With bargaining coming up this year, it’s the time for everyone to get involved and help build a strong union. Below are a few ideas for how you can build up your union –
Do you like to write? You can always contribute your views about being part time faculty, or current events, to the Road Scholar blog or newsletter. Send your entries, or questions about entries, to uptfaft@gmail.com
One of the biggest jobs in any union is making sure everyone else knows what’s going on. If you’d like the opportunity to meet your fellow PTFs at the university while building a little solidarity, you can always come out and organize!
And, finally, if you’d like to take on a leadership role, you can always become a steward in your department. By becoming a steward, you will be the first person your colleagues can go to for help with union issues. Email us at uptfaft@gmail.com for more information on becoming a union steward with the UPTF.
As time goes on, we’ll have more opportunities for you to get involved, so be sure to check back to the Road Scholar for details. You can also drop by the office at any time in the Macabees Building, 5057 Woodward, Suite 3303.
Hope to see you soon.
December 14, was a day of emotional swings.
We were elated to win an organizing drive at a charter school, giving those teachers a voice in their school. Unfortunately at the same time the legislature was passing SB 618 to expand charter schools across the state. We are profoundly disappointed that those pushing an education bill didn’t actually want to make policy based on research, facts or rational discussion.
We opposed the bill to expand university sponsored charter schools and worked hard to keep it from passing. Thank you to all who called or wrote your Representatives and Senators.
There are certainly good charter schools out there like The Arts Academy In The Woods who joined us yesterday. We have the utmost respect for the teachers and staff who work in charter schools, but the overall research shows that charter schools do no better and in many cases worse, than the neighborhood schools where they operate.
Additionally, there was no need for this legislation as there was no real cap on the number of charters that could open in Michigan. Under current law any school district, ISD, or community college could open as many charter schools as they want. Most of those however, would not be run by profit-making businesses.
We are perhaps most disappointed by the Republican leadership in the House. In addition to simply dismissing facts and research that didn’t support their view, yesterday while considering the legislation they refused to even allow the Michigan PTA to distribute a letter to legislators expressing their opposition to the bill.
They gaveled down any amendments offered by Democrats without debate or roll call votes while accepting Republican amendments.
We cannot have a functioning government if we can’t even listen to each other.
So go home and enjoy the December break. Rest up and come back in the New Year recharged and ready to go. Because if we don’t like what they are doing in Lansing, then we need to change who is making decisions in Lansing. We do that on Election Day, November 6, 2012.
Happy Holidays,
David Hecker
President
Congratulations to the teachers of Arts Academy in the Woods for voting to unionize yesterday, and well wishes for their negotiations ahead!
Read all about it:
Monday, December 12, 2011
For Immediate Release
Ferris Nontenure-Track Faculty Organization / AFT, AFL-CIO
Contact: Alice Bandstra, FNTFO President 231-580-1395
Ferris Faculty To Stage Grade-In, Many to Lose Jobs
Big Rapids, MI—Nontenure-track faculty at Ferris State University will conduct a “grade-in” at the university president’s office today to publicize their precarious employment status, low pay, and lack of health care. Hired on a semester-by-semester basis, many of them will lose their jobs next week. Ineligible for unemployment, they will be without an income during the upcoming holidays. Many teaching full-time at the university do not have health insurance.
The event follows an emergency membership meeting of the year-old Ferris Nontenure-Track Faculty Organization (FNTFO). At the meeting, the membership voted to “authorize FNTFO leadership to take job action up to and including stoppage of work starting Dec. 7 until the FNTFO/FSU contract is settled.”
FNTFO and FSU have been negotiating a contract for nearly a year. A state-appointed mediator has attended the bargaining sessions for several months, but little progress has been made on three key issues including job security, health benefits and pay rates.
Many of the faculty members who will be losing their jobs have worked at Ferris for decades, but according to the university are only “temporary” employees who are hired and fired each semester. After nearly a month without pay, most faculty members hope Ferris will rehire them Jan. 9, but there are no guarantees of future employment.
It was this uncertainty and lack of security in their job status that prompted the faculty members to vote to form a union in the Summer of 2010.
“I think offering job security is not a lot to ask,” said Jill Jepsen, a 9-month temporary faculty who has been at Ferris for four years.
Job security, health insurance and annual cost-of-living increases are three of the most important things to this group of employees who frequently works year after year without any increases in their modest salaries. About a third of these faculty members, who teach classes on the university’s Big Rapids campus, work at an annual rate of less than $25,000 a year. Another third are paid less than $40,000. The average annual salary offer to 2011 college graduates was $51,171, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers in its Fall 2011 Salary Survey.
“I don’t get health benefits from anywhere,” said Katherine Wykes, who currently works full-time in the Language and Literature Department. “I could really use health benefits from my place of employment.”
Job security is also a big concern for Wykes. “Sometimes I work a full load at Ferris but not always.” Next semester, Wykes is scheduled to be rehired, but her salary and course load will be part-time, cutting her wages by more than half. This is normal, Wykes said. “It fluctuates.”
Negotiations between the two sides will continue Wednesday, Dec. 14 at 4 p.m. Union leadership have scheduled the grade-in today for the Timme Building outside President Eisler’s office. The leadership has not yet decided on any additional actions including the work stoppage approved by the union’s members.
The FNTFO is affiliated with AFT Michigan, AFT, AFL-CIO, a union of 35,000-members working in K-12 and intermediate school districts, community colleges, universities, and local government. The 95 locals include unions of nontenure-track faculty at most of the state’s universities.
What are the moral principles we ought to use in our struggle for justice, equity, and democracy at WSU? Can we learn something from the movements around the USA and elsewhere in their struggles for the equal worth of all and, so, equal respect for all? What does that look like here at WSU?
The military occupation of cities [local police forces acting like an occupying force] is showing us just how revolutionary the liberate or occupy Wall Street movement has become. There is great fear that this movement is here to stay and is everywhere. I believe it is. Are local police forces are out protecting the liberty of us all, our constitutional rights to freedom of assembly and free speech?
So, at 1am this morning that fear got acted out in New York in light of a coming mass action on Wall Street by OWS. Hundreds of police-soldiers cleared Zuccotti Park and dumped all the possessions, personal and collective, into garbage trucks to be moved to some sanitation station. This shows me that the movement has been extremely effective in communicating, in demonstrating, their sincerity about transforming the political economy of the US. And I believe we will do just that.
What is an economy for? Who is it for? It’s an economy if and only if it works for all of us. Otherwise, it’s a militarised occupation of cities like we’ve had for some time. Think of what the ‘war of drugs’ and the ‘war on terror’ have done to the municipal police forces amongst us. We’ve turned our civil servants sworn to uphold the liberty of all into occupying soldiers upholding the unjust distributions of income and wealth. That has to take its toll on those of us working as police-soldiers.
OWS embodies a social transition, a social struggle, out of morally indefensible distributions of income and wealth and into distributions that are democratically governed and just.
What moral principles govern such transitions? What moral principles governed South Africa’s struggle to end apartheid? Our own civil rights struggle in the USA? The struggle of the Palestinians to end the occupation?
Here are words attributed to Gandhi. Are we at the third stage – the stage at which they’re fighting us? This is a struggle – armed only on one side – that will get even more brutal. Nonviolence will, in the end, show up the brutality embedded in the very dynamics of the US economy.
Gandhi or words attributed to Gandhi:
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Wealth without Work
Pleasure without Conscience
Science without Humanity
Knowledge without Character
Politics without Principle
Commerce without Morality
Worship without Sacrifice
Peace will not come out of a clash of arms but out of justice lived and
done by unarmed nations in the face of odds.
Democracy and violence can ill go together.
Evolution of democracy is not possible if we are not prepared to hear the other side.
A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.
Hatred ever kills, love never dies; such is the vast difference between the
two. What is obtained by love is retained for all time. What is obtained by
hatred proves a burden in reality for it increases hatred.
Non-cooperation with evil is a sacred duty.
You assist an evil system most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees.
An evil system never deserves such allegiance. Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil.
A good person will resist an evil system with his or her whole soul.
Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is
mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man
It may be long before the law of love will be recognized in international
affairs. The machinery’s of government stand between and hide the hearts of
one people from those of another.”
mark wenzel
Philosophy Department
Wayne State University
Hey Everyone!
The First General Membership Meeting of the Year is coming up soon.
Come meet us on:
October 14th, 2011
from 2:30-4:00pm
in the Walter Reuther Library, in the Conference Room.
We’ll be discussing bargaining for the upcoming year, as well as important member issues and ways you can get involved.
And, hey, we’ll even have refreshments!
Hope to see you there.
The Union of Part Time Faculty marching in the 2011 Labor Day Parade
For those of you who missed out on the Labor Day Parade, we’ve got our photos from the event here. If you members out there have any more, send them to uptfaft@gmail.com and we’ll post them here on the blog.
The crowd was about this dense the whole way through.
The Spirit of Detroit with love for Detroit teachers
Be sure to send us more pictures. And keep posted for updates.
Afternoon Folks!
Now that we’ve had some time to get into the groove of the new semester, it’s time to kick off some new programs. And one of these big ideas? Rolling out new articles for the blog!
Obviously, having used exclamation points twice, this is going to be a big project, so we’re asking all you members out there to contribute.
The UPTF Road Scholar is going to focus on the experiences of you, the members, as members of the union teaching at Wayne State. How has the experience of teaching in a union university been for you? What are some of the experiences that you want to share? Why do you think it’s important to have a union here?
So if you like to write, and have something to say, send along an email to uptfaft@gmail.com
Send along an email earlier for a special bonus prize (having your post published earlier).
Looking forward to your responses!
Hey Everyone!
I just wanted to introduce myself. I’m Roberto and your new Staff Organizer. You’ll probably see me around campus or at the meetings throughout the year.
If you ever have any questions, I’ll be in the office from 1-4pm every day. You can also email me at uptfaft@gmail.com.
I can also take appointments at the UPTF Doodle MeetMe Calendar here: http://doodle.com/uptf477
Looking forward to meeting you,
-Roberto.
The UPTF was in Lansing on Saturday at the Rally along with other AFT locals and AFT Michigan personnel. Among the speakers were Bob King, President of the UAW, David Hecker, President of AFT-Michigan, Charlie Parrish, President AAUP-AFT, WSU and Iris Salter, President of MEA.