March 9, 2004

WHAT: Unions� response to Executive Action on school funding in the budget.

Although many other issues dominated the session, the New Mexico Legislature and Governor Richardson continued to make historic progress on education issues including:

� Keeping the Faith with School Reform Dollars from Constitutional Amendment Two

� Across the Board Salary Increases for School Employees

� Continued Implementation of Minimum Salaries for Teachers

� A New Career Salary System for Educational Assistants

� New Flexibility in Bargaining for Health Care Costs

Union officials say that given the packed agenda during the session, public education fared well. "Initially, we were concerned that DWI legislation, the burgeoning fight over Medicaid funding, and sweeping changes to the gross receipts tax would distract the legislature and the Governor from continuing the reform agenda, and that didn�t happen," said Eduardo Holguin, President of NEA-NM.

In addition to implementing existing school reforms, both unions heavily supported a new licensure and career salary framework for Educational Assistants. "We were particularly pleased with HB304 because it starts us on the path of equity to reward Educational Assistants for meeting the new requirements of No Child Left Behind," said Christine Trujillo, President of the New Mexico Federation of Educational Employees.

Higher Ed. was well represented at the C.O.P.E meeting in Albuquerque last Saturday. For those of you who weren't there, I asked Gubernatorial candidate Richardson a question about the overuse/abuse of part-time employees, especially in Higher Education. He apparently had no idea what I was talking about. Given his bewilderment, we obviously have a large job of educating our elected officials about realities in Higher Education. This is generally true--Richardson is not alone in his lack of awareness, as I have discovered in testimony before the House Education Committee and in conversation with Legislators and others. There was a campaign last Fall sponsored by AFT, NEA, AAUP and others to draw attention to the plight of part-timers, especially instructors, but there are still many who are unaware of just how much instruction and other work is done by part-timers.

Organizing part-time employees will be a major component of the organizing plan I noted in my last message. The part-time Faculty is bargaining at T-VI, but when the part-time faculty at NNMCC (Northern New Mexico Community College) collected enough authorization cards for a Representation election, the administration filed an objection with the PERB maintaining that adjunct faculty were not eligible to organize under the Collective Bargaining Act. This history will almost certainly repeat itself when CB is restored. We suspected at the time that the costs of the legal challenge would be shared by the other colleges, as NNMCC's budget could not sustain a prolonged legal battle. We anticipated a struggle equal to the protracted US-UNM fight.

Once again, I am asking for your support to continue this and other labor struggles. 

In solidarity,

Tim Crone
NNMCC
921 Paseo de Onate
Espanola, New Mexico 87532

I wanted to thank all of you who attended the Convention for being there and especially thank all of you who supported my re-election to Higher Ed. V.P. There is a momentum to this position that I will now be able to continue.

With a new Governor, we will be in position to make great gains in the number of higher ed. members and locals. We are going to press (our probable) Gov. Richardson to hold good on his promise to sign a new bargaining law and the promise to restore bargaining and former contracts to those locals who had already won representation elections and negotiated contracts under the old law, such as my own local. We will also press to have adjunct faculty and other part-time employees included in the new bargaining law. This would be a tremendous political victory and would mean that my local, and others, could then become wall-to-wall units. We had two negotiation sessions for staff when the old law sunset and we had filed the cards to have an election for part-timers. If we are able to acheive this, it would save out union a lot of money, because NNMCC (and others) were going to challenge the right of part-timers to organize. This is a lot to acheive, but it is possible. Additionally I will continue to work with Jennifer on the plan to do a full-scale higher ed. organizing drive in N.M.

Obviously, I will continue to work hard in the political campaigns to help elect our endorsed candidates and in the Legislature to acheive other goals such as elected Regents for State institutions, parity with PERA, reducing the dependence on part-time employees, the funding formula for Higher Ed. and whatever else you identify or comes up. Which reminds me, let me know if you think there are things to which we need to give more attention or which have not been brought up as yet.

Thanks again for your support and let's all work in solidarity to make Higher Ed. the largest component of NMFEE.

Tim Crone
NNMCC
921 Paseo de Onate
Espanola, New Mexico 87532
FAX (505) 747-2180
Phone (505) 747-2211

Ed. note:  following is the prior correspondence Tim referred to above: