UDC OKs contract with faculty union

The University of the District of Columbia’s board of trustees has approved the school’s new employment contract with the faculty union, which has been at odds with the school administration for years over pay and rules for layoffs.

The new contract is “long overdue and we are pleased that it happened this fall,” board Chairman Charles Ogletree Jr. said yesterday. “I was very pleased to see the board’s enthusiastic and unanimous support for the agreement.”

Members of the UDC Faculty Association, an affiliate of the National Education Association, have worked without a contract since 1993 and without a cost-of-living adjustment since 1998. Contract negotiations nearly collapsed earlier this year after the union rejected the administration’s offer of a 1 percent pay raise.

The union membership ratified the contract Sept. 12, and the board approved the agreement Wednesday night.

Final approval of the contract must come from the D.C. Council.

The proposed contract would give the faculty a 6.4 percent pay raise retroactive to last October, matching a pay increase given in June to nonunion workers, including law school faculty, some hourly laborers, career service employees and education-support staff. Unionized faculty will receive an additional 3 percent pay raise next month.

The Washington Post first reported the contract approval in a brief yesterday.

Mr. Ogletree commended the work of the negotiating teams from the school administration and the faculty union, which returned to the bargaining table three weeks ago after the union membership rejected a subsequent contract offer.

That offer included a 6.4 percent pay increase but undercut job security. The new agreement preserves the pay raise and secures faculty protection against firings and layoffs.

“We listened to the faculty; we heard their objection and we went back and corrected it as quickly as we could,” union President Leslie Richards said after the union vote last week.

The new contract requires the administration to consider an entire set of criteria when deciding layoffs, rather than giving it the ability to pick and choose from among a list of criteria as was allowed under the original contract.

The new contract also guarantees the continuation of existing job protection to teachers who would be ineligible for the school’s new tenure status. Most of the professors and instructors already enjoy an equivalent job protection, though the school previously did not call it tenure.