It has been almost seven months since I began my two-year term as your elected statewide MCCC President. During these seven months, I have learned a great deal about our statewide union that I didn’t know or appreciate as a member.

YOU are the union. If the Union is to work for YOU, you must know how the union works so you can be a knowledgeable voter and participant.

Directors are the most important positions in our Union. The management of the MCCC union is the responsibility of the Board of Directors, which consists of 21 voting members and four (4) non- voting members as follows :

Chapter Directors (15); one from each local chapter elected by all members.

Part-Time/Adjunct at-large Directors (2); elected statewide by all part-time professional staff and adjunct faculty. Statewide MCCC President, Vice President, Secretary, and Treasurer (4).

Non-voting members include MCCC MTA Board of Director Members (3) and an NEA Director who is an MCCC member but whose duty is to represent the entire body of MTA members and not just the MCCC.

The Board decides by majority vote, with each voting member casting one vote.

How The Board Works: The Board meets the third Friday of most months; there are no meetings in July, December, or May. Elected Directors may receive scheduling accommodations in order to attend these meetings.

Two primary powers and duties of the Board per the MCCC Bylaws are:

Recommend policies or changes to policies to the Delegate Assembly (which generally meets each year on the third Saturday in April ). During the time between each yearly MCCC Delegate Assembly, the Board creates new policies and makes changes to existing policies. These policies should be reviewed by the members before being voted on by the Board, but sometimes the Board votes to override that notification requirement.

Adopt procedures and rules for conducting the business of the Council (the MCCC union). These are created internally within the Board and may or may not be communicated to the members.

Bylaws are available on the MCCC website (www.mccc-union.org) for members to view; policies are currently not available to members.

Chapters. There are 15 College Chapters with locally elected leaders who are the first line of contact with members at that college. Chapter elections typically follow the same timeline as the statewide officer elections; i.e. every two years. Each Chapter should hold an open and fully accessible election in March or April for the chapter positions of President, Vice President, Secretary, and Treasurer. Many chapters elect a statewide Professional Staff representative by a vote of only the professional staff members and elect a statewide Adjunct (DCE) representative by a vote of only the adjunct (non-full- time) faculty members.

How Chapters Work: According to the Day Collective Bargaining Agreement, “The Employer shall provide each Chapter President with a workload reduction of one (1) course section per semester without cost to the Association.”

The MCCC pays $500 for each Chapter Strategic Action Committee (SAC) representative and $500 for each Chapter Webmaster or Newsletter editor.

The MCCC offers a yearly Chapter Reassigned Time/Stipend “to broaden leadership and to develop new union talent.”

Chapters should hold monthly chapter meetings to which all members are invited.

Two primary powers and duties of Chapters are:

Assist the Council (statewide MCCC) in the administration of the collective bargaining agreements on their campuses.

Secure the advice and recommendations of their members when such is sought by the Council, the Board of Directors, or committees of the Council.

Members belong to the MCCC; chapters cannot charge dues. Chapter President should forward all messages sent by the MCCC President and should invite the MCCC President to attend chapter meetings or events.

If you want a democratic union, you must engage at whatever level you are able. Consider serving on a local or statewide committee. Consider running for a local chapter or statewide position. Attend a chapter meeting. Meet the local chapter officers and ask questions. Attend the MCCC Delegate Assembly in April as a chapter delegate. Take advantage of professional development opportunities offered by the MCCC, the MTA, and the NEA.

The strength of our statewide union rests on the strength of each individual chapter. Chapter strength rests on broad member engagement in leadership positions, attending meetings, and voting.

I ran for MCCC President to work with you to build your individual power and to build our collective power so we can improve our working conditions and improve the learning conditions of our students. If you are interested in receiving leadership training or would like to learn more about union opportunities, please contact me at president@mccc-union.org or by phone at 508-947-5822.

#Respect4MCCC.

In Solidarity

Diana Yohe, MCCC President

SURVEY SAYS… Equal Pay for Equal Work

Anyone who has ever been treated unfairly by an employer has learned that if we stand alone, we are weak. But if we stand together in solidarity, “our union makes us strong.”

We saw the power of union solidarity with the November election win on ballot Question 2. A loss would have jump-started the privatization of public education by allowing a big expansion in the number of charter schools in the state. The odds against winning were overwhelming. In March the polls showed a big lead for the pro-charter side with over $24 million invested by mostly out-of-state billionaires. Our union, the MTA, couldn’t even begin to match the pro-charter money, but we had thousands of volunteers knocking on doors and making phone calls. As a result, by No- vember, the results had flipped, and our side, the pro-public schools side, won by 24 percent (62-38%), a smashing ballot victory that no one thought possible.

Union solidarity and member involvement in bargaining our DCE/Adjunct contract will be required if we are to achieve equal pay for equal work and other improvements in benefits and working conditions for our DCE/adjunct members.

One of the first steps in achieving solidarity is to share information so we can deal with misconceptions. The survey conducted by the DCE/Adjunct bargain – SURVEY SAYS… Equal Pay for Equal Work ing team will help us understand what adjuncts think about the issues.

Do adjuncts want equal pay? You bet they do. The survey showed that 92% of those members who teach only in the DCE/adjunct unit ranked per course pay equal to that of full-time faculty as important or very important.

Do adjuncts want full-time positions and job security? You bet they do. People sometimes say “many adjuncts don’t want full-time jobs.” The survey showed that 87% of adjuncts – almost seven out of eight adjuncts – think that when a full- time position becomes available, qualified adjuncts should get the first shot at it. After all, they’ve been doing the job.

In order to ensure priority hiring for adjuncts, almost 85% think that jobs should be posted internally before they are posted externally and that the pool of currently employed adjuncts should be exhausted before new adjuncts are hired.

There is also widespread support for other measures to provide job security: 76% think it’s important to get earlier notification of course offerings, and 72% think it’s important to have annual or multi-year contracts instead of single semester contracts.

Having a pension plan comparable to full-time members (prorated) was ranked by 82% as important or very important, and 71% ranked health insurance com-parable to full-time members (pro-rated) as important.

Other issues also garnered widespread support: 70% think office space is im- portant, 72% want to eliminate pro-rated pay based on class size, 73% want free tuition at state colleges and universities for employees and family members. It should come as no surprise to anyone that our employers will resist these demands by saying they are too expensive or too impractical. But our employers should be clear, our legislators should be clear, and our own members should be clear: these are issues with widespread support among adjuncts.

It should also come as no surprise that we will have another challenging fight on our hands. But if we maintain solidarity, we can make big gains. We will need solidarity among all our MCCC members: full-time and part-time/adjuncts. We will need solidarity and support from our MTA colleagues. We will need support from students through groups such as PHENOM…the Public Higher Education Network of Massachusetts. We will need support from our communities.

Our students deserve equality in instruction and support that can only be provided by a secure and stable work force.

#Respect4MCCC.

In Solidarity

Diana Yohe, MCCC President

Equality for Adjuncts Benefits Full-time Faculty

Our adjunct members and our part- time professional staff are paid substantially less than our full time members, they have less job security, limited or no benefits, and are often treated as second class citizens who are not, for example, equal participants in college governance, eligible for certain awards, or given recognition for their service or achievements. With DCE (adjunct) contract negotiations currently underway, we have the opportunity to move toward equality for adjuncts. With future Day contract bargaining, we can move towards equality for part-time professional staff.

It’s easy to make the argument for equality as a matter of social justice: We should have equal pay for equal work. Women shouldn’t be paid less than men, African Americans and Latinos shouldn’t be paid less than Whites, and part-time faculty shouldn’t be paid less than full- time faculty for doing the same work. (Sometimes there is an argument about how much of the job is teaching versus non-instructional work, but that is a matter of implementation, not of principle.) Adjuncts deserve a substantial pay raise, and it’s easy to see how they benefit from that.

But in this column, I want to make a not-so-obvious argument: It is in the self- interest of full-time faculty to fight for equality for adjuncts . Take a hypothetical case, with round numbers to be easy to understand. Suppose an administrator knows that next year she or he will need to cover 20 courses in, let’s say, the English department. One way to do so would be Equality for Adjuncts Benefits Full-time Faculty to hire two full-time faculty at $60,000 a year each, with benefits that cost an additional $20,000 a year for each of them. That is, it costs $160,000 to cover 20 courses, an average of $8,000 per course. Alternatively, the administrator could hire 20 adjunct instructors at $3,000 per course, for a total cost of $60,000.

Faced with that choice, and facing a budget squeeze, most administrators hire adjuncts, regardless of their personal preferences. When a full-time faculty member retires, the only “cost-efficient” strategy is to replace the full-time retiree with more adjuncts. Adjuncts are not required to advise students, hold office hours, attend meetings, or serve on committees. Administrators load the extra non-instructional work onto existing full-time faculty. It’s a hassle to hire that many adjuncts; but in a financial crunch, it’s easier to lay them off. Administrators may even start looking for ways to push out existing full-time faculty in order that they can be replaced by more cost-effective adjuncts.

On the other hand, if adjuncts were paid $8,000 per course and had increased job security, the administrator would have a lot less incentive to push for more adjuncts. Hiring and keeping track of many people is a hassle; having a full-time person who does the necessary non-instructional work required outside the classroom is an asset. Administrators would still have the choice to hire full-time or adjunct faculty, but the choice would no longer involve a big cost savings.

Winning equality for adjuncts won’t be easy. In the coming months, I and the DCE bargaining team will be listening to you and talking with you about ways we can change the game: arguments we can use, ways we can spread the word, pressure we can bring to bear. A DCE bargaining support team is currently working with Chapter Presidents to organize and engage our members in strategic action throughout the negotiation process.

This sort of change can’t be won by a handful of people engaged in smart bar-gaining. Unions gain our power through our solidarity. We need to help all members understand this issue and why it is vital to all of us, adjunct and full-time; and we will need to undertake creative actions to make equality a reality. What that means and how we can do so will be the focus of many future communications from me, from the bargaining team, from the DCE bargaining support team working with the support of Chapter presidents, and I hope from member to member.

#Respect4MCCC.

In Solidarity

Diana Yohe, MCCC President