APA Contract Receives Favorable Recommendation
September 19, 2018
Thanks in part to the hundreds and hundreds of MSCA faculty and librarians who joined APA members in contracting the governor, their state representative and state senator, APA received word today that the Office of Employee Relations has recommended to Governor Baker that he submit the APA contract funding to the legislator.
While the MSCA endured an arduous round of bargaining on the day contract, please know that the APA contract expired six months earlier than ours.
Please congratulate APA members when you see them in their offices, in the cafeteria, walking down the hall, and everywhere else on campus. They have endured unreasonable delays and stress.
See APA President Sherry Horeanopoulos’s message below.
CJ O’Donnell
MSCA President
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Good day, APA members;
Best wishes for the start of the fall semester and thank you for the work you all do to make our colleges and Universities successful in serving our students.
If you have not already seen it, there is an update letter on the APA website (more on that in a minute) that will give you some updated information about where we stand with contract funding. In the worst case scenario, the contract funding proposal will be ignored and the contract will be returned to us for renewed collective bargaining. Neither the APA, the Council of Presidents, nor the DHE wants this to happen.
Communication from the Governor’s administrative offices has been sparse. Most of what we know has been communicated through representatives of the Council of Presidents (CoP) and some responses from Legislators who have been contacted by us and our supportive MSCA colleagues. The CoP message has been one of solidarity for our plight and hopefulness that this will be resolved before the time runs out to recommend funding. That being said, we are now only about two-weeks away from that deadline and we can’t sit idly waiting to see what happens.
Here are some of the things we are doing in roughly the order in which we’re doing them:
- As statewide president, I am informing the HR Directors and the CoP that the APA is standing fast with the decision not to participate in activities surrounding the new evaluation process and contract update workshops – the prime reason being; we are not secure in knowing this contract stands as ratified. This is not a work stoppage or slowdown in any form, but it is an inconvenience that helps to draw attention to the fact that a bargain we made in good faith has been waylaid by the Governor’s people at the 11th hour. Failure to complete the collective bargaining process is neither justified, nor fair in this case and demonstrates a total lack of respect for the workforce.
- We have written a letter to explain how we have NOT exceeded the financial parameters, to counteract the misinformation that is being directed at legislators who are trying to understand the circumstances of this funding debacle. These letters will be delivered to every state legislator. They will include a plea for assistance in connecting with OER, A&F and the Governor – to resolve the funding issue.
- We, as members of the Executive Board of the APA, will attempt to visit the local district offices of our Senators and Representatives and we ask you, if you can, to do the same. Legislators are out of session, so local, fact-to-face visits will be the most powerful connections we can make.
- We have asked the President and VP of the MTA to send out an Action Network request to have the K-12 MTA affiliates write their legislators and request prompt funding for the Higher Ed contracts.
- We will schedule a “visit” to the offices of the OER – and ask you to join us in our endeavor to be heard
- It may be necessary to launch a media/social media campaign – we are planning for that eventuality.
Finally, an answer to a common question that many members have – “Why don’t the local campuses pay the salary increases that are coming out of local campus budgets for 2018?” — The local Institutions cannot fulfill their obligation to provide funding because they ALSO have not received their fiscal 2019 allocations and since the APA Agreement is not yet approved by the Governor, they have no authority to implement the increases. Quite frankly, they are just as frustrated as we are.
Thank you, as always, for your support, ideas, comments and for participating in getting these issues resolved.
Sherry Horeanopoulos
President, Association of Professional Administrators