[ TEACHER STRIKE ]
The University of Hawaii Professional Assembly will tally ratification votes today on a tentative agreement that last week suspended a 13-day faculty strike. UH faculty expect
approval of contract
despite oppositionBy Treena Shapiro
Star-BulletinAlthough some union members have slammed the settlement for selling out the highest- and lowest-paid faculty, even those who oppose the agreement expect that it will be ratified.
Jerome Comcowich, a UHPA board member who passed out leaflets at the Manoa campus this week encouraging faculty to vote against ratification, called the pay raises embarrassing and said too little was given to the lecturers and community college faculty.
He said UHPA's board of directors should have recommended voting against ratification and sent the negotiating team back to the table. "Unfortunately, we didn't walk the extra mile," he said. "I think we folded prematurely."
However, Comcowich said that although he convinced some faculty members to vote against the agreement, he expects that the contract will be ratified.
"I think people will vote their pocketbooks, and we've gone without salary raises for two years already, and people are hurting," Comcowich said.
About 90 percent of the 3,100 union membership voted to authorize a strike after working without a contract for two years. The tentative agreement does not include retroactive pay but would give flat-rate increases of $2,325 for the first year of the contract and 6 percent pay hikes the second year.
Full-time lecturers, who are paid by the credit, will receive 3 percent increases. Community colleges will also receive $1 million a year for teaching equivalencies to give faculty time outside the classroom for professional development and preparation for promotion and tenure.
Some faculty on the high end of the pay scale have accused the negotiators of making an agreement that left them worse off than they would have been if the union had accepted the state's pre-strike offer of 9.2 percent pay raises over two years.
The point of contention is the flat-rate increase, which translates to roughly 4 percent for faculty earning $58,000. But those earning more than $77,000 a year will see a smaller raise than they would have had if they had not gone on strike.
Although UHPA board member Bill Puette will be one of those who sees a smaller pay raise, he said the contract is fair. "Our bottom of scale was so horrible. ... That has to be corrected," he said. "Certainly it's not everything everybody wanted ... but it's a good start for certain issues."
Puette, director of the Center for Labor Education and Research at UH-West Oahu, said the decision between flat-rate increases and percentage raises will always have a negative impact on one part of the bargaining unit. If the settlement had included only percentage raises, it would have widened the gap between those at the high and low ends of the pay scale. "A fair settlement reflects a mixture of across-the-board and percentage increases," he said.
As for complaints that the lecturers' raises were too small, Puette said, "The state was attempting to have a two-tiered system that would have had them getting paid less than they have now."
UHPA went on strike April 5, the same day as some 12,800 public school teachers. Although the Hawaii State Teachers Association settled six days after UHPA, their new contract was ratified on Tuesday.
HSTA succeeded in shutting down all public schools from kindergarten through high school except on Niihau. However, part-time lecturers, graduate students and more than 400 faculty crossed UHPA lines and taught up to 30 percent of courses at UH-Manoa and about 11 percent at the community colleges.
>> UHPA Web site
