Broadside 9-22-17
Broadside September 22, 2017
Thumb Drive Contracts
For your convenience and information, the FFECC has a searchable 2009-2020 contract on thumb drives. To get these drives, please contact your campus’ FFECC vice presidents:
VP, City campus VP, North campus VP, South campus
Patricia Kaiser Adrian Ranic Jason Steinitz
716-270-5639 716-270-5828 716-851-1305
kaiser@ecc.edu ranic@ecc.edu steinitz@ecc.edu
FFECC Website
The FFECC website (www.ffecc.org) is a valuable resource for union related information, initiatives, and activities. Recent FFECC activities featured:
Our union’s recent involvement in an ECC sponsored DACA event
Convocation presentations on future challenges to our union delivered by NYSUT Executive Vice President Jolene DiBrango, NYSUT labor relation specialist Elizabeth Vignaux, and our FFECC officers.
Need to view the current contract?
Login to the Members section to access the current contract, the FFECC Constitution and Bylaws, or Executive Council meetings minutes.
Updating your professional status? The Members section also has Rank Advancement forms, Evaluation forms, and Retirement Information.
Contact information for our Officers and Executive Council (http://www.ffecc.org/about) if you have any Union issues or questions, please refer to that page to contact the appropriate personnel.
Unions connect YOU to the bigger issues! See the Links page for information about the upcoming Constitutional Convention referendum or to contribute to Vote-Cope (which allows us effective political action)
The Links page (http://www.ffecc.org/links) connects to other organizations like NYSUT, AFT, and the NEA.
What Having a Union Does for You – reprinted from 5/22/17 FFECC Broadside
The Supreme Court will likely hear one or more cases this term that could affect your ability to have a union at ECC. Seriously. One such is Janus v AFSCME, but there are others.
The essence of these cases is whether to allow agency fees. In 21 states including New York, agency fees are the fees that public sector unions collect from employees in the bargaining unit who choose not to join the union. These fees are not union dues but consist of a large portion of the money that union members pay as dues, excluding that part used for political activities.
Public sector unions, such as FFECC, are required by law to bargain for and represent non-union members in their bargaining unit, and to protect all their rights under the contract. These fees support these activities on behalf of non-members, preventing what is called “free riders” or sometimes “freeloaders” to benefit from the activities of the union while doing nothing to support it.
If the Court decides in favor of the plaintiffs in any of these cases, all states will become “right to work” states, which means agency fees will be outlawed. However, the union will still have an obligation to provide all non-paying non-members the same protections as paying members. If this happens, and a public sector union’s paying membership falls below 50% of the bargaining unit, the union can be de-certified. Then it would no longer exist.
Let us pause for a moment to consider what some of these protections are. The median weekly earnings of unionized workers are nearly 30% higher and more secure than non-union workers in equivalent positions. Without salary schedules in your union contract, individual employee salaries could be changed arbitrarily without regard to any fair standard. Union contracts prevent employees from being arbitrarily fired – it is your contract, not the law, that provides this protection. In our case, your FFECC negotiated union contract secures tenure/permanent status for full-time members, which entitles those members to multi-stage progressive discipline, due process, and mandatory arbitration in cases of termination. Without these protections all college employees would become “at-will” employees subject to termination for no reason at all.
Furthermore, without the contract, management would be free to change our health insurance without bargaining, or reduce it to the bare minimum coverage currently required by the ACA. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the plaintiff in Janus v AFSCME and New York along with all other states become Right to Work states, these protections that we enjoy and depend on will probably disappear.
All public sector unions are under threat. Please inform yourself about the upcoming Supreme Court case, Janus v AFSCME, and talk with your union representatives about these.
