NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 29, 2005
Contact:
COLUMBUS STATE FACULTY
CONDUCT INFORMATIONAL PICKETING,
PREPARE TO RESUME CONTRACT TALKS
The Columbus State Education Association (CSEA), which represents the college's 260 full-time faculty, will conduct informational picketing at the downtown campus August 31 and September 1.
Faculty will picket and distribute flyers at locations along Cleveland Avenue, Spring Street, and Mt. Vernon Avenue from 8 to 10 AM and 4 to 6 PM each day.
CSEA President Steve Abbott said that the faculty hope to inform students and residents of central Ohio about the critical issues involved in the negotiations. These include the ratio of full-time to part-time faculty, a basic salary schedule that allows faculty to progress through their pay ranges, the burden of increased health care costs, workload issues, and reassigned service time for CSEA officers.
Abbott said that when the college's accrediting body conducted a site visit in 2000, its report noted the institution's large number of managers and the disproportionate ratio of part-time to full-time faculty.
"Columbus State has the worst ratio of full-time faculty to student enrollment for any institution of its size in the nation," Abbott said. Since 2000, he said, as student enrollment increased, the Board failed to hire sufficient new full-time faculty and "has actually increased the number of administrators, creating two new vice presidents."
"Our students deserve better and the community deserves better," Abbott said.
The picketing precedes a scheduled return to talks with administration negotiators September 2 with the assistance of a State Employment Relations Board mediator.
Picketing is the latest action in escalating actions by Columbus State faculty. Nearly 50 faculty in more than a dozen technical programs and academic departments at the college notified their department chairs two weeks ago that they will not continue their work as program coordinators and lead instructors when the college's Autumn Quarter begins September 21.
The action followed the August 11 collapse of contract talks between the Columbus State administration and the Columbus State Education Association (CSEA). The parties have been negotiating a second contract with the college since April. The first contract expired June 30.
Program coordinators and lead instructors provide administrative support within their technical and academic areas. In return, they receive reassigned time from classroom duties to coordinate labs,supervise adjunct faculty, resolve students complaints, and direct curricular activities.
Abbott said that the faculty involved would take on additional teaching assignments in lieu of the reassigned time.
Economic issues have contributed to the difficulty of reaching an agreement.
"Once inflation is factored in, the Board of Trustees is offering faculty a pay cut in the same year it lavished the college's CEO with an 8.3% raise," Abbott said. "Columbus State faculty already pay the highest proportion of health care costs of any public college faculty in the state, and on top of that the Board wants employees to pay an additional 75% in health care costs while freezing its own costs at current levels."
"In a time when CEO compensation packages are so out of line with employee wages and benefits," he said, "it's absurd for the Board to dramatically increase employee health care costs and offer a raise that's less than the rate of inflation in the same year that it increases the President's compensation by more than 8 per cent."
"Our faculty are committed to their students and to the college," Abbott said, "We are also committed to negotiating a salary schedule that develops fair compensation and to resisting the Board's attempt to force employees to shoulder all the increase in health care costs."
He said that those with the responsibility to run the college appear unwilling to effectively address Columbus State's ratio of full-time to part-time faculty, morale problems among employees, ongoing frustrations of students due to problems with a flawed computer system, or necessary investment in personnel that quality education demands.
"We hope to resolve these issues before Autumn Quarter begins," Abbott said, "but it's going to take more creativity and more willingness to compromise from the administration than we've seen so far."