On October 30 and 31, three members of AAP went to Peoria to attend an Illinois Education Association (IEA) conference for higher education professionals. The conference united workers from colleges and universities across Illinois, including a variety of sessions in which participants exchanged experiences and learned how to do a better job organizing and participating in their unions.
Among the topics covered were understanding university budgets, the impact of distance learning on university employment, when and how to file a grievance, three new plans available to participants in the State Universities Retirement System, bargaining, and writing a union contract.
A session on the Higher Education Contract Analysis System described the use of this CD database that contains over 600 higher education contracts from all over the country. The instructor demonstrated searching the database for a key word such as academic professional in order to get an idea of the type of contracts that academic professionals at other colleges and universities are negotiating.
In "Understanding University Budgets" the instructor pointed out that a budget report was someone's best guess, only a projection of income and expenses. Yet salary and other important decisions are based on these reports. To get a more accurate picture of income and expenditures, one should look at the most recent year-end report, which is produced by an independent certified public accountant and based on actual figures of revenues and expenditures. When both types of reports are placed side-by-side, clear differences emerge. The year-end report also reveals financial maneuvers such as the shifting of funds from one column to another, creating the illusion of a budget deficit.
The session on interest-based bargaining described two different approaches to bargaining: interest-based and positional. In the first, the participants come to the table as collaborators. All parties are problem-solvers working toward an efficient and amicable solution. There are two approaches to positional bargaining, accommodation and competition, with the goal of the former being agreement and that of the latter being victory. The presenters advocated the interest-based approach, but they stressed that both sides need to be trained in this method for it to succeed.
In the distance-learning session, Roger Knutsen, president of the National Council of Higher Education, described cases where distance learning was appropriate and effective and others where colleges have promoted it with little gained. He discussed the National Education Association's plans to issue recommendations for effective use of distance learning.
The day closed with a session on benefits available to members of IEA/NEA (National Education Association, the parent organization of IEA). The sheer size of the NEA membership--2.3 million people--allows the organization to negotiate some very good rates for car and home insurance, mortgage rates lower than the best rate on the market, and high-interest CDs and money market accounts. They even provide a credit card that accrues frequent flyer mileage with no fee the first year and only $20 per year subsequently. One member said that the benefits more than made up for his membership dues.