June 30,2008 We will be switching our website to an AFT website personalized for UCC in the next few weeks. Information will be made available as soon as we have all of the details. It will allow us to deal with local issues as well as state and national issues in education. The site is free to us, and in fact we will even being getting paid a small amount each time a member clicks on the site. More information to follow.

June 18,2008 Hello, this has been a busy month attempting to stem the attack on pension and health benefits for adjunct and part-time faculty and part time staff. We are also staying on top of stray attempt (individual law makers) to limit health benefits in retirement. We are working with other units but have also created a tight working group with other AFT affiliates that are part of AFTNJ. As AFTNJ we have developed (literally over night) a set of talking points when meeting with legislators that you and your memberships may wish to use as a base point for any emails, visits, etc. Please keep in mind the attachment is not meant to be a final published document but an outline/guide so feel free to make your own grammatical changes and add or subtract points. Staff are too busy meeting with legislators and will not have time to refine this document. It is imperative that you make your contacts now because this is happing now. Also the Governor and legislator have reach agreement on the budget. Some fine points remain. One of them being the “pension reform” for part-time employees. If we are to make any head way in at least reaching a comprise position we need calls, emails, etc. now. Please help and ask anyone who is around full or pt-time to help. Some legislators are looking at this attack as a first step. It is up to you to generate sufficient heat to win this battle and thereby discouraging them from taking the second step. So this is not just a battle over adjunct faculty and part-time employees but preservation of retiree benefits and yes full-time employees. Remember legislation pre-empts a contract. HIGHER EDUCATION PENSION & HEALTH BENEFITS CONCERNS FOR ADJUNCT FACULTY, PART-TIME LECTURERS, PART-TIME PROFESSIONAL EMPLOYEES AND PART-TIME NURSING PROFESSIONALS The proposed pension & health benefit reforms will have an adverse impact on over 10,000 adjunct faculty, part-time lecturers, and health professionals in New Jersey public higher education as well as negative consequences for our colleges/universities who rely greatly on these same employees. Prospective part-time higher education professionals should be placed in the existing Alternate Benefit Program the same as current full time higher education employees. This program was created for NJ public higher education. Additional exemptions should be granted for current part-time employees. S-1969 or any companion bill needs to allow for adjunct/part-time employees to designate multiple employers in public higher education. • Adjunct and part-time faculty employees do not have defined hours or a defined work week. They are generally hired on a semester to semester basis and paid according to how many courses or credits they teach. The typical adjunct in the state college system will teach one or two courses (3 credits or 6 credits) per semester at a single institution. And in some semesters they may not receive a contract to teach at all, but will be hired back in a subsequent semester. Under the proposed legislation , existing employees may get bumped from PERS if they miss a semester of teaching. • Because of the modest level of compensation paid, i.e. $1,100 - $1,325 per credit hour taught in the fall 2008, many adjuncts work at multiple institutions (state colleges, state universities, county colleges and/or privates), in an attempt to cobble together a meager and barely survivable income. Our state colleges and universities are increasingly relying on these employees to save money, instead of creating enough full time faculty positions. These employees should be viewed as a resource, not a burden to the state. • Existing adjunct and part-time faculty are currently eligible to participate in PERS after earning $1,500 for 2 consecutive semesters. If adjunct and part-time faculty work at more than one institution, they earn and receive pension contributions from each institution. Allowing adjunct and part-time faculty members to participate in the pension system based on employment at multiple colleges and universities is a longstanding practice and should not be eliminated. There is no evidence of pension abuse from this group of state employees. • In the rare cases where adjunct and part-time faculty work long enough to vest and to collect a pension from the state, they receive paltry benefits. To limit pension contributions to one employer for existing employees will have extremely adverse financial consequences for these invaluable state employees upon their retirement. • Many health professionals work part-time often because our health care institutions do not offer full time work in their attempt to deal with financial constraints. Some professionals work at two or more health care institutions in order to piece together a full time job. Hospitals and other health care institutions require 1.5 RN’s to fill one shift for one week. So as not to over burden full time staff; the part-time RN’s and professionals are hired to fill in the weekend and holiday shifts. At Runnells Specialized Hospital, a county facility, of the 71 RN’s on staff 24 of them, or 34 %, are part-time. • UMDNJ and Runnells Specialized Hospital currently allow employees working 20 hours or more per week access to the State’s pension benefits system. Any legislative action changing the definition of eligibility for State and County employees would limit a facilities ability to recruit and retain vital part-time positions. • No matter what changes are made in their pensions, adjunct and part-time faculty should continue to be permitted to make contributions to PERS for each position and to have their retirement benefit calculated using the combined salaries of the positions held. • Placing newly hired adjuncts and PTLs into the Defined Contribution Retirement Program, as proposed in Senate Bill 1962 (or any Assembly companion bill) needlessly creates a third retirement system in NJ public higher education. Limiting these employees to only one employer will severely affect their participation due to the nature of semester by semester employment in higher education. Currently, higher education full time employees are the Alternate Benefit Program (an existing defined contribution plan). Adjuncts, PTLs & part-time higher education nursing professionals are in PERS (a defined benefit plan). We strongly believe that a two-tier system for this group of employees is wrong for the quality of higher education in NJ. If there must be a change for new hires, then the Alternate Benefit Program is the equitable and much better match. Health Benefits • Adjunct and part-time faculty are currently eligible to purchase state health benefits at their own expense, pursuant to Chapter 172, P.L. 2003. They pay the actual full premium cost plus an additional 10% if the wish to buy into the plan. We are concerned that S-1965 and any Assembly companion bill might eliminate that right for new adjunct and part-time faculty. We seek assurances and clarification that this is not the intent of S-1965 or any other bills, nor will it be its effect. • Teaching Assistants and Graduate (Research) Assistants at Rutgers University are eligible for health benefits under Section 17:9-4.2(a)6. of the State Administrative Code. These benefits are included as part of a compensation package that attracts the best graduate students to New Jersey. A high technology and biomedical research state like New Jersey uses such a package to draw top quality teaching and research talent to the state. Rutgers, as a top tier public research university, depends on attracting such talent to boost its academic and research rankings, which in turn attract top faculty and research staff. The state risks losing federal and private research grants if Rutgers is unable to compete with peer institutions in graduate student recruitment. Approximately 1,100 Teaching Assistants are enrolled in the SHBP. In addition, another 800 Graduate (Research) Assistants are enrolled with 100% of their benefits funded through federal and private research grants. • Part-time nursing professionals at UMDNJ are also provided health benefits. The proposed bills would eliminate their health benefit coverage and make attracting the best and brightest to our research institutions more difficult. With the existing and growing nursing shortage, attracting part-time nursing professionals to UMDNJ will become even more difficult. An additional unintended consequence of this would be fewer grants being obtained by our research institutions. S-1965 or any companion bills need to exclude public higher education. • Retirement benefits - both pension and healthcare - do not often come with the job in healthcare. Having the security of these benefits is one attraction of public sector healthcare. Nurses, mental health clinicians, medical researchers and staff working in Newark and urban areas of New Jersey, often caring for the uninsured, should not themselves become part of the uninsured. • Allowing part-time workers who do not have state health benefits to buy into health insurance is, in fact, cost-effective as well as good public policy. As NJ seeks to improve access to health care and reduce the numbers of uninsured, why would we seek to cut off access for those working in the healthcare system?

June 4,2008 Not So Lucky 21 Written by Phil Ray Jack Tuesday, 20 May 2008 Margaret West has been teaching as a part-timer for Edmonds Community College twenty-one years. For several years, she has been offered annual "Assurance of Employment Contracts." Her students enjoy her classes, and her colleagues like working with her. She has been active in her local, serving on its Executive Council for almost eleven years as the Vice President of the Committee On Political Education (COPE) and the Vice President for Communications. Margaret has also served on (or led) the faculty team during six contract negotiations. On the state level, Margaret has served on the AFT Washington Contingent Workers Committee and on AFT Washington’s Executive Board. She has testified in Olympia on behalf of her colleagues, and has proven herself to be passionate about education. At this year’s annual AFT Washington Convention, Margaret announced that she was running unopposed and would be the first part-timer to serve as president of the faculty union at Edmonds Community College. It would seem that a teacher like Margaret would be secure in her position at the college, so it came as a shock when Margaret’s dean informed her that she will no longolution on “Contingent Faculty and Pr

June 1,2008

Happy June to everyone. I just want to give everyone a heads up on a potential problem. One of our sister Locals is having serious internal problems and is facing the possibility of an AFT National investigation. The president of the local has been lashing out at our Local, since we have many adjuncts at both schools, with undocumented accusations about our Constitution and our organization. Rest assured that everything we have done has been in accordance with AFT National Guidelines and with their approval. I just want to make you aware of this 'attack' on the integrity of our local. In almost 5 years our local has operated in a very professional manner and our leaders have been able to settle most problems without having to go into grievance procedures. We have a very co-operative relationship with administration and have not had 5% of the problems this other local has had over the past few years. Your leaders work for you and to better our position. This is evident is the increase in credits and the % of our pay increases. We have done all this alone, not with the help of the State as the other local has. If any of you are approached by another local in an attempt to undermine the UCCAFF the officers would appreciate it if you let one of us know immediately. Thanks and have a great summer.

May 16,2008

PLEASE BE SURE TO ENTER YOUR SPRING, 2008 GRADES ONLINE NO LATER THAN NOON ON MAY 20,2008.

May 14,2008

Welcome to the first issue of the FACE Bulletin, an e-newsletter about AFT’s Faculty and College Excellence campaign and matters related to academic staffing in our colleges and universities. The idea behind The Bulletin is to keep leaders and activists up-to-date on what is happening with the campaign, whether that be developments in the legislative arena, recent contract settlements or new reports and data about academic staffing. The launch of The Bulletin coincides with the launch of our new web site for the FACE Campaign. We are very excited about the new site. It consolidates our old site and the FACE Talk blog, which our contributors will continue to post to regularly. We hope you will stop by and share your thoughts with us at FACE Talk. The site also contains a variety of resources including: An extensive Toolkit to help you and your local get involved in the FACE campaign; Links to all FACE Legislation introduced in the states, as well as links to other legislation related to academic staffing issues; Summaries of collective bargaining agreements in areas that relate to FACE and links to those agreements. And much more! We hope you will pass The Bulletin on to your colleagues and encourage them to sign up to receive it themselves, and we welcome you to visit the FACE web site and to let others know about that, too. FACE is an AFT-sponsored campaign, but neither the website nor The Bulletin are intended for AFT members only, so spread the word far and wide! And, as we say on the FACE site, we always want to hear your ideas, suggestions and questions.

April 10,2008

REMINDER---Saturday, April 12th, is Technology Day at UCC. There will be a series of over twenty (20) workshops offered to adjunts and full timers. Most of these are level #2 and eligible for payment to adjuncts. There will also be a free continental breakfast and cold-cut luncheon. I advise you all take advantage of this. Please contact Joann Levey at levey@ucc.edu if you have not received a schedule.

April 6, 2008

I wish to thank everyone here at UCC who signed my petition for the position of PRESIDENT OF THE NEW JERSEY STATE FEDERATION OF TEACHERS- AFT- which is our parent Union. I just returned from our convention, the elections were held yesterday, and I Wthe same sections just because we have had them in the past.

March 24,2008

For those who are not aware the school is participating in the Community College Survey of Student Engagement(CCSSE) as part of our student retention program. Dr. Patricia Biddar is in charge of the program and is looking for adjuncts who would like to serve as proctors for the Survey in chosen classes. The survey takes about 45 minutes and you would be paid $13.50 for each test you proctor. It is not much money, I agree, but if you have time to kill between classes it is enough for coffee and a sandwich. If you are interested contact Dr. Biddar at biddar@ucc.edu or call her at 908-709-7509.

February 28,2008

The computers in C207, the Adjunct Office, and all classrooms will be re-imaged next week over Spring Break. Beth Sutherland from IT has informed me that her team will make the trasition as painless as possible for the adjuncts. You should have all received email instructions as far as what to do the first time you log on after the re-imaging. If you have not received it please contact sutherland@ucc.edu and she will forward it to you. Also all computers will then have Word 2007. Workshops were offered for training, but unfortunately most of us adjuncts were not notified on a timely basis. I have been assured that anyone who takes the INTERMEDIATE training will be able to use Word 2007 with little difficulty. If you can not make any of the sessions send an email to Dorothy Andrews- andrews@ucc.edu - to see if you can arrange for another time. Beth and Dorothy are very co-operative and will do the best they can to accomodate us. Do not wait too long on this or you may have problems accessing documents.

February 28,2008

Any adjunct who uses C207, the Adjunct Office, in Cranford, please be advised of the following- Make sure all books, folders and papers are put away in drawers or cabinets before you leave. Any papers left around will be considered trash and disposed of. Also, any BOXES left on the floor or under desks must be removed or placed where they do not interfere with 'foot room' inder the desk. The most important thing is to MAKE SURE THE OFFICE DOOR IS LOCKED AT ALL TIMES. We have reports that the door was found unlocked on Friday mornings, meaning someone has been leaving the door unlocked on Thursday evenings. We have been informed by the administration that if any computers or other valuable items are stolen from the room we could lose the room completely. We have fought very long and hard to get these facilities and we do not want to lose it. MAKE SURE THE DOOR IS LOCKED WHENEVER YOU LEAVE C207...

February 19,2008

You should all have received your first paycheck for the semester by now. Please remember that in the Spring semester we have 8 pay periods. Therefore, multiply your gross by 8 and divide by the number of credits you are teaching in order to verify that you are being paid correctly. If there are any problems contact Payroll immediately.

February 6,2008

AFT Advantage is the latest benefit available to our members on the AFT members-only Web site at http://www.unionvoice.org/ct/KpzXZsS1iclh/. Members who have activated their new AFT membership cards have full access to the AFT Advantage--discount shopping online from top retailers. Members can shop for electronics, jewelry, women's clothes and accessories, children's clothes, wine and travel (just to name a few products) at discounted prices. Other online benefits include: AFT Member Account Information--Correct member data is vital to the success of the union. Members can make sure the AFT has their latest contact information. AFT + Member Benefits--Discover all the discounts, services, insurance, financial and travel programs available to AFT members as a benefit of membership. AFT Voices-Members are invited to speak out on a variety of topics, from workplace safety to early childhood education. Reminder: Mem this and seems to be attempting to challenge it. AFT legal department has assured us that our contract is valid. However the word is that AAUP has informed Chairs and Co-ordinators not to honor our contract. You would think that the full timers would want to work closer with us rather than oppose us, especially since many of them have come from our ranks. If you are teaching over 14 credits this semester due to Late Start or UCC101 you are safe this semester. Just do not expect to see a repeat of it unless we can convince AAUP that it serves both of us. Have a Happy November as the semester starts to wane down.

October 11,2007

The date has passed for nominations of officers for the 2008-2010 term and only the current slate of officers were nominated. Therefore according to our Constitution and Roberts Rules of Order, the secretary declared the current officers as all being re-elected for the new term. We do not need a formal election since there were no challenges. The executive board would like to thank Dr. Alan Hodes for serving as the chair of the nominations committee.

September 24,2007

The contract was ratified by an overwhelming majority and the new pay plan should be reflected in your first check on September 28. Deep, heartfelt thanks to all who participated in the pre-negotion and negotion sessions. It took a lot of time and hard work and hopefully it was all worth it. A special thanks to Dave McClure, Alan Hodes, Jan Wyzykowski, Karl Heinze, Cherrie Kipple and Joe Pizzo. Also we owe an extra special thanks to our AFT representative, Joanna MacAvoy, without have already sent emails to those that I show are eligible. If you feel you are, and have not received an email from me, please contact me ASAP. It has not been easy, it is obvious that the administration of UCC does not understand and respect us as they should, but we are trying our best to represent all 264 adjuncts at UCC.

July 31, 2007

Union County College is finally coming into the technological age and will be starting online grading with the Fall, 2007 semester. Watch your emails and maiboxes for training sessions. I understand that as of now only one has been scheduled, but they will need many more. I also understand that department secretaries are being trained and will post the grades for any faculty members that requests it. I personally think that system will not work too long. I have requested paper instructions for adjuncts since many of us have done online grading at other schools and I imagine it is not that difficult of a process for us to master.

July 14, 2007

We are coming to the crucial part of negotiations---money---and there seems to to a big gap between what we propose and what the College offers. We will be in touch with the membership via email in the next few weeks and ask that you all respond to our contacts with the utmost speed. We do not want to start the Fall semester without a ratified contract, but at this point it appears as we may. The 9 State Colleges and Universities are working on a pay scale package that is substantially higher than ours and we do not want to fall further behind than we already are.

June 15, 200 classes go to adjuncts, sometimes both on the same days. As more and more institutions encounter financial problems because of faulty administration, it becomes easier to balance the budget by paying pitiful salaries to adjuncts than it is to pay decent salaries to full-time personnel. We teachers are professionals, and we deserve professional salaries just like everyone else. If it were not for us, most of those professionals wouldn't be where they are today.