GREENFIELD — Nearly 40 years into a career as a professor at Greenfield Community College, Doug Wilkins sees the state as trying to take more control ofthe faculty’s work.
“This is the start of the slippery slope away from academic freedom,” said Wilkins, the president of the local union chapter of the Massachusetts Community College Council.
A couple dozen faculty and professional staff at the college lined the walkway to GCC Wednesday afternoon to call for a contract that pushes against additional state oversight of their work, and for salary and benefits that rise with the cost of living.
The decision to go public with their frustrations over contract negotiations comes nearly a year since GCC’s faculty and professional staff last had a current contract. The union workers here joined the efforts of fellow unionized faculty and professionals at the 15 community colleges in the commonwealth.
“What has me riled up is this is actually normal,” GCC librarian and Greenfield Precinct 5 City Councilor Tim Dolan said about the length of time to settle a contract. “This seems to happen all the time.”
The remaining issue at the negotiating table is the state’s insistence that faculty have to use a “Learning Management System.” The union workers say the state wants to regulate the way they manage students but is not explaining how it will do so and its intentions behind it.
“It’s like me being a professor and not telling you what your grade is based on,” Wilkins said.
The system is used by a majority of professors, Wilkins said, but regulating it and making it as a way to evaluate teachers is what’s troublesome.
“It’s a starting point of shifting us from an academic or a scholarly community into a means of creating benchmarks that are more in line with business,” Amy Ford, human services program coordinator at the college, said. “Yes, a college is a business, but in terms of our relationships with our students — this concept concerns me.”
A majority of the union’s employees are on the faculty side, but the professional staff is still frustrated with the reduction of the holiday time that can be rolled over. It used to be 64 or 65 days and now it’s been capped at 50 days. Previously additional days could be transitioned to sick days, which has also been eliminated, the unionized workers said.
The workers said they believe the decision to reduce holiday time that can be rolled over and paid out when retired was in response to a couple of college presidents in the state who had six-figure payouts from similar situations. Presidents are not a part of the contract.
Wilkins said Gov. Charlie Baker told negotiators he would not sign off on any salary increases greater than 2 percent. The workers said this is unfair because the inflation of cost of living typically rises by more than 2 percent.
In prior years, GCC faculty and professional staff had its college President Bob Pura typically in their corner. The negotiations are with a portion of the 15 community college presidents, which didn’t necessarily include Pura.
“Bob was great,” Wilkins said of the president who retired last year after about 17 years on the job. “He listened. He tried to battle for us.”
Wilkins said the college’s new president, Yves Salomon-Fernandez has been very supportive of the staff, but she naturally doesn’t hold the same clout Pura held at this time.
“He was the grand ol’ president,” Wilkins said.
Wilkins doesn’t have the same feelings about the senior leadership of the college presidents who are from elsewhere in the state.
The crux of the conflict now, though, is much less to do with who’s the president for GCC, Wilkins and other union workers said. Unions in the area and across the country have been facing challenges since since a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year weakened unions.
“All we’re asking for is to be adequately compensated for that work,” Dolan said. “Part of that is being respected.”
You can reach Joshua Solomon at:
jsolomon@recorder.com
413-772-0261, ext. 264