Update on Day Negotiations
From: Brad Art and Donna Sirutis
Date: December 28, 2004

December 6, 2004: The parties met for bargaining. We were dismayed to find that, when we asked for more bargaining dates, Peter Tsaffaras responded that he was not authorized on that day to agree to any dates. We expressed our suspicion that if Tsaffaras had no authority to agree to dates, he must have no authority to agree to anything else. Tsaffaras denied that he lacked authority. We made another effort at reaching agreement on reducing the number of evaluations under Article VIII. This goal proved unattainable, and the BHE/COP stuck to its idea of increasing the number of evaluations, but having fewer unit members do them. (In fact, as we pointed out to management, the most recent BHE-COP proposal on Article VIII was more anti-employee than its original proposal of July 28, 2004.) We did agree on a slight reduction in the number of part-time faculty evaluations. Eventually we stopped trying and said that our original Article VIII remained on the table.

December 7, 2004: The MSCA (along with some MCCC members) demonstrated at the BHE meeting at Roxbury Community College. President Markunas addressed the BHE and brought to the BHE members’ attention the inability of the BHE’s representative to agree to dates because he lacked the authority to do even that. The BHE voted to recommend a 9.5% increase in state and community college FY 2006 budgets, and went into executive session to discuss collective bargaining.

December 15, 2004: The parties met again. This time Deputy Chancellor David McCauley was back. The BHE-COP team had no substantive proposal, only a process proposal. The proposal, in essence, required the MSCA to make what we would guess might be viewed by Tocco as a “suitable” money offer, in response to which the BHE-COP would make a “refined” language proposal, whereupon Tocco would assess whether the parties were close enough to warrant his coming to the table at some unknown time in the future. After a caucus during which we tried in vain to find some redeeming feature in the BHE-COP’s process proposal, the MSCA declined the offer, but promised to get a new counterproposal to the BHE before Christmas.

Immediately following the bargaining session, two management representatives privately expressed their opinion to those of us remaining in the room (Brad, Donna, C. J., Pat) that we misinterpreted the BHE-COP’s process proposal and that we should have accepted it in order to bring Tocco into the negotiations.

December 16, 2004: After much internal discussion throughout the day, we recommended that President Markunas, accompanied by Priscilla Lyons, meet with Steve Tocco to discuss the status of our negotiations. A proposal to this effect was emailed to Tocco that evening.

December 22, 2004: The MSCA delivered a copy of a radically simplified package counterproposal to Peter Tsaffaras’s office. The same package proposal was emailed to Steve Tocco shortly thereafter, accompanied by a second request for a meeting.

December 23, 2004: Tocco agreed to such a meeting to be held on January 11, 2005.

Meanwhile, we received a copy of Mark Peters’s brief in the fact-finding. One of Peters’s arguments in his brief is that the COP salary study should be implemented by academic ranks and disciplines, and short of doing that, nothing should be done for FY 2004, i.e., FY 2004 ought to be a no-raise year for state college faculty and librarians.

Peters ostensibly represented the BHE in fact-finding. However, we are very interested in finding out whether the position he took is also that of the college presidents. In any case, the arguments in the brief have important implications for negotiations. (Copies of the briefs were sent to members of the Bargaining Committee. If anyone else wants copies, please let Donna know.)

January 5, 2005: The next negotiation session is scheduled for this date, at which time the MSCA team will review the December 22nd proposal for management.

January 18, 2005: A Spring Semester packet will be prepared for distribution to MSCA members by this date. We anticipate that it will contain a timetable for no-confidence votes.

January 28, 2005: Negotiations are scheduled. The BHE-COP is to present a full counterproposal to the MSCA December 22nd counterproposal.

Other developments: The continuing education unit of the MCCC rejected a tentative agreement providing 10% over three years. U Mass faculty were offered 2%-2%-2% without the proposal to eliminate agency fee.