Election Results
May 10, 2017
Dear TC3 Adjuncts:
We are excited to announce the members of the new executive council have been elected. Thank you for voting and thanks to all the candidates for participating. The new council is as follows:
Alice Caroompas: President
Pat Sewell: Vice President
Barbara Need: Secretary
Erin Cornish: Treasurer
Cindy Coleman: At-large member
Emily Reardon: At-large member
Diane Williams: At-large member
The Constitution was overwhelmingly accepted. The executive council will be working on a bargaining survey to find out your priorities for the upcoming contract negotiations.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact any of the executive council members.
Active participation by all members is critical to our success. We look forward to working with and hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Nancy Crane and Jill Marie
Elections Committee Members
TC3AA Election Materials
The election for the TC3 Adjunct Association Executive Council and ratification of the Constitution and Bylaws is underway. Ballots are due back by May 8, 2017.
In an effort to limit paper waste, copies of the proposed Constitution and Bylaws were not included in the ballot packets. Instead, please find downloadable electronic versions of those documents below. (A hardcopy of the proposed Constitution and Bylaws is also available for viewing in Room 122, on the secretary’s desk immediately to the left as you enter the room.)
Proposed TC3AA Constitution
Proposed TC3AA Bylaws
For your convenience, an additional copy of the candidates’ statements is also available for download here.
Questions? Please contact Election Committee members Nancy Crane or Jill Marie. Or email tc3adjunctassociation@gmail.com
Judge Issues Decision on TC3 Adjunct Association!
Dear Colleagues and Friends,
As most of you probably remember, back in June of 2015 the TC3 Adjunct Association (TC3AA), the Tompkins-Cortland Community College Faculty Association (the union which represents fulltime faculty), and the College participated in a hearing at the Public Employment Relations Board (or “PERB,” the State entity that oversees unions and employers in the public sector). The TC3AA and the Faculty Association argued that the TC3AA (the union for adjuncts and tutors at the College) should be separate from the existing faculty union. The College argued that the adjunct union and the fulltime union should be merged.
Recently we received word that Judge Carlson of the Public Employment Relations Board has ruled in our favor that the TC3 Adjunct Association should be a stand alone union! We submitted the requisite paperwork to show that the TC3AA has the majority support of the adjuncts and tutors at the College. Once PERB has verified this they will “certify” the TC3AA as the official union for the College’s adjuncts and tutors. We know getting to this step has been a long and often frustrating process with unfortunate delays but now we are literally almost done.
But we’re almost done with the FIRST step. Now we need to turn our attention to building our organization and preparing for negotiations. When we met with representatives from TC3 management after the judge issued his ruling, we were pleased to hear that the College is interested in settling a contract with the TC3AA as soon as possible. That’s great news, but there will be a lot of work needed to make it happen. We are up for the task!
We are very excited at this long awaited moment and we hope we can continue to count on your support and encouragement as we move toward in the coming weeks and months to build a strong union and win a fair contract for TC3 adjuncts and tutors!
Sincerely and On Behalf of the TC3AA Executive Council,
Herman Altmann (Biology), Cindy Coleman (Sociology), Nancy Crane (Modern Languages/Spanish), Barbara Need (English), Pat Sewell (Environmental Studies), Sherry Tacktill (English), Gregg Weatherby (English), Diane Williams-Altmann (Biology)
A TC3 Adjunct Association Scholarship?
Yep, read more about that and other news in the September 2016 edition of Room 122, the newsletter of the TC3 Adjunct Association.
March Edition — Room 122
In the March 2016 edition of Room 122, the newsletter of the TC3 Adjunct Association, you can read all about:
*Thoughts on Mid-Winter Day
*Why a Union? Why Now?
*NYSUT Member Benefits for TC3AA Members
*Latest on Cayuga Community College adjunct union.
Room 122
is not only the location of the “Adjunct Office” at TC3, it’s also the name of our newsletter which recently debuted. Click here to read the very first issue of Room 122.
Congrats to Cayugians!
Cayugites? Cayuga’ers? However one says it, congratulations are in order for Cayuga Community College’s adjuncts (Cayuyadjuncts?) for now being one step closer to the bargaining table for their union, the Cayuga Community College Part-time Faculty Association.
On January 29th, the Public Employment Relations Board affirmed the April ruling of an Administrative Law Judge that adjuncts at Cayuga are entitled to their own union, separate from the existing union for Cayuga’s fulltime faculty.
A little background: Adjuncts at Cayuga had started organizing a union back in Spring 2014. Despite a majority of adjuncts supporting a stand-alone adjunct union, the College’s administration interfered, insisting that the “most appropriate” union for adjunct was a merged one with fulltime faculty, something that neither Cayuga’s adjuncts nor its fulltime faculty wanted. The College’s refusal to recognize an adjunct-only union forced the issue into a long (and expensive) legal battle.
Sound familiar? It should. Back when a majority of TC3’s adjuncts signed “authorization cards” indicating our support for union representation, TC3 Administration and Board took a page from Cayuga’s anti-union handbook, insisted that despite the preference of TC3’s adjuncts and fulltimers to be in separate unions, the “most appropriate” union was a merged one of fulltimers and adjuncts. Thus, the TC3AA was forced into a similar legal delay as the Cayuga adjuncts had been and we are currently waiting for an Administrative Law Judge to issue his ruling from the June 2015 hearings.
When the judge issues his ruling on the TC3 situation sometime in Spring 2016 (which we anticipate will be favorable to our position for separate unions) we call on TC3 to accept his decision and not undertake additional legal delays (which are funded with public monies) by filing an appeal that is all but certain to end in the same way the Cayuga case did — with PERB upholding a judge’s ruling that separate unions for fulltime and part-time adjuncts are most appropriate.
It’s time, it’s high time, for TC3 to respect the decision of its adjuncts to organize, recognize our union, and begin the process of collective bargaining with the adjuncts’ chosen union — something they do for every other employee at the College.
*For press coverage of the recent PERB decision on Cayuga’s adjuncts click here.
*To read the actual PERB decision, upholding the judge’s ruling for separate fulltime faculty and adjunct unions, click here.
*To add your name to the Open Letter calling on President Haynes and the TC3 Board of Trustees to commit to respecting the judge’s decision on this matter and refrain from wasting more time and money on unnecessary appeals, click here.
Questions? Please contact any member of the TC3AA Executive Council or email us at tc3adjunctassociation@gmail.com.
Spring 2016 — Come By and Say Hi
Welcome back!
Adjunct volunteers from the TC3 Adjunct Association will be on hand in Room 122 with refreshments and the latest information about our Union. Come by to learn more, say hello, or just grab a snack. We look forward to seeing you!
Wednesday, January 27th
9am-10:30am
and
5pm-7pm
Thursday, January 28th
8:30am-11:30am
and
2:30pm-3:30pm
and
5:30pm-7pm
Friday, January 29th
Noon-3pm
Monday, February 1st
9am-10:30am
Wednesday, January 27th
9am-10:30am
and
5pm-7pm
Tuesday, February 2nd
9am-10am
and
1pm-2:50pm
and
5:30pm-7pm
Wednesday, February 3rd
9am-10:30am
and
12pm-3pm*
*Also from 12pm-1pm, a representative from NY State United Teachers’s Member Benefits department will be hosting a presentation in Room 122D. Come find out all the “other” union benefits (aside from having a voice at work and a collective bargaining agreement) that come through membership in the TC3AA and NYSUT!
Thursday, February 4th
8am-2:45pm*
*Also from 11:30am-12:30pm, a representative from NY State United Teachers’s Member Benefits department will be hosting a presentation in Room 122D. Come find out all the “other” union benefits (aside from having a voice at work and a collective bargaining agreement) that come through membership in the TC3AA and NYSUT!
Membership Meeting
TC3 Adjunct Association members: we hope to see you all at our meeting on Tuesday, the eve of the Spring 2016 semester. We’ve budgeted an hour for chatting and pizza before we work through our agenda. If you missed the invite, contact an Executive Council member or email us at tc3adjunctassociation@gmail.com. We really hope you can make it!
We Are Proud
to have been honored by the Midstate Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, and the Tompkins County Workers’ Center as one of the recipients of the Mother Jones Award at this year’s Labor Day picnic.
Thank you to the Central Labor Council, the Workers Center, and the many, many individuals from TC3 and beyond who have supported the TC3AA this past year. It has been a more difficult journey than many of us anticipated when we set out, but then that’s probably not unlike the way many of us felt about teaching before we actually started doing it.
As Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty…”
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