Claudia Barnes is the president of the Massachusetts Community College Council, which represents around 5,000 faculty and professional staff at the commonwealth’s 15 community colleges.
“We teach every course that the community colleges offer, except for some of the workforce education classes and our professional staff unit members have positions that range from librarians to academic advisors, transfer counselors, mental health counselors, disability services, admissions, student orientation, tutoring, writing centers, all of it, pretty much every forward-facing position at the colleges is one of ours," she told WAMC. "As far as we fit into the big picture, the colleges can't function without us. It's that simple.”
Barnes says the unfair labor practice charge the union has filed with the state’s Department of Labor Relations against the Board of Higher Education is the result of new demands from community college presidents for ongoing contract negotiation terms. One would withhold reassigned time for union bargaining reps unless the MCCC stops inviting silent bargaining representatives to negotiations and starts conducting all meetings in person. Barnes characterized it as a blindside.
“For at least 30 years, the administration has been providing for release time or reassigned time for members of our unit that negotiate our day contract, which is the contract that covers all full-time faculty, all professional staff, whether they're full-time or part-time, and then a small segment of our part-time faculty,” she explained.
Barnes says failing to provide that time is a body blow to the rights of union education professionals to fairly represent their goals at the bargaining table.
“As far as we can tell, we have the highest community college faculty workloads of any system in the entire country, except for Nevada," she said. "So, we already don't have a lot of time to do this, and so taking away that time that we would have to do that puts obviously, an enormous amount of pressure on us. It's also going to be challenging, because this will mean that all meetings have to be after 4 p.m. or on weekends, because we're not going to have the ability for professional staff to walk away from their desk to go to a bargaining meeting, and their customary hours are eight to four.”
The MCCC says it isn’t against in-person meetings, but resents being strongarmed into them.
“We're a pretty big union, we're across the state, we need to be as transparent as possible. So, I think it is important to be able to allow people to silently observe what's taking place," said Karen Hines, a business faculty member at Pittsfield-based Berkshire Community College and a union worker. “The bigger issue is that they consistently keep putting barriers to not address the salary information, and so they keep trying to come up with ways or more barriers that we have to figure out how to get around it now, when the reality of it is, is it just comes down to the fact that we're underpaid for what we do, and it's only going to get worse.”
Hines says her salary has only risen by around 9% over the 15 years she’s worked for the Massachusetts community college system – a system she describes as crumbling due to stagnant wages and ever-expanding demands.
“We’re not being paid a living wage," she told WAMC. "So, in not receiving a living wage, it's really hard for, one, our seasoned faculty to stay, because they decide they can find something somewhere else that will pay them that living wage, and two, we can't turn around and find new people to fill those positions, because they look at the pay rate and they say, I can't live on this with my family. So, what's happening is either faculty are going somewhere else, or faculty are now balancing two or three jobs in some instances, in order to make enough money."
Barnes says better wages for union workers are crucial, making their fight against college presidents over bargaining table access even more important.
“Our average salary was for faculty was 70% below California, which is the state with the closest cost of living to Massachusetts," she said. "So even though the governor's parameters over the last few years have been more generous than they have been in the past, 3.5% and 4% is not cutting it”
With recent moves to make community college free to all in Massachusetts through the MassReconnect and MassEducate programs, Barnes says union member workloads have exploded as droves of new students stream onto campuses.
“I've got one college, they only have three disability services counselors for 1,400 students," she said. "I mean, you can't function that way. When somebody's got an advising load, that's over 400 people. It's not tenable. I mean, it can't continue. They need to hire more people.”
Hines says community colleges are a critical economic development tool for Massachusetts – one the commonwealth can’t risk weakening by failing to support faculty and staff.
“I think we're on the breaking point," she told WAMC. "I've seen this going on for five or six years now and trying to correct it, and we just keep seeing one barrier put up after another. This has the potential of really having a serious impact on workforce development, and those who are staying in the state after graduation in what they're going to do to contribute to the success of Massachusetts.”
The Massachusetts Association of Community Colleges represents the presidents and local boards of trustees for each of the commonwealth’s community colleges. In a statement, Executive Director Nate Mackinnon told WAMC that the body doesn’t “share the union's characterization of events” and “looks forward to negotiating a successor agreement at the bargaining table,” but would not otherwise comment on pending litigation.
The Massachusetts Department of Higher Education cited the same concern around commenting to WAMC beyond the assertion that “faculty bring life-changing opportunities to our community college students,” and that it is “committed to conducting contract negotiations fairly and in compliance with state law.”
Barnes says the ball is in the presidents’ court, and that the union was pressed into a hardball approach.
“If management's willing to back off of this, we'd be in a position where we could drop the unfair labor practice charge, which is something that can be done under the Division of Labor Relations policies, and that we try to sort of heal this rift that they have created. I would like nothing more than to see that," the union president told WAMC. "But at the same time, we're not going to cave. Our members are committed to participating in bargaining.”
