23 October 2001
President’s Message
Departmental Representatives:
We just held productive luncheon meetings with nearly two dozen of our Department Representatives. Chief topics were Distance Education bargaining and our drive to increase the ranks of the regular faculty. We expect the Rep system to grow in importance over the next year. We are therefore scheduling another lunch meeting in December and two additional meetings next spring. We will also send an emailed Newsletter to all Reps every month. If your department does not currently have an MSP Representative, make sure you get one. This is no time to be unrepresented or uninformed.
Departments lacking reps are: Linguistics, Music, Philosophy, Biology, Microbiology, Biochemistry, Vet & Animal Sciences, Forestry & Wildlife Management, Entomology, Sports Studies, E.P.R.A., Finance & Operations Management, and Marketing. If you or a colleague would like to serve, please contact the MSP office at 5-2206. We would really like to have full representation by the dates of our next scheduled reps lunches in early December.
Distance Education Bargaining:
We are finalizing our bargaining proposals, which reflect the opinions you expressed in our campus survey last spring and the input of faculty with on-line experience, and appointing a strong negotiating team. We have tried to craft proposals that will provide enough incentives (remuneration, property rights) and quality safeguards to encourage our bargaining members to offer such courses. The Administration has professed commitment to faculty-based quality and should therefore be receptive on most counts, unless budget challenges cause them to backslide. We hope to complete negotiations by early spring, in time to cover fall course offerings. If you contemplate offering such courses, we suggest that you wait until we finalize a contract that will provide appropriate incentives and safeguards.
The Drive for More Full-Time Permanent Faculty:
A clause in the new contract commits the Union and the University to reverse the decline in tenure-system faculty, a decline we have all felt in the most grievous ways. The contract provides for a joint union-administration committee to study underlying causes of this trend, provide data on student-faculty ratios by department, and propose measures to restore the ratio of students to tenure system faculty. An MSP working group is preparing to participate in this joint committee, which will issue a report February 15. Another larger group is crafting op ed pieces, brochures, letters to the editor, legislative and trustee talking points, and the like to make sure people understand the importance of rebuilding the regular faculty. We need information and stories from your departments about how this has impacted you. This is not a fight that will benefit us personally or directly anytime soon. It is, however, a fight for the soul of the university. Please help.
Contract Funding:
President Bulger has forwarded our contract to the Governor’s Office, which is supposed to forward it to the Legislature. Despite the severe decline in state revenues - the result of a normal business slump, exacerbated by the September 11 attacks, and last year’s ridiculous tax cuts – we still hope the contract will be funded. We are working toward that goal.
-- Ronald Story, President
Longevity Pay Calculation
The MSP Contract provides that bargaining unit members receive 1.5 days’ pay for each year of service when they retire. We recently were asked how a day’s pay is calculated and now have an answer. One day’s pay is your weekly salary divided by five (5). We hope this is helpful to those of you who are planning for retirement.
New Contract Committees
The new MSP Contract creates several new Committees. We need members to serve on the Spousal Employment Committee, which will be looking for ways to ease recruiting quality faculty by creating relationship-friendly policies. If this joint committee with the administration develops recommendations, its work could lead to reopening negotiations on this topic. We also need representatives to the Child Care Committee, which is a topic that should be of interest to all those with pre-school children. Please call us at 5-2206 if you are interested in working on either of these committees.
Last Chance Sick Leave Bank
October 31st is the last day to sign up for the sick leave bank, and we urge you to sign up now. To be a member of the bank, you need only donate one of your own sick leave days, and then you will be entitled to draw up to 90 days from the bank at your full regular salary in case of an illness that exhausts your own personal sick leave. This is GREAT CHEAP INSURANCE.
Red Cross Donation
MSP has made a donation of $100 to support the disaster relief work of the American Red Cross on behalf of all our unit members.
