P-fac Updates, March 1, 2012



 

Update from Pfac Executive Committee

Looking forward to seeing some of you in Chicago! I wanted to thank you for your support for a day of action to support East-West and Columbia College in Chicago this Thursday, March 1st.  The anti-union attacks and union busting tactics have been severe against these two institutions and its leaders.  I wanted to share a brief update from the executive committee of the Part-time faculty union (P-fac) that follows.

We are pleased to report the successful completion of trial before the National Labor Relations Board from February 7th through 9th, 2012.  After three days of testimony, trial briefs are now being written, and we expect a ruling in three to five months.  This complaint was issued by the NLRB after investigating ULP charges filed by Pfac alleging bad-faith bargaining and refusing to bargain, discrimination discouraging union and protected activity, unilateral changes in working conditions, and employer retaliation.  

We cannot over-state the importance of skilled legal representation in all steps leading to this trial. Columbia College spent several hundred thousand dollars addressing this matter before the National Labor Relations Board, while it refuses either to bargain with Pfac, to settle disputes before the litigation stage, or to stop engaging in unfair labor practices that lead to new charges.  Meanwhile, NLRB investigators are indicating their willingness to broaden two recently-filed charges in connection with a pattern of college anti-union conduct.  

Timely legal services have played a key role in strengthening the Pfac local, and this remains a strategic resource.  Columbia College is escalating its interference, surveillance, and harassment of Pfac members, representatives, and steering council spokespersons. These college actions include interfering with the grievance process, interfering with internal Union business, interfering with the exercise of protected activities - - including Weingarten rights - - monitoring and disrupting Pfac President Diana Vallera’s movements, meetings, classes, and communications with Photography Department colleagues and students, and surveillance of Diana Vallera’s personal residence on January 30th, 2012.

According to Evanston Police Report 12-2282 the witness positively identified a member of Columbia College legal counsel as one of the individuals on that date taking photographs in the direction of Ms. Vallera’s Evanston home where its residents include Ms. Vallera’s five-year-old daughter.  Additionally, Ms. Vallera’s was informed that all communications in the Photography Department are now screened through an “Advisory Board,” which forwards Diana Vallera’s verbal and written communications to the Office of the General Counsel. 

Columbia College has also failed to enforce its own policies prohibiting harassment and intimidation and regulating, without preference or discrimination, permitted uses of college intra-net resources.  It failed to intervene and limit harm to Pfac President Diana Vallera, who was libeled in a December 8th, 2011 email that was circulated using college intra-net communications, and which was forwarded by department administrative personnel with College knowledge.

We regard the aggressive union-busting activities of Columbia College as part of a wide-reaching anti-labor movement in the United States that is currently targeting educators and public sector employees.  The issues facing Pfac are national in scope, importance, and impact.  The victory for labor that we anticipate will also be national in scope and significance and will benefit employers as well.  

Pfac has been actively supporting coalition efforts with the Columbia College staff union, Columbia College student activists, Occupy Chicago labor activists, and many unions across the country.  The college has reacted to this alliance with alarm, increasing its surveillance of student activities, using the student newspaper to deliver its message, and threatening staff activists with discipline or termination.  Columbia College has no experience with union activism on behalf of members and its response to Pfac’s appeals for a contract, due process, and fair treatment has consisted of a single theme - - dismantle Pfac at all costs. 

To that end, Columbia College has refused to bargain with Pfac since October 2011 and even threatened that Pfac “will be begging for the current contract before this is all over.” They have fired the federal mediator, suspended face-to-face bargaining sessions, refused to set dates for resumed negotiations, abandoned the article-by-article format of negotiations - - including all “Not in Dispute” language - - and submitted a regressive proposal in December 2011.  The college has rejected its legal obligation to bargain with the elected representative union.  Columbia College has demonstrated that it will continue to violate labor law until Unfair Labor Practice charges are filed.  IEA will file with the NLRB in the next few weeks.

Pfac is a 1,300 member local; we comprise seventy seven percent of the total Columbia College faculty.  Our members are active, interested, committed, and increasingly angry.  We believe in a multi-level campaign that includes legal action, grass roots actions, pickets, and protests, coalition building, media outreach, and donor, alumni, and supporter outreach.  Recently, we have received scholarly interest in the Pfac struggle as a case study.  We have seen national media interest in the Pfac team leadership. What Pfac needs immediately is timely and accessible legal resources, which have the potential to impose penalties on the college, especially when we can demonstrate recidivist employer conduct.  With your help and our efforts, we believe that Pfac and all faculty unions can be strengthened and that Columbia College can be rehabilitated.  

In solidarity and friendship,  

Steering Committee,
Part-Time Faculty Association at Columbia College Chicago

 


The Inadequacies Of Our Current Contract

P-fac learned recently that an arbitrator ruled in favor of Columbia College on our grievance on behalf of an adjunct.

In this case, the adjunct was assigned to teach in the Humanities, History and Social Sciences Department in the fall 2010 semester as he had been for several semesters. When he went to the student book store in August to see that his books had been ordered, he was told by the store manager that his class had been canceled. The adjunct contacted his department's academic manager. That staff person told him Columbia had received a phone call from the adjunct saying he no longer wanted to teach at Columbia. Columbia never contacted the adjunct to verify the phone message or inform him in any way that Columbia believed he had resigned from his job. 

However, the adjunct insisted he had never made the call. He produced phone records to prove his point. In addition, Columbia deleted the phone message. Meanwhile, the classes he once taught were given to another adjunct for the fall semester.  

P-fac's steering committee decided to take the matter to a grievance and arbitration procedure because we determined that the adjunct's right to due process had been violated. We also wanted to fight on behalf of this adjunct in an effort to protect our membership since the school could claim at any time that any one of us has called the school and quit. One of the things we have been working for at the bargaining table is language in the contract that increases our job security in the Instructional Continuity article. 

The lesson to take away from the loss of this arbitration case is how inadequate our present contract is. We need to negotiate a better one. That's why we're still at the table, more than two years after we first started bargaining a new contract. 

Would you like to be let go for no real reason from one semester to the next? As you can see from the example above, you might be. Want more protection under your contract? Stand by your union!