Dear MSCA Day Faculty and Librarians,

I write to inform you that the day collective bargaining agreement expired on June 30, 2017. Under the “evergreen” clause in Article XXI, the contract will remain in “full force and effect” while the MSCA and the BHE/Presidents continue to negotiate a successor contract.

At this point the BHE/Presidents have not made a financial offer.

They have proposed language changes which, predominately, we consider take-backs. These items include:

• elimination of the 15% cap on certain sections taught by part-time faculty, meaning the universities could have unlimited sections taught by part-time, non-benefited faculty (by comparison, the majority of Massachusetts community college courses are taught by part-time faculty, at some colleges nearly 90% of all courses; the community colleges have no language restricting the number of sections taught by part-time faculty),
• discontinuation of formulary increases that have offset salary inversion, salary compression and possible gender-based pay inequities
• creation of a new, third non-tenure-track full-time faculty employee category with reduced academic credentials and academic experience,
  requiring faculty to do course, departmental and university-wide assessment without release time or compensation,
• a new provision allowing some department chairs to force tenured faculty in the department to conduct evaluations of part-time faculty without release time or compensation,
• a new provision allowing tenured faculty to require that other tenured faculty in a department have additional student evaluations administered,
• allowing student enrollment and retention in faculty members’ classes to be considered in evaluations,
• allowing written, anonymous comments on student evaluations,
• having the ability to reduce pay for program area chairs,
• hiring deans with faculty tenure, the tenure evaluation would be conducted by the search committee (which may include non-tenured faculty) with no cap on how high their salaries could be when they “resign” and go into the faculty,
• giving university presidents partial control over which faculty and librarians serve on governance committees,
• allowing trustees to serve on governance committees, and
• allowing classes to start in the middle of August at MassArt.

Needless to say, the MSCA bargaining team will be fighting these proposals as they diminish the profession and impede the education of state university students.

The MSCA will be meeting with the BHE/Presidents on July 12th and July 17th.

The team will be working throughout the summer, but we anticipate that a settlement will not be reached by September 1st.

The MSCA Board has taken steps to prepare for job actions starting September 1st.

Thank you for your support of the bargaining team:

Maria Hegbloom – Bridgewater State University
Jenn Berg – Fitchburg State University (Vice Chair)
Virginia Rutter – Framingham State University
Nita Sturiale – MassArt
David Eve – MCLA
Elaine Craghead – Mass Maritime
Amy Everitt – Salem State University (Chair)
Margot Hennessy – Westfield State University
Don Bullens – Worcester State University

CJ O’Donnell
MSCA President