Montgomery College Adjunct Professors Vote in Favor of New Contract

Montgomery College adjunct professors have voted in favor of their new contract by an overwhelming margin. Provided that the college's Board of Trustees approves it, this will conclude the biggest union organizing campaign in recent county history. Following is the announcement from the faculty's bargaining committee.

We are happy to announce that our first-ever collective bargaining agreement with Montgomery College has been approved by the part-time faculty.

Part-time faculty voted 3-to-1 (213 to 70) in favor of the contract. The final vote count had been delayed two weeks, to allow faculty members inadvertently left off the voter eligibility list by the college to receive ballots and vote.

The final step now is for the Board of Trustees to vote to ratify, which we expect will take place at their January 19th meeting. Our contract will then be signed and go into effect.

As a reminder, the agreement calls for all part-time faculty members who taught in the fall semester to receive a lump sum bonus equal to 2.37 percent of their earnings for that semester. The college has committed to having the bonus paid to you within 30 days of ratification by the Trustees. A 2.37 percent salary adjustment will go into effect with the spring semester. Also, because of the delay in completing the ratification process, the ESH limit increase to 11.5 per semester that we achieved in our agreement goes into effect immediately.

The agreement is available online at www.seiu500cal.org. Printed copies will also be available soon.

With our contract nearly in place, we have a busy spring semester ahead. We will move to implement the agreement. Negotiations will also begin next month for salary levels in the 2010-11 academic year, and we'll begin the critical work of addressing the pay disparities between full-time and part-time faculty.

With these and other challenges before us, it's more important than ever to come together to build a strong union. We'll be in touch in the new year with ways you can help build our part-time faculty union and win results in the months and years ahead!

On behalf of the officers and staff of SEIU Local 500 and our entire bargaining team, we wish all of you our best for a happy, healthy 2010.

Sincerely,

Your Montgomery College Part-Time Faculty Bargaining Committee

Victoria Baldassano, English Professor
Richard Foster, English Professor
Jean Freedman, History and Women's Studies Professor
Dan Moskowitz, Mathematics Professor
Alan Stover, Business Professor
Lynn White, Mathematics Professor