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By: Jason M, Jake S
WORCESTER – Teachers and staff organized under the Massachusetts Community College Council (MCCC) have been engaged in contract negotiations with the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education for the last few months. Despite Massachusetts offering free community college through the MassEducate program, faculty at community colleges across the state face conditions that harm their wellbeing. Low pay, food insecurity, and ever-increasing class sizes hurt faculty and prevent them from being able to teach their students. While community college presidents across the state regularly make more than $200,000 annually, community college faculty make the lowest average salary nationwide, according to a study conducted by the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA).
Nearly half of MCCC members struggle with food insecurity and most need a second job to pay their bills. Increases in the size of online classes by as much as 56% undermines existing protections in the Local QCC Distance Education agreement and severely hampers the ability of faculty and staff to offer students a quality education.
The Massachusetts Board of Higher Education has not entertained a proposal from MCCC. Only three bargaining sessions have been held over a four-month period, during which the Board has tried to implement restrictions over rank-and-file MCCC members’ ability to attend, and changes to how union representatives are compensated for their time spent negotiating. The union has filed an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) over the latter.
Working Mass sat down with Caitlin B, an academic advisor and enrollment counselor, as well as secretary for the union’s QCC chapter (the Quinsigamond Community College Professional Association, or QCCPA), to talk about union members’ concerns.
Quotations used in this article have been edited for clarity and brevity.
Distraction, Delay, and Hostility
Salary, workload, and schedule flexibility are top concerns amongst QCCPA members. The Mass Board of Higher Ed, instead of entertaining proposals from the union, has forced negotiations to fixate around rules of engagement. Caitlin explained:
We haven’t proposed anything regarding these issues yet. So far, we’ve been working with management on establishing ground rules for bargaining. This has already been difficult to negotiate.
The Mass Board of Higher Education has also earned an Unfair Labor Practice charge from QCCPA early on by undermining compensation of the union’s bargaining team.
They don’t want us to be compensated, so we’ve been doing all of our bargaining outside of working hours. I’ve never done this before, but other people are like: ‘This is absurd.’
The school argues that rank-and-file union members should not be physically visible to the boss when they attend virtual bargaining sessions.
I’ve heard horror stories about bargaining, and so far I haven’t experienced anything that bad, but this year, there were some issues with silent representatives. Dues-paying members can silently attend bargaining sessions, and there’s this complaint about, should they be visible during the Zoom session, should they not be visible, it clogs things up, blah blah blah.
The Board of Higher Education hasn’t offered much detail to explain why seeing union members’ faces make them so uncomfortable during negotiations. Caitlin can only assume their intent.
The silent representatives are really important for us, because when we caucus in between bargaining sessions, they actually have information they can give to us that we wouldn’t necessarily know off the cuff. Management doesn’t want them there, they don’t want to look at people when they’re telling them: ‘No, you can’t get this, you can’t get that’, so that’s been the biggest issue for them right now.”
A Real Sense of Ownership
When asked about what being in a union meant to her, Caitlin paused thoughtfully.
Without the union, we’d be at the mercy of whatever our employee decides what is best for us. When you work in a system with so many different components and types of employees, having proper representation is essential.
Caitlin continued:
My coworkers have an unwavering dedication to their students. We work together on a mission to help our students get what they need, and at the community college level, our students may not be “traditional.” We are their advocates and support systems, and that is something worth preserving.
Caitlin reflected positively on rank-and-file engagement at QCC.
We’ve increased our membership a bit. We’ve got the MTA [Massachusetts Teachers Association, of which MCCC is an affiliate] noticing that and coming to our meetings every week, they’re really paying attention to how we’re doing things, which is really nice. So I think watching the change, watching people being more engaged in it, makes you want to be more engaged in it.
Caitlin in large part credited James L, president of the QCC chapter of MCCC and an active member of Worcester DSA who previously served on its Steering Committee, with this growth. “He quickly formed an organizing committee on campus, which exists at the statewide level, but usually locals don’t have one,” she explained.
I think once people started realizing, oh, we can actually do something with this, it’s not just a contract, it’s also action, you know? I think that’s really important.
Workers united can, in fact, demand a say in the place where their labor is bought and sold is why a strong, conscious labor movement is a central component to building working class power. Ownership unites the collective. When workers organize amongst themselves to confront a class enemy, they become the protagonists of the struggle they live through every day. They learn to think and act collectively, laying down the paving stones along the road to a better future. One where the working class is in full control of society, not the bosses and the capitalists.
Jason M and Jake S are members of Central Mass and Worcester DSA. They are contributing authors for Working Mass..
The post Community College Faculty and Staff, Suffering Low Pay and Board Hostility, Fight for a Contract appeared first on Working Mass.
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