Images From our Spring Legislative Trustees Reception
UA President Felicia Kornbluh talking to Representative Tristan Toleno
Steve Finner and Senate Majority Leader Phil Baruth
Representative Kurt McCormack
UA President Felicia Kornbluh's remarks to the UVM Board of Trustees - Saturday, Feb. 6, 2016
Comments before the UVM Board of Trustees
Dr. Felicia Kornbluh
Associate Professor of History and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies
and President, United Academics, AFT/AAUP
February 6, 2016
Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to address the Board this morning. And hello to those legislative trustees with whom United Academics has had the pleasure to share its perspectives in recent months.
I am Dr. Felicia Kornbluh, an Associate Professor of History and of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, at UVM and the President of United Academics. Here with me today are members of our elected leadership bodies, the Executive Council and the Delegates Assembly, and other active members of our union. We are all busy teachers and scholars, who join together in UA to forward our vision of the university.
Let me begin by acknowledging your service to the University of Vermont. As the representative of the organized faculty of the University, United Academics is indebted to you. We know that this is a hard-working board, and that you all have many other commitments in your lives as well. We acknowledge as well President Sullivan and other university administrators who use their best judgment to sustain UVM financially and steer it toward a stable future.
This morning I will say a few words about United Academics and share some of our current concerns, offering not a “state of the union” but thoughts on the state of the University from the union’s point of view.
Since 2002, United Academics has represented the large, diverse faculty of UVM. Our 800 members range from library and research faculty, to part-time faculty, with specialized knowledge as experienced practitioners in their fields, to full professors in the humanities, physical sciences, and social sciences. We share a profound commitment to our students, to thi university, and to our own professionalism. We stand for the material wellbeing of each and every faculty member – including our access to high-quality, affordable health care and to the time that allows us to nurture our family lives and feed our intellects. We also stand for the values of the faculty. These include the accessibility and affordability of higher education to all who seek it; the importance of education that is challenging—and to courses that are small enough to allow for the most rigorous pedagogy; intellectual and political independence that permit us to challenge young minds; and a democratic, humane university that can serve as a beacon in an era in which the most truculent or meretricious voices are often the loudest.
We care more than perhaps you know about the fate of the University of Vermont and about the fate of universities generally in our society. These institutions value fairness and free inquiry, depth of engagement and the search for truth, and the ability to stand at a critical distance from the picture of the world provided by conventional media, political, and economic authorities.
Concerns
Our over-arching concern at present is that a certain version of fiscal sense has taken priority over other values that define us as a community. Throughout the university, we seem to be experiencing a death of a thousand cuts. I say “seem” because UA learns about these only episodically and anecdotally. Under Incentive-Based Budgeting, the central administration has divested itself of responsibility for these decisions while imposing demanding fiscal targets upon the Deans and colleges.
We insist that the UVM administration at all levels hold the faculty harmless in the face of the many remaining unknowns of this budget model. We should not be taxed to enable its implementation. The letter and the spirit of our collective bargaining agreement with the university must be honored. Changes in the quantity or quality of faculty members’ work must be bargained and negotiated with United Academics as their organized representative. We call for a moratorium on administrative decisions that are ending the careers of some of our treasured colleagues and exposing others to uncertainty and unanticipated, exploding workloads.
As a partial solution, we ask this Board to demand that the UVM administration work with the faculty to establish new democratic procedures that give faculty the power to approve or reject any decisions that affect our and our colleagues’ wellbeing under the IBB system.
Last, we ask that this comment period be restored to FRIDAY AFTERNOON to enable more students and faculty to attend.
I fear that this Board has received a somewhat false sense of the level of satisfaction within the UVM faculty. The hope of Incentive-Based Budgeting is that it will provide for greater democratic participation because decisions are made within the colleges, which largely command their own budgets. However, we have seen the following:
* Disparity across colleges in implementation of IBB. This includes disparity in the degree of consultation and democratic participation that individual Deans have solicited, or even allowed. We must ensure that faculty have power under this system – not merely the ability to have their voices heard, but the authority to make choices based upon our experiences and expertise.
* Departmental chairs and deans operating in the shadow of IBB to cut costs pre-emptively. Some appear to be running scared, limiting or eliminating the contracts of nontenured faculty just in case the finances do not work out. This is no way to make decisions about matters of intellectual and academic value, which have implications for our students’ education and which may end the livelihoods of professors who provide enormous value to UVM.
* Increased class sizes—by fiat and against the best judgment of the faculty. This happened in the Environmental Program, a shared endeavor of the College of Arts and Sciences, CALS, and the Rubenstein School. It is one of our flagship programs at UVM, a national leader and one of the defining elements of the undergraduate curriculum.
* The withdrawal of Teaching Assistance. We know of one faculty member, a distinguished part-time Lecturer, who has left the university largely over this issue. The faculty member had taught essential courses for six years and is also a scholar whose research focuses upon urgent contemporary issues. Faced with rising class sizes, no assistance, and no additional compensation, this faculty member left UVM. Aside from the rising workload, this professor felt disrespected and devalued by a university that was apparently more interested in cutting costs than in preserving a high-quality education.
UVM can and must do better. United Academics is eager to work with you to take the next steps forward.
Thank you.
President Felicia Kornbluh's remarks at the Fall 2015 UA Member Meeting
President’s Address
Felicia Kornbluh
United Academics
For The Member Meeting: November 2, 2015
Today I want to talk briefly in three parts:
First, the assault we are facing and the vision of the world that motivates that assault;
Second, what we as faculty, and education workers, and union members have as a contrasting vision, what our sense is of the kind of university we hoped to work in and we want to help create;
and Third, to begin to think together about what are the concrete steps we can take.
I want to start off by acknowledging everyone for your contribution to United Academics: Past leaders; NEW MEMBERS: The most important people here Delegates; Departmental Representative; members of the Executive Council; Member of our staff; Allies of United Academics, friends of our union.
And ALL members of United Academics –who joined with the intention of joining with other faculty at UVM to accomplish things we care about.
My intention today is that you leave here knowing that the union absolutely needs you and every colleague you can bring with you into active membership.
I. Challenges
We face a historically new situation.
- Thanks to our predecessors in the 20th century, universities have been special places, held apart from the most dehumanizing dictates of market capitalism.
- Since the 1970s, public-sector unions, such as ours, have been a port in the storm for organized labor. It has been possible for labor to keep unions alive and even expand our efforts to humanize the workplace in the public sector.
- UVM has benefited from a demographic “bubble” that has allowed it to expand and bring in more revenue without lowering admission standards.
These are all changing. In fact, we have so many challenges, we could spend hours just talking about those. So, very briefly --
At UVM: Budgeting (the “Incentive-Based Budgeting” model and its concomitants): By design, cost is designed to be in the driver’s seat in ALL university decision making – by every Dean in every College, and therefore by every Chair and Department head.; Erosion of faculty governance, for example, in the powers of the Faculty Senate.; Continued biases on the basis of race, gender, (dis)ability, nationality and sexuality; andNOT looking at how we can have smaller classes, give students more attention, engage in more ethnical and critical reflection, reduce our teaching loads.
State legislature – multiple proposals – including Higher Education “performance measures,” distracting from the scandal of Inadequate funding : Vermont 49th in the country in its support for higher education (in the dollar value of its per-pupil expenditures)
U.S. Supreme Court: Friedrichs v. CTA case, which could imperil our ability to have a class of “fee-payers” whom we represent in bargaining but who do not affirmatively declare that they are members of the union.
Those are serious and sometimes overwhelming challenges, attempts to transform UVM as we have known it, to operate like a private business, with managers calling all of the shots, with students conceptualized largely as “customers” here to provide a revenue stream, and with the emphasis ONLY on the bottom line instead of expanding knowledge, opening minds, and encouraging the free exchange of ideas.
We have to counter these challenges, but we also need to put forward our contrasting vision, to insist that WE ARE THE UNIVERSITY. We need to be a key part of the decision making process, and to involve people to create the kind of university that Vermont deserves.
That’s what our union is: a chance to come together, to talk about what WE want to create, to unite with student and community allies, to contrast our vision with the administration’s vision, and to work in solidarity to stop the outrages -- and start to create something better.
Doing that isn’t easy. But we have the power of the faculty and the people who work here, the support of many students, and a set of legal and organizational tools created through past struggles. Those include the union itself, our right to decide on our goals and to bargain with management, and a contract that we can enforce. Those are potential resources – resources we can strengthen!
II. What to do/Hope
The main source of hope here is our committed union itself. Just recently the part-time bargaining unit of UA finished negotiating a remarkable contract. Brian Tokar will share details in a minute – but in summary, it makes the part-time faculty of UVM among the best protected in the country.
The Contract Administration Committee for good reasons keeps many details of its work confidential. But it, too, has stood up for individual members of UA with incredible tenacity and dedication – and won much for those individuals.
In the past, some of you may have brought a concern to the elected representatives of the union or the staff. You may have heard, “There’s nothing we can do,” because the contract has already been signed, or state labor law doesn’t seem to address the situation that concerns you or your colleagues. You may even have said that yourself when somebody came to you with a question or a concern. Starting today, we never want to say there’s nothing we can do. We can build on our success at contract bargaining and the bringing of grievances to expand our work to face our new situation: We don’t yet have all the answers. But many of us in UA want to work together to be more creative in our response to some of the challenges we face – and we want to be more effective, and more powerful.
Please be part of the effort to widen the conversation in UA, to make us a union that can really never again say, “no, there’s nothing we can do for you.” To do that we need to build active membership. We need informal interest groups, committees, and Delegate and Representative structures that are firing on all cylinders.
III. Suggestions
We need to start by increasing our capacity to listen to our members, and talk with them.
Several of us have discussed the idea of having departments invite in people from the union for 15 minutes or so. When UA gets invited in, we need members who will volunteer to attend those meetings, to have questions to ask members at those meetings, to tell people what we are already doing, and to ask for suggestions about other things to do.
- What two topics would you want UA to emphasize if leaders of the union were to come to your colleagues or your whole department or college?
- What other strategies and ideas would you propose in the face of our current challenges?
Thank you
Part-Time Bargaining is well underway
We have met with the Administration's team three times, and proposals are in. We seek a fair contract that recognizes the hard work of our PT Faculty, leaders in their field who have been teaching at UVM for years or decades. UA Members, come to a bargaining session and support us as an Observer. Students and community supporters, tell your favorite PT Faculty member how much they appreciate their work.
Gary Younge Speaking at UVM - Will Miller Social Justice Lecture Series
New Full-Time Collective Bargaining Agreement (Contract) Ratified
United Academics Members in our Full-Time Bargaining Unit have ratified a new contract with the Administration of the University of Vermont. The new contract contains significant gains for all members, with a special emphasis on Lecturers and other lower-paid faculty. The emphasis on lower-paid faculty was proposed by United Academics, and remained a priority of the Bargaining Team throughout the negotiations.
Tentative Agreement Reached in Full-Time Bargaining
I am pleased to report that both the Delegates Assembly and the Executive Council have approved the tentative agreement for a new contract, which means that we will hold a ratification vote in mid-December (date to be announced).
We will be holding two informational meetings for members, both in Memorial Lounge, Waterman:
Thursday, December 4, 4:00 - 5:30
Tuesday, December 9, 11:00 - 12:30
Please come with your questions!
I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving.
Denise
Tabling in the Davis Center moves into high gear
As the weather gets colder, UA's table has moved indoors, but you can find us in the Davis Center Friday the 7th, Friday the 14th and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday the 17th - 20th. Come by and say hi, or, better yet, join us at the table - contact Nancy Welch to sign up.
United Academics supports the Reclaim Rutgers Campaign!
We stand in solidarity with our sisters and brothers at Rutgers!
United Academics Member David Feurzeig's Remarks to the Board of Trustees
I’m David Feurzeig, Associate Professor of Music. I’ve been a member of this faculty for six years, and hope to remain many more. When people ask if I’m a Vermonter, I tell them no one chooses where to be born, but here is where I plan to die.
Recently, our central administration announced the formation of a Council to review UVM’s administrative units. The eight units slated for review this year do not include the offices of the President, Provost, or Deans. Gary Derr, VP for Executive Operations, told the Faculty Senate President that there is currently no plan to do such reviews.
I am asking that the administration and this board correct that omission. A review of leadership offices is especially important for three reasons.
First, administrative compensation has grown out of proportion to all other areas of the university. From 2002 to 2012, the number of top executive positions (those at VP level and above) swelled by 52%, while student enrollment grew 40% and full-time faculty positions increased by only 10%. The average salary for these top 35 administrators grew as well, by 53%, to $210,851. The chart in my handout out illustrates these trends.
UVM’s excessive administrative pay has been the subject of sustained public attention, from stories in the student-run Vermont Cynic to area media and even national coverage by ABC News and the Washington Monthly. United Academics has compiled an archive of about three dozen selected pieces. I encourage you to browse them to see how much this issue rankles in a state with a proud tradition of frugality.
Second, the upper administration has recently advanced, at great cost, several major initiatives that were never implemented. This is largely because they were put forward without serious regard for faculty input. Yet according to the Faculty Senate bylaws, the authority to establish policy regarding academics and research is “vested in the faculty by the Board of Trustees”. A comprehensive review of the university must include a complete accounting of recent administrative initiatives and their outcomes.
Finally, a thorough review of the central administration will set a positive tone for the other university-wide reviews. In keeping with “Our Common Ground's” expressed values of openness and responsibility,[2] the administration should seek the broadest possible input. This will do much to rebuild the trust of the faculty and staff, which has been eroded by what is perceived as administrative overreach and under-accountability.
Thank you for your attention.
UA Vice President John Forbes Remarks to the Board of Trustees
Good Morning. My name is John Forbes, I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre and the Vice President of United Academics.
The faculty that United Academics represents is the soul of UVM, and want UVM to be the best institution that it can be. To that end, we are dedicated to providing high quality, personalized, affordable education to our students.
Faculty working conditions are student learning conditions. In our contract negotiations, we have tried in good faith to work to improve both of these conditions. A demoralized faculty inevitably affects student interactions and student retention, issues we all care deeply about. Faculty strongly support the principles outlined in “Our Common Ground” and strive to put them into action every day. We would, however, like to draw your attention to significant challenges regarding two of its principles: respect and justice.
Faculty faces a three-tier hierarchy: tenured faculty, full-time lecturers, and part-time lecturers. Our lecturers comprise one-third of the faculty, but teach one-half of the courses.
Most of them have the terminal degrees, yet they receive less money for doing more teaching than do tenured faculty, and the administration’s latest contract offer would represent no raise for some of those lecturers. Many do not even have an office and are forced to meet with their students in public spaces on campus. Until United Academics started bargaining in 2003, they had no job security at all. A decade later, despite our best efforts, most have little more security than a two-year contract provides.
A large percentage of our lecturers have taught at UVM for years, have deep roots in the university and our community, yet they must live in fear of a non-renewal letter because of “no further need.” Even if they are renewed it may be at less than full-time, which affects not only salary and benefits, but also their level of commitment and student interaction.
The most egregious recent example of such a termination is the case of Kevin Thornton, a historian at UVM for fifteen years, who had been promoted to Senior Lecturer and nominated for the prestigious Kroepsch-Maurice Award, both signs of his excellence in the classroom. Dr. Thornton’s forced departure has left the History Department without a teacher of American Civil War history.
Like many lecturers, he has an active scholarly agenda that currently focuses on Andrew Harris, whom the university is now celebrating as the first African American graduate of UVM. Dr. Thornton first alerted the administration to this fact in January 2014, but his contribution was not acknowledged in any campus announcements. The Harris story exemplifies the unacceptable situation in which many of our lecturers find themselves.
United Academics is proud to sponsor a lecture on Andrew Harris by Kevin Thornton on October 29, at 4 pm in Memorial Lounge. We invite all of you to join us for this lecture.
Faculty, Students and Staff Rally at the Board of Trustees Meeting
Shortly before 11:00 AM on Friday, October 17, a large and enthusiastic, but orderly group of faculty, staff and students made their concerns known to the UVM Board of Trustees. United Academics took a stand for justice for faculty, supported by the UVM Student Union, VSEA United Staff and others, because Faculty Working Conditions are Our Students' Learning Conditions. Student Climate Culture exhorted the Board to divest UVM from the fossil fuel industry. VSEA United Staff called for a fair union election without interference or intimidation Faculty, Students and Staff all stood in solidarity, united by a common call for justice at UVM. Together, we are the University!
Dennis Mahoney's essay about Kevin Thornton
Doing Justice to Andrew Harris – and Kevin Thornton
Behind every headline is a history that bears further investigation. That’s also true for the Burlington Free Press’s headline of April 19, 2014: “Long forgotten, UVM’s 1st black graduate gets his due.”
As Tim Johnson reported last spring, the University of Vermont administration has pledged to recognize Andrew Harris (UVM Class of 1838), its first African-American graduate. But in the meantime, Kevin Thornton, the Senior Lecturer at UVM whose research established Harris as a standout figure in our university’s and state’s history, has been shown the door.
In statements to the student newspaper and Vermont Public Radio, the administration claimed budget woes, adding that Lecturer positions such as that held by Thornton are “not expected to be permanent.” For the record: Kevin Thornton first joined UVM in 1998 and had taught full-time since 2006.
It’s not that UVM no longer needs Kevin Thornton. Based on his record of superior teaching, his colleagues in History and in the College of Arts and Sciences were unanimous in promoting him to Senior Lecturer in 2012; he also had been nominated for the prestigious Kroepsch-Maurice Award for Excellence in Teaching. With his dismissal, the university has lost its sole historian of the U.S. Civil War, one of the most critical times in American History and the focus of exhibits this fall at the Fleming Museum.
Does this mean that UVM can’t afford to teach about the Civil War? That seems unlikely, as Kevin Thornton's entire salary for teaching seven heavily-enrolled courses a year was less than the raises UVM recently has given to incoming top administrators, compared with their predecessors.
Meanwhile, the audit of university finances commissioned by United Academics, UVM’s faculty union, raises questions about why the administration claims a budget gap at all. Over the past decade, that audit finds, the university’s unrestricted net assets—that is, its savings account, independent of restricted endowment funds—have grown close to $137 million.
After more than a decade of delay by its own admission, the university is finally poised to celebrate Andrew Harris as a pioneering champion of African-American equality—a pioneer who, as Thornton’s research also reveals, endured the hostility of classmates and administrators as he worked to obtain his degree.
As we understand it, Kevin Thornton has received a (belated) invitation to the ceremony that will be taking place between 3 and 4 pm on Thursday, October 16, 2014 alongside the recently installed commemorative plaque on the 3rd floor of the Waterman Building. But this justice deferred for Andrew Harris will continue to be justice denied if the historian who made sure Harris would be remembered at UVM is no longer teaching on campus.
The reinstatement of Kevin Thornton as Senior Lecturer would be an excellent way for UVM to demonstrate its commitment to the values of Integrity and Justice that it proclaims in its statement on “Our Common Ground” (http://www.uvm.edu/~presdent/?Page=miscellaneous/commonground.html).
In the meantime, we at United Academics invite you to attend the lecture that Kevin Thornton will be giving on “Andrew Harris and UVM: 1835-2014” at 4pm on Wednesday, October 29, 2014 in the Memorial Lounge of UVM’s Waterman Building (Waterman 338).
Dennis Mahoney is a Professor of German
UVM Unions on the Radio
Why UVM Staff are organizing for a voice@work
Our colleagues at VSEA United Staff are featured on Traven Leyshon's most recent Equal Time Radio show. Click the link above to go to a podcast of the show.
Sarah Goodrich and Jennifer Larsen discuss why UVM staff are organizing their union. Assisted by the Vermont State Employees’ Association, staff have petitioned the Vermont Labor Relations Board to schedule an election so the nearly 800 non-teaching personnel at UVM can make needed improvements at UVM through wining union recognition. As union members, staff would have a legally enforceable right to bargain with the administration around key issues like wages, benefits, working conditions, and fair discipline. Staff deserve the right to bargain for a fair contract, to be treated with respect, and to have their expertise valued. While UVM's top administrators are warning faculty and staff to prepare for substantial program cuts and probable layoffs, their own ranks and salaries have been growing far faster than faculty and staff, at rates far outpacing changes in student enrollment.
Listen at: http://www.equaltimeradio.com/2014/why-uvm-staff-are-organizing-for-a-voicework
United Academics stands with our staff colleagues in support of their right to Organize!
UA Vice-President John Forbes spoke in support of the VSEA petition to the Vermont Labor Board.
“It is time for the staff to organize and have a say in their own working conditions the way United Academics and the United Electrical Workers, the Nurses and the Bus Drivers do. When we sit down across the bargaining table with the UVM Administration to negotiate the terms of our employment, the Administration has to care because we formed a Union and they are required to care. They may not like it and I’m pretty sure they don’t, but about that, guess what – We Don’t Care! Our rights to have a say in our employment are guaranteed
United Academics’ full-time faculty, along with the United Electrical Workers, are currently in their own fights for a fair contract. Next year, U.A.’s part-time faculty and the nurses will begin their negotiations for their own fair contracts.
We all look forward to a time, very soon we hope, when the Staff’s Union will have that same opportunity.. The opportunity to speak out for their members about salaries and benefits and working conditions, and the opportunity to negotiate a fair contract, rather than having a contract dictated to them.”
Rally for a Fair Contract NOW! was a great success
Thank you to all who attended Monday's rally, both United Academics members and our colleagues from around the campus and the Burlington community! A few images from the rally are below, for those who couldn't be there in person!
Felicia Kornbluh on the radio
UA Activist Felicia Kornbluh was interviewed by Traven Leyshon on Equal Time Radio recently. Missed it on the radio? The podcast is now online at Equal Time Radio.
VT Digger Commentary on the contract situation from our own Felicia Kornbluh
UA Delegates Assembly Member Felicia Kornbluh wrote a wonderful piece for VTDigger entitled More at Stake Than Wages. Please forward her piece to anyone who might be interested.
Solidarity Watch: Retail Workers finding better conditions when the union steps in
This article in the New York Times discusses the differences in hours, pay and working conditions between union-represented and unrepresented retail workers in New York City. Union workers can have guaranteed schedules and earn as much as $40,000 per year, while non-union workers across the street learn their schedules two days in advance and make half as much. Unions are more relevant than ever in today's cutthroat workplace!
UVM Administration forces 2/20 on another unrepresented group
UVM's unrepresented faculty just received notice that the Administration is applying their inadequate 2/20 compensation formula, previously forced on the unrepresented staff, to them as well.
The 2/20 formula involves a meager 2% raise, along with a 20% increase in the percentage of health insurance premium the employee is responsible for.
For employees with a family health plan, their net raise is negative if they make just under $40,000 or just under $50,000 before the "raise" - three separate health insurance increases (the 20%, the increase in premium share from going over $40,000 or $50,000 and a 3% year-to year premium increase from Blue Cross) combine to more than consume the 2% pay increase.
Other employees with a family health plan face either a ~1% net raise if the 2% raise doesn't push their income across $10,000 boundary or a near-zero (well under 0.5%) raise if they are unlucky enough to cross a boundary.