occupy uri – RI Future

September 7, 2012

URI Profs Get Hearing for Unfair Labor Complaint

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The state Labor Relations Board has “upheld the charge and issued a complaint” concerning the University of Rhode Island professors’ union unfair labor practice accusation against the Board of Governors for Higher Education, said Robyn Golden, administrator for the board.

The complaint alleges that the Board of Governors violated state labor laws when it declined to vote on the professors’ contract that had been agreed to in scope after Gov. Chafee indicated he thought 3 percent raises for professors was too expensive for the state.

Golden said the board voted unanimously to hear the charge. That a hearing date has been set does not indicate fault, she said, but added that Labor Relations Board members “see something there. Now they need to take testimony to see if it is a valid charge.” A hearing at which both sides will testify is set for Tuesday, October 23, she said.

Louis Kirschenbaum, president of the URI professors’ union, in an email to union members said the unanimity of the decision may bode well for their complaint. “According to our attorney, unanimous decisions are extremely rare. Such unanimity indicates the gravity of the Board of Governors actions in bargaining in bad faith with the URI AAUP.”

The professors’ union brought the unfair labor practice complaint after Governor Chafee intervened in their contract negotiations with the Board of Governors. The Board was prepared to take action on the contract in March that included 3 percent raises, but it delayed a vote. In April, Chafee was vocal about the . On May 6, the board voted 7-5 to reject the contract proposal. Two days later, the AAUP filed an unfair labor practice complaint.

Chafee could not be immediately reached for comment. I’ll update this story when i hear back from him or his staff.

The Board of Governors have a meeting on September 24. Spokesman Michael Trainor, who would not comment on the labor board’s fidning, said he did not know if the matter would be on the agenda for the next meeting.

Kirschenbaum, in his email, said:

We have written the Board of Governors to ask them to reconsider our collective bargaining agreement at their September 24, 2012 meeting. We have informed them that because of the unanimity of the decision they have little or no chance to prevail and that they should ratify our contract in everyone’s interest. We have also let them know that we intend to depose every board member, under oath, to ascertain what happened in Executive Sessions and whether members of the Executive Branch may have interfered in matters of the Board of Governors, in violation of the RI separation of powers statute.

I would like to make it clear that our goal is to have our contract ratified and put into effect. URI faculty should receive one year of a retroactive 3 percent pay raise (minus the increase in the premium sharing), and should have started on July 1, 2012 to receive their second three percent pay raise.

May 10, 2012May 10, 2012

URI Contracts and the Privatization of Higher Ed.

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At the March 19 meeting of the Rhode Island Board of Governors of Higher Education, the board was supposed to discuss the tentative agreement that had been ratified that very same day by URI faculty. Unfortunately, because of the disruption of this meeting by Occupy URI and the Raging Grannies, the board was so shocked that thediscussion about the tentative agreement had to be postponed. At least, that was the story line originally put out by the board. It now seems that the tender soul of the board was so traumatized that it even postponed a meeting originally planned for April 2.

At its meeting this week, on May 7, a bitterly divided board rejected the tentative agreements with faculty at URI in addition to agreements with professional staff associations at RIC and CCRI, and the agreement with URI’s graduate assistants.

Here is what I had to say at the public forum at the May 7 meeting:

I am a member of Occupy URI and affiliated with The Ad Hoc Committee to Defend the University. Governor Chafee interjected himself in the contract negotiations stating that a 3 percent raise is unacceptable “in a time of strained state finances.” He turned eleven month process into a farce. Take into account the increases we pay for health care and you find that faculty have been sliding back for at least five years. Meanwhile, America’s CEOs leap forward by 15 percent in a second year of double-digit income hikes. More than a decade ago Lehman Brothers advised their clients: “[…] we can privatize the educational system, make a lot of money of it.”

How is this done? One engages in union busting, assaults faculty tenure, and puts CEOs in charge of universities. Here are some numbers:

URI’s former CEO got a 14 percent raise in 2008-09.

Our former CEO cashes in with a retirement incentive of 40 percent of his $183,000 current “faculty” salary. Last time I checked faculty salary was about $100k per year. Hey, you got to show your former CEOs a little love!

Our current CEO started off at about 25 percent more than his predecessor ever made.

Between 2004 and 2010 spending on instruction and academic support declined by 10 percent; spending on administration increased by 25 percent. Meanwhile, this board justifies tuition hikes by claiming concern for quality education!

Explaining the perverse priorities of this nation in three minutes is tough. Let me just mention that we spend $4,000 per person per year to support the imperial war machine. For a quarter million dollars per person over a lifetime we could have free public education for all, and then some!

Rather than making a trip to Washington to do something about this immoral waste of money, governor Chafee went to Afghanistan just last week to boost the war economy.

If you want to do something about state funding, call Speaker Gordon Fox. Tell him to stop blocking a floor vote for the Cimini-Miller Tax Fairness bill (H-7729). The idea contained in the bill has the support of 70 percent of the Rhode Island population: it would undo the Carcieri tax cuts for the rich and generate $135 million additional revenue per year. Fox’s telephone number is 222-2466.

Is it a surprise that in this time of unrelenting attacks on educators and their unions, the California Faculty Association produced a 95 percent voting majority authorizing a September strike?

Under these circumstances, I will vote for any job action the AAUP might propose!

Bringing more bad news from the privatization front, Peter Kerwin posted the following message on the
Occupy URI Facebook site:

“Hi there. I’m looking to talk to someone in the organization about trying to compile stories from students about bad private student loans. Please contact me at pkerwin3@cox.net so we can set up a meeting. I am the Chief of Program Development at the Rhode Island Higher Education Assistance Authority and am trying to get some of this info to a ProJo reporter who has expressed interest in doing a story. My agency has been the subject of a hostile takeover by the Rhode Island Student Loan Authority, a private student loan business which is trading on its very thin connection to the state to trick students into taking their private loans, which are not as consumer-friendly and lack the repayment options that come with federal student loans. Thanks!”

Peter Kerwin was fired from his job, as of May 1, after a board meeting that took place on April 20. All of this happened –oh, coincidence!– after he filed a whistle blowers complaint with the Attorney General’s office, the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the US Department of Education. The complaint was that “members of the Rhode Island Student Loan Authority board have a potential financial stake in taking over Rhode Island Higher Education Assistance Authority and its data.”

The takeover is part of an ongoing process of privatization of student loans, something that was introduced as part of the reconciliation process of the Affordable Care Act, which should probably be known as the Care and Feeding of the 1% Act. We are planning to post a steady drip of information about this issue on the Occupy Facebook page in the coming weeks.

Finally it is worth mentioning that the May 6 edition of the Providence Journal reported that “the board chairman is trying to build support for the Office of Higher Education absorbing the Rhode Island Higher Education Authority.” Or might that be the Rhode Island Student Loan Authority, possibly with all the problems mentioned by Peter Kerwin? Sounds like an interesting development; let’s see who will take over whom.

March 27, 2012March 27, 2012

Dooley Takes Issue with Op/Ed on Tuition Increases

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It isn’t often that an editorial is so off-the-mark as to warrant news coverage, but such is evidently the case with the Projo’s take on tuition increases from Saturday morning.

In an article in today’s Journal about a Q&A session with URI president David Dooley, Gina Macris writes: “He spoke at length about the ‘great deal of misinformation’ about the causes of higher tuition and mounting student debt, singling out ‘misguided editorials like the one in The Providence Journal on Saturday.'”

Misguided indeed.

The editorial board seemed to be writing about the rising cost of tuition, then quickly veered into how college isn’t for everybody – almost as if this was part justification for the cost of college rising.

“For many years, college tuitions have risen at up to three times the general inflation rate,” Saturday’s editorial said. “This has happened as society’s leaders constantly harp on the importance for many young people of getting a college education. That idea is exaggerated in our view; for many people, obtaining a post-high-school vocational education would be considerably more useful than going to a liberal-arts college.”

It’s true that tuition is rising far faster than general inflation. And it’s true that our leaders “harp on” the importance of a higher education (as well they should). It’s also true college isn’t for everyone and many are better served with a vocational education. But to put those three statements together makes it seem as if the Projo thinks we are wasting our time trying to make college available to the masses and we might as well just send the smartest and richest and let the rest enjoy auto shop – or eat cake, as it were.

Dooley took issue with the Projo’s insistence that “curious courses” and high-paid staff were driving up costs at URI.

“A proliferation of curious courses is not a cost-driver at URI,” Macris said he said. And she also quoted him as saying, “we are driving up higher education costs because we are anxious to add higher-paid administrators is one of the sillier things that I’ve read.”

Dooley knows the real reason tuition is going up, and he explained it to me last week.

“Public higher education is increasingly seen really out of necessity I think in the view of a lot legislators as a discretionary part of the state budget,” he said. “They have long assumed … that if they fund higher education less and ask families to do more, Americans have such a strong belief in the value of higher education, particularly public higher education, that they will pay more and they have been willing to do that for two decades. ”

Dooley called this model “unsustainable.”

March 19, 2012March 19, 2012

Occupy URI, David Dooley on Tuition Increases

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Protesting years of cuts to public higher education in Rhode Island that have caused rampant tuition increases, Occupy URI mic checked the meeting of the Board of Governors for Higher Education Monday night with a song.

While their tactics were lighthearted, the issue is a serious one. The Board of Governors recently approved a 8 percent tuition increase that will mean this September an in-state student will pay an extra $1000 a year, up from $10,400. Since 2008, said spokesman Mike Trainer, the legislature has cut some $45 million to the three state colleges in Rhode Island. But because the cost of an education is only getting more expensive, students are running up enormous student loan debt to pay for the cost cutting.

There was a brief moment of tension when Professor Scott Molloy, who showed up late, asked to speak even though he didn’t sign up to and Chairman Lorne Adrain asked officers to prevent him from doing so.

Aftewards, I spoke with URI President David Dooley about the issue. He told me that legislators seem to view funding higher education as “discretionary” because when they make cuts, tuition goes up and enrollment doesn’t suffer. He also said the state would be wise to invest more in higher education.

February 21, 2012

Occupy East Bay tonight, Occupy URI teach-in on Thursday

A new Occupy group is starting in Rhode Island and while the first one focused on Providence this one will focus on the East Bay.

“People there are interested in doing something,” said Randall Rose, one of the organizers of Occupy East Bay, which meets tonight at the Bristol Library (525 Hope St.) from 6 to 8 p.m.

“It’s not the only place,” said Rose, who was heavily involved with Occupy Providence, “but it’s the furthest along.”

Occupy URI is another new local offshoot of the 99 percent movement that is forming in the Ocean State. The group has met twice so far and a “teach-in” is planned for Thursday at 3:30 to 6:30 in White Hall, room 205. Presentations will include Helen Mederer, of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and Scott Molloy, a professor of Labor and Industrial Relations.

Here is a video from a previous Occupy URI meeting: