Dear MSCA Day Part-Time Faculty,

I am writing to let you know about recent activity around the problems with the day per-credit (and Music Instructor) rates in the 2017-2020 collective bargaining agreement. This follow up on an earlier post.

On September 30, 2019 the presidents sent the MSCA the presidents’ computations of what the per-credit rates should be effective on July 1st of 2017, 2018 and 2019. The transmital email included a request that the MSCA contact the presidents if we had concerns or disagreement with the computations.

On October 1st I informed the presidents that the MSCA Board of Directors would review the computations and that I would let them know of the Board’s decision after the meeting. Yesterday I sent the presidents the Board’s decision, which is as follows:

The Board agreed to the July 1, 2017 rate of $1,801.40.

The Board believes there are two errors in the computation of the July 1, 2018 rate and have asked the presidents to look at those two errors.

The Board believes there is one error in the computation the July 1, 2019 rate and have asked the presidents to look at that error.

We understand different universities are partially implementing some of the increases, on different dates. We learned of this from part-time faculty reporting that to us. You should be confident that once the errors are addressed, the MSCA will let you know the final agreed-to rates and enforce accurate payments on your behalf.

Some of you may have heard from the administration that the union has been the hold-up in these computations. That is false.

During the summer before negotiations began, the DHE informed the MSCA that we should not be doing the formulary computations, that that was the DHE’s responsibility, and they asked for the MSCA’s assistance in learning how those computations had been handled.

I traveled to Boston and met with two DHE employees for roughly an hour to go over the methodology. The MSCA was relieved not to have to deal with the complicated computations, although I stated to the DHE that the MSCA intended to verify computations. These formulary computations were for full-time faculty to offset salary inversion and salary compression. As you know, in this contract the parties agreed to use the funds available instead to increase the day part-time rates.

On August 20, 2019, the presidents asked me to do the computations.

CJ O’Donnell
MSCA President