MSCA DAY BARGAINING UPDATE
December 2003

In bargaining, is there anything worse than being lied to by management?
Yes! Being asked by management to lie to you!

Peter Tsaffaras, Associate Vice Chancellor for the Board of Higher Education (BHE), represents the Board and the Council of Presidents (COP) in negotiations with MSCA. On November 14, 2003, he offered the MSCA Bargaining Committee a “political opportunity.” His proposal for a one year deal included a “2%” raise. But that 2% would never make it to the Governor or the Legislature! WE WERE NOT SUPPOSED TO TELL YOU THAT THE 2% WAS A SHAM.

In other words, Mr. Tsaffaras wanted your Bargaining Committee to lie to you in order to obtain ratification of a bogus one year deal.

To make sure we had not misunderstood, we asked him, “Do you mean you’re offering 2% with a wink?”

“Yes,” he said. Peter Tsaffaras seemed to be quite at ease with the deception. Of course, we refused.

How can we trust Mr. Tsaffaras?

Some members of the MSCA Bargaining Committee have been negotiating contracts for a long, long time. We’ve been through some intense bargaining with a variety of management representatives. None of us has ever been asked to join with management in deliberately misleading the membership in order to ratify a proposed contract.

Lie to our members? No thanks, Peter, not now, not ever.

What’s next?

We are scheduled to return to the bargaining table on December 12, 2003. We told the BHE-COP team that we will be prepared to discuss a three-year proposal, but would remain open to the possibility of a one-year extension agreement.

Thanks to the tremendous efforts of the higher education unions, the MTA, and supportive legislators, it appears that the other collective bargaining agreements will get funded. That would remove the biggest obstacle to bargaining that has confronted us.

The next step is the Governor, who may veto the funding, leaving it to the Legislature to override the veto.

NO MORE ZEROS NO MORE ZEROS NO MORE ZEROS NO MORE ZEROS*

*And no pretend raises, either.

- Brad Art, Day Bargaining Chair