

Leaders of the faculty local of the American Federation of Teachers said the membership would meet Monday to discuss the contract. But a formal ratification voted was expected to take some days. Union leaders said they were confident the contract would be approved.

Both sides said they were glad there wouldn’t be a strike. Although there have been walkouts among non-teaching staff members of the state’s higher education system, teachers have never gone on strike, officials said.

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