ICCD Hosts Community College Administrators to Discuss Labor Relations
Community college presidents, deans and other senior administrators in human resources, academic affairs, staff development, and finance from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida and Wisconsin met at Cornell’s ILR School in November 2006 to discuss labor law, alternative bargaining methods, and contract administration.
“Piecemeal adaptation does not work in labor relations,” said keynote speaker Dr. Harry Katz, Dean of the ILR School at Cornell University. “Think about system-wide change. Success comes from experimentation, such as using new processes with one segment of the workforce and using their success to convince other workers to try a new process.”
Faculty from the internationally-recognized ILR School utilized case studies, role-playing, and small groups to provide the participants with hands-on experiences.
Through the role playing exercises participants explored position- versus interest-based bargaining : one (non-labor) as individuals, and one (labor) in teams. Discussions followed on the flaws in positional bargaining, including how it ignores the value of relationships, promotes distrust, and discourages communication of interests that could lead to inventive solutions. Teams reported on the principles observed in their interest-based bargaining exercise, such as separation of the person from the problem, generation of multiple options, evaluation by objective criteria, and best alternatives in getting to yes.
Richard Boris, Executive Director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education at CUNY, spoke about how unionization has contributed to the “professionalism” of the community college professoriate; prior to unionization, there were no predictable paths to tenure, no grievance procedures, and salaries compared poorly to those at private colleges and universities of a similar size. According to Boris, administrators and union leaders face two kinds of issues at the table: Non-controllable funding from external sources: how much and when, and Controllable issues: like workload and intellectual property.
Rick Hurd, Professor and Director of Labor Studies at the ILR School, noted that “Higher education in the United States has the sixth-largest number of unionized workers, there are more unionized workers in higher education than in the automobile, steel or airline industries.”
Tony Wildman, the Director of Higher Education Services at the New York State Union of Teachers, reviewed the effect of the elections, the Spellings report, and state funding on community college bargaining. According to research conducted by NYSUT, the public, in general, is not aware of or interested in higher education. Therefore, it is imperative that labor and management work together to improve resources.
Rocco Scanza, the Executive Director of the Cornell Institute on Conflict Resolution, talked about grievance procedures and arbitration. Scanza emphasized that mediation is appropriate when the parties wish to resolve their issues early on and maintain their working relationship. Scanza pointed out that there will soon be a great number of arbitrators leaving the system for retirement, creating a succession crisis similar to that of community college leaders.
Two-thirds of the participants brought experience negotiating with their campus unions. The program confirmed to all the participants that, in negotiations, leadership is critical: the better educated both sides are, the more they will be committed to the mutual goal of serving students, and the better the outcome will be.
Ron Seeber, Executive Director of Conflict Resolution and the Assistant Dean of the ILR School explained that before two sides sit down to negotiate they must prepare by dealing with the larger issues surrounding the table: the relevant economic, political, and legal issues, and the concerns of their specific constituents. State laws, in particular, determine the unions’ ability to strike, the methods of dispute resolution, ratification of the bargaining agreement, and its scope. Study your constituent views, your costs and budget, any relevant current situations, and other similar contracts.
Rebecca Givan, an Assistant Professor in Collective Bargaining in the ILR School, who reviewed the phases of negotiation, encouraged community college administrators to “think about educating your union by sharing as much information as you can, rather than being secretive.” Sally Klingel, a Senior Extension Associate in Organizational Change at the ILR School, noted that many K-12 systems employ a useful model of teamwork in which union and management leaders meet quarterly to review wages and other data; when these leaders come to the table to bargain they have both an existing relationship with each other and a useful body of data. As Klingel pointed out, “the best resource for problem-solving is the person across the table.”
A panel of community college presidents and union leaders discussed their campuses’ markedly different bargaining models. The president of Genesee Community College in Batavia, New York, Stuart Steiner, and the president of the Genesee Education Association, William Brewer, explained how, after protracted negotiations, they shifted to small teams without lawyers with a limit of three meetings to finish negotiating the contract. Since then they have used the same method and have maintained basically the same contract for thirty-four years with only minor revisions.
Debbie Sydow, president of Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, New York, where all but approximately eighteen employees are unionized, spoke about beginning her presidency with a great deal of theoretical knowledge but no practical experience. Impressed by interest-based bargaining, Sydow has used interest-based bargaining successfully for some aspects of their agreement, and unsuccessfully for others, such as hybrid courses.
The president of Corning Community College, Bud Amann, and Paul McNaney, the president of Professional Educators of Corning Community College, talked about how they are preparing for their next negotiations and have had only one contract so far. New to their campus, the contract has had a major effect on the campus, changing some people’s positions from faculty to administration. President Amann commented that he had learned at this conference that even if the interest-based model is not fully utilized, management can identify mutual interests and share information, which he intends to do.
Responding to the participants’ desire to focus more in-depth on specific areas of labor relations, ICCD will host a follow-up program, tentatively scheduled for November 2007, on contract language and progressive discipline and arbitration, with “The Essentials of Community College Labor Relations” to be offered again in the spring of 2008.
- Martha Stettinius
“The Essentials of Community College Labor Relations” is one of the programs within the area of Organizational Integrity in ICCD’s comprehensive program Gravitational Leadership.
More information about "The Essentials of Community College Labor Relations."
