This year’s report on the state of the union, called for by the Local 1650 constitution, finds HFCC teachers and the College in the midst of a three year contract; at the conclusion of demanding state and federal political campaigns; and within an ongoing, one might say never-ending, cycle of elections at the local level. This annual report, which assesses the efforts of a concluding year and challenges of a pending one, again finds our College and election campaigns – our careers in public education and the necessity of political activism – interconnected and interdependent.
CONTRACT CHANGES
The Fall 2000 semester marked the second year of a three year contract, and brought with it implementation of several important provisions of the contract. The most obvious to all was the provision of long-term care insurance. An $84,000 benefit now buffers HFCC teachers from the economic devastation wrought by debilitating illness or accident. This initial coverage provides a base that the Union hopes to enhance in the next round of negotiations. Long Term Care insurance, along with the tax sheltered annuity monies negotiated some years ago, provide this generation of HFCC teachers a more secure working life and the prospect of a more secure, and perhaps earlier, retirement, than their predecessors at HFCC ever envisioned.
During the last year, the Local 1650 contract also brought HFCC teachers dramatically improved professional development opportunities and enhanced professional standing. Travel-Conference, Tuition Reimbursement, and Professional Improvement Fund monies increased significantly – and will do so again in 2001. HFCC faculty also saw new contract language relative to distance learning take effect. Teachers are now assured of adequate institutional support in developing and offering distance learning, and the faculty’s authority in determining what instructional material, courses, or programs are appropriate to distance learning has been secured in contract language.
FULL-TIME STAFFING
The most important provisions of the contract addressing our professional standing, though, are the two new provisions relative to full and part-time staffing. The first has been overlooked by most HFCC teachers – and that is the provision which makes explicit the role HFCC full-time faculty should play in the hiring of adjunct faculty within a department. The 1650 contract now makes clear for all departments what had been the practice of some: that the filling of all vacancies, full-time and part-time, should involve a department’s full-time faculty.
The other contract provision addressing staffing at the College has been over twenty years in the making – and was twenty years overdue. Departments where the ratio of part-time to full-time faculty has been most out-of hand have used new contract language to secure three additions to full-time faculty in Fall 2000 – and should secure an additional three full-time faculty in Fall 2001. Action to reduce HFCC’s over reliance on adjunct faculty involved twenty years of effort by Local 1650 at the negotiating table. The new contract language is unprecedented in Michigan and rarely paralleled in any contract across the nation. It has been described by some AFT Local presidents as the best staffing language in any contract across the nation. This language is a credit to, the Local 1650 negotiators who crafted it, but is also a credit to HFCC President Andrew Mazzara and the HFCC Board of Trustees whose concern for quality teaching, ongoing curriculum development, and a sound system of shared governance took precedence over the mantra of "managerial flexibility" proffered by most college presidents and Boards as they deplete the ranks of full-time faculty.
The improvements in our professional lives and in our livelihoods over the last year, and those of the years preceding, are unquestionably the product of our right to bargain collectively – the result of our right to a union. One need look no further than the compensation and professional status of college faculty in non-collective bargaining states to see this. One need look no further than the compensation and professional status of teachers at non-union colleges in Michigan for confirmation.
LOCAL POLITICAL ACTION
Not so readily apparent, though, is the unrelenting fact that a union contract, the compensation principles it embodies, and the professional standing it affords, are all subject to the political process. HFCC teachers are public employees. We will enjoy professional levels of compensation and exercise professional authority only so long as supportive candidates are elected to public office. In the last twelve months, this Union has expended considerable resources and energies on ballot questions and candidate campaigns because what we have here and what we do here at HFCC is largely determined by what happens out there – in the political arena.
Sometimes this connection is clear, as in the three capital improvement bond campaigns of the last twelve months. In each of these campaigns, Local 1650 turned out large numbers of volunteers, provided leadership in each advocacy campaign, and financed campaign efforts in the amount of $20,000. Unfortunately, it required three campaigns, including two unsuccessful District-wide campaigns to secure renovation funds for the College’s aging buildings. Unfortunately, it will require yet another campaign or campaigns to do so for the Dearborn Public Schools.
Last November, HFCC teachers supported two incumbent College Trustees deserving of reelection. Both Sharon Dulmage and Julie Morrison had records of being fair-minded toward District employees and supportive of improved educational programs and opportunities. While Ms. Morrison was unsuccessful in her bid for reelection, both she and Ms. Dulmage are very appreciative of the assistance afforded them by HFCC teachers, and Ms. Morrison’s high regard for HFCC teachers will serve the College in good stead, as she seeks a new public office.
STATE AND FEDERAL POLITICAL ACTION
With respect to the state and federal politics in the year 2000, Local 1650 implemented the AFT’s member-to-member campaign, under the leadership of Jim Wanless, Chair of the Local’s Legislative committee. For the first time, this Union fashioned a comprehensive, issue-based packet of materials – and 1650 members contacted their colleagues personally to deliver the materials and provide feedback to the Union leadership. This entailed hours of work on the part of Jim and committee members: Hal Derderian, Hal Friedman, Joyce Fisher, Mike Garms, Geraldine Grunow, Matt Johnson, Peter Kearly, Dan Kearney, Gary McIlroy, Bill Secrest, Pam Sayre, Sue Suchy and Barbara Suhay.
The result of teacher political activism such as this across the State of Michigan had an effect. Vouchers were defeated; endorsed candidates supportive of education – both Democrat and Republican – were elected to the State House; Governor Engler’s candidates for U.S. Senate and President met defeat in Michigan; and Governor Engler, his candidates, and their party were forced, at least for a time, to move toward the political center to be competitive.
Last year Local 1650 also played a leadership role in a legislative initiative undertaken by the MFT&SRP to survey the conditions under which part-time faculty at the State’s community colleges are hired, are evaluated, and function. This effort has met considerable resistance from most of the State’s college presidents, but the effort is being renewed this year with some hope of success – given the concern of a number of legislators and the momentum the issue has gained from similar surveys in Illinois and Washington. Such a survey, it is hoped, will demonstrate to State officials the need to reduce the over-reliance on adjunct faculty and the need to improve dramatically the conditions under which adjuncts must now function at the State’s community colleges.
COMMUNITY OUTREACH
Fostering relationships with leaders of the Dearborn community has been a continuing focus of Local 1650 over the last several years. Early in the year 2000, Local 1650 undertook fulfilling its $200,000 pledge to the College Foundation’s five year fundraising drive. Chaired by Mr. Edsel Ford and Mr. Heinz Prechter, the Foundation’s campaign committee is comprised of influential community leaders who volunteer their energies in support of our college – and whose good will toward HFCC is as important as any funds they may raise. When citizens such as these lend their reputations and records of success to a College undertaking, it is imperative that HFCC faculty do all they can to assure success. With $107,000 contributed by 100 of Local 1650's 200 members thus far, it is clear that we are but halfway toward fulfilling our goal. It is also clear from where the remaining half of our pledge should come. A pledge of $40 per pay period for a teacher filing a joint tax return, or one of $20 for a teacher filing a single tax return, is needed to meet our pledge to our Foundation. Given the compensation package afforded HFCC teachers by the Dearborn community which is party, through the Board of Trustees, to our contract, and given that State tax credits and federal tax deductions reduce the out-of-pocket expenses of such pledges by more than one-half, all 200 HFCC teachers are strongly urged to pledge and thereby invest in their college, their careers, and their own self interest.
The Federation continues to play, as well, a leadership role in the Dearborn Rotary Club, a service organization prominent Dearborn leaders. In addition, Local 1650 officers now chair the Mike Adray Memorial Golf Tournament. HFCC teachers can strengthen the College’s relationship with community leaders, and have fun doing so, by supporting their efforts to support our College. Two upcoming events in support of HFCC scholarships are the May 16 Adray Golf Tournament and the June 9 Dearborn Rotary Spring Gala. Both events support HFCC students. Both events afford Local 1650 members the opportunity to present a human rather than an organizational face to our community – and both will forge relationships with leaders whose opinion can enhance or diminish the College’s standing in the community that sustains it.
2001 AND BEYOND
Why this emphasis year after year on political activism and community involvement. Permit me to list the reasons:
In 2002, this Union must negotiate a new contract, with the spectre of Governor Engler’s PA 112 hanging over the bargaining table. Whatever leverage this Union will have in negotiations to preserve or enhance that contract will derive from the regard of elected officials and community leaders – and our ability to solicit their support.
In recent legislative sessions, attempts have been made to expand PA 112 and thereby rescind our right to bargain tenure, class size, and calendar, and insurance carriers. The right-wing Mackinaw Center is presently plastering State newspapers, including Dearborn papers, with articles attacking teacher unions, teacher tenure, and agency shop. Dearborn’s opinion makers and citizens are seeing the right-wing pundits perpetrate character assassination on teacher unions and the teachers. One response to these attacks is the written response. Another is to build relationships and friendships in over community that can withstand the distortions of far right idealogues.
Retired teachers are facing ever increasing costs for their health insurance, which Governor Engler contends is not a State guaranteed pension benefit. Retirees now assume 20% of health care cost – and that percentage is likely to rise.
Governor Engler also remains committed to converting our defined benefit pension system to a defined contribution system, one fully dependent on an individual’s investment earnings to fund both a pension and health insurance benefits. Pinning pension hopes on the Dow-Jones and NASDAQ is the attractive proposition it was twelve months ago.
Moreover, what becomes of those who remain in a defined benefit system with ever-decreasing numbers of participants and ever-diminishing political clout to preserve health benefits before the State legislature?
We currently have HFCC Trustees who may seek to "reclaim the Fairlane School" (read take over the HFCC Dearborn Heights Campus) without provision for relocating and housing displaced College programs.
This attitude smacks of Board attitudes some 15-30 years ago, during which time HFCC seemed to be, in the words of a Wayne County Circuit Court Judge, the "District’s cookie jar."
Over the course of those years, millions of dollars in College funds were transferred to District coffers by various means. The College’s allocated millage was reduced in years when the P-12 anticipated revenue shortfalls; the "service charge" paid by the College to the District fluctuated by hundreds of thousands of dollars from year-to-year depending on projected P-12 revenue needs; College extra-curricular programs were cancelled because the P-12 budget could not support P-12 extra-curricular programs; and full-time HFCC teachers were laid off during a period of College enrollment growth because a P-12 Superintendent, facing P-12 enrollment decline, wanted "heads to roll" at the College as well. Most of these abuses are no longer possible given the College’s independent CEO, budget, and local funding – and given the protections negotiated into the Local 1650 contract.
However, when a Citizens’ committee recommends displacing College programs without regard to their relocation, clearly this Union, this faculty, and this College have much work to do in many arenas. This work can not and is not confined to the bargaining table. This work is not the work of a handful of union officers and union activists.
The work before us is work which must be done outside the College – in order to preserve the programs of the College. The work before us is work which must be done away from the bargaining table – in order to foster happens at the bargaining table. This work will, of necessity, entail political engagement and community networking – for this is where the future of our College and our careers ultimately plays out. This work is the work 200, not 100, or 50, or 25 College teachers. Every teacher benefitting from working at our college and under our contract has an obligation to assume these burdens which benefit us all. This is important work. It is our work, and we should all be involved in affixing to that work – the union label.
John McDonald
February 19, 2001
Henry Ford Community College
Federation of Teachers
5101 Evergreen Road
Dearborn, MI 48128-1495
Last Revision:
jmcdon@hfcc.net
Copyright © 1999