The Big Bargain

Support staff at NCMC are looking to get union strong; the college is pushing back.

By Patrick Sullivan | March 24, 2018

Northern Michigan isn’t a hotbed of unionism, but in recent years, at least at some of the region’s community colleges, unions have made strides. Faculty at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City organized in 2015.

Now a vote is scheduled in April at North Central Michigan College in Petoskey in which the school’s support staff — think janitorial, maintenance, and clerical employees — will decide whether to form a union with the Michigan Education Association.

The effort has drawn resistance from the college’s president, who said she believes the move is without cause and that employees will not see improved work conditions through collective bargaining. 

IMPETUS TO ORGANIZE
NCMC’s faculty members have been organized since 1980, but they have to stay out of the current debate; a provision in their contract prohibits them from getting involved in the organization of another employee group, several people said. Numerous requests for comment from faculty were declined. 

Margaret Daniels, who was director of NCMC’s student and community resource center for 14 years before retiring in 2015, said support staff determined they needed to form a union because many of the employees felt mistreated and misunderstood by college administrators.

The final straw — and the catalyst for unionizing — came last summer when the college eliminated its longstanding “step program,” an incentivizing loyalty plan that rewarded low-wage employees for their longevity. In addition to implementing annual raises of one to four percent for all employees, the step program offered support staff scheduled pay bumps according to their years of service years.

Adding insult to injury, she said, was that the college eliminated the step program at the same time it promised administrators generous raises — a response to the results of a September 2017 pay-scale study.

“People noticed that. That’s why the support staff has been contacting the MEA for union support,” she said. “Without that step program, it’s pretty much impossible to achieve a middle-class lifestyle when you get a 14-cent-an-hour raise.”

She said that administrators responded to complaints about the elimination of the program by pledging to look into merit-based pay raises, but that effort has stalled.

Daniels said that the support staff also want the security of a union so that they can complain about supervisors without fear of retribution.

“They want to be able to say, ‘My supervisor is not supporting me. My supervisor is not doing what she is supposed to be doing according to her contract,’” Daniels said. “Nobody listens when they do that.”

Daniels believes that if administrators wanted to stave off the union, they should have paid attention to employees’ growing frustrations.

“The administration is not happy about this at all. They cannot figure out why morale is so low,” she said. “And this has lasted many years. If a supervisor is being disrespectful, uncaring, or not doing the responsibilities of his job description, something must change.”

EXPLANATIONS AND A WARNING
In a memo to college staff titled “FACTS,” NCMC President Cameron Brunet-Koch made her case against the union and explained why the step program was eliminated.

Brunet-Koch said the program was axed because a wage study found that support staff wages were significantly above average. Since the program had been instituted at a time when their wages were below average, she explained, the goal had been accomplished, and the step program was no longer necessary.

Brunet-Koch wrote maintaining the step program would require overpaying employees, making it fiscally irresponsible. She conceded, however, that the announcement of the cut could have been better.

“In retrospect, we wish we would have delivered the information regarding this necessary change in a different manner,” she wrote. “The end result would still be the same, but perhaps we all would have a better understanding of the circumstances behind the decision.”

The memo makes the case that NCMC support staff enjoy better wages and benefits than people in comparable roles at the local school district and at some other community colleges.

While budget challenges and health care costs contributed at times to limiting or freezing wages since 2010, in the three most recent years, support staff saw raises in a range considerably higher than administrators. For 2017–2018, for example, support staff saw increases of 3.1 to 6 percent, while administrators got raises of just 3.1 percent. The memo notes that over the last two years, raises for NCMC support staff have been four times the boost support staff at Petoskey Area Schools received.

Brunet-Koch also noted that NCMC raises last year were far higher than at two community colleges where the support staff are represented by the MEA.

“Although a union can promise just about anything, no union can obtain more than the College will agree to,” she wrote. “We will not agree to anything that jeopardizes the institution’s ability to deliver on its mission or that we cannot defend to the public or our students.”

The memo warns that union negotiations may not make things better at NCMC: “There are no guarantees, and some things may be better, but others may not. The College will not agree to any contractual language that would negatively impact any of our stakeholders.”

“SUMMER HOURS” AT STAKE
The memo makes clear that staff who support the union will not be retaliated against; however, elsewhere, the memo appears to possibly promise that work conditions would change for the worse if staff bring in a union, something that might be construed as a threat.

For instance, in one section, the memo explains that the current culture of the college enables employees to be flexible with their work time to attend to personal matters. Under a negotiated contract, that flexibility could vanish, the memo said.

More specifically, the memo warns support staff that if they unionize, they could lose what are referred to as “summer hours.” Daniels said summer hours mean staff get to leave early on Fridays to get a start on their weekends.

“Summer hours were instituted to provide our employees with greater flexibility with their schedule during the summer months,” Brunet-Kock wrote. “Unless this is agreed to in negotiations, and added into the contract, employees are bound to the work hours specified in the contract.”

In response, MEA organizer Jake Louks and MEA Petoskey representative Diana Kelly sent a letter to administrators protesting what could be construed as retaliation against employees considering adopting a union.

They cited a federal law which prohibits public employers from interfering with, restraining, or coercing public employees who plan to form a union.

“Under this prohibition, for example, employers may not threaten employees with loss of jobs or benefits if they join or vote for a union,” the MEA representatives wrote.

Louks said MEA lawyers will be watching carefully to determine whether terms of employment are changed in retaliation to organizing efforts.

He stopped short of calling the wording of Brunet-Koch’s memo regarding summer hours a threat.

“That’s not necessarily a threat, I’m going to say, but there’s an expectation that during the organizing process, what are called ‘laboratory conditions’ must remain in status quo,” he said.

Brunet-Koch said in a brief interview that there was nothing in the memo that represented a threat to employees.

“The document that I sent out contained facts — F-A-C-T-S — facts, and you’ll have to ask the MEA how they interpreted it,” she said. “I think they misinterpreted it, and it has been misrepresented.”

HOW A UNION BEGINS
There are 28 community colleges in Michigan; 24 of them have unionized support staff.

Louks explained how a group of employees at a community college go about getting organized.

First, an employee requests that a union like MEA get involved, and then union staff collect signature cards from employees who are in favor of asking for a vote to determine whether to form a union. They must collect signatures from at least 30 percent of eligible employees.

Those cards are then filed with the Michigan Employment Relations Commission. Once that’s happened, MERC organizes a conference call with the employer and the MEA to determine who the stakeholders are and to schedule an election, either by mail or in person, if one side requests a day-long vote at the workplace.

The organizing process for NCMC support staff began in early winter, and the first petition was filed by MEA on behalf of the custodial, maintenance and clerical staff on Jan. 19.

The “bargaining unit” became larger, however, so organizers had to start over, Louks said. The MEA had counted 28 service staff, while the college counted 31. The second time, Louks said, organizers collected signatures from over 50 percent of the staff in order to ensure they would have enough.

Louks said there is sometimes confusion in the employee counts over what constitutes full-time or regular part-time employees.

“It’s a situation that happens from time to time. We don’t want to exclude anyone who should be included,” he said. “We refiled with a much higher number than the ratio that we needed, so the same issue should not happen again.”

That was in mid-February. There was a conference call between all of the parties on March 20, and the sides agreed to an April 19 in-person election.

Louks said NCMC requested an in-person election.

“The MEA always seeks a mail ballot election because we feel that it gives a stakeholder the best option for using discretion when voting when an employer has made it clear they are against organizing,” Louks wrote in an email. 

AN ELECTION LOOMS
In the election, more than half of the employees who vote must approve the union for it to go into effect. Employees are allowed to choose whether or not to vote. If they decide not to vote, they are not counted toward the total number of employees. That means if 26 of NCMC employees vote in the union election, 14 or more of them have to vote yes in order to bring in the union.

Since Michigan enacted a “right-to-work” law in 2012, members who vote against unionization don’t have to join the union and pay dues in order to enjoy whatever benefits come from collecting bargaining.

Louks said it’s up to the employees whether they want to join the union, and MEA doesn’t even ask for employees to join the union until they’ve gone through the first round of collective bargaining. That’s because the union wants to prove its value to prospective members from the outset, he said.

Louks expects that NCMC support staff will be unionized after the vote.

Louks said resistance from administrators is routine.

“I think employers, they go to great lengths to avoid their employees having a seat at the table,” Louks said. “Unfortunately, it is something that’s happening during this process.”

Brunet-Koch said she was surprised by the unionization move, which happened to have occurred in between when she announced her retirement in September and her last day on the job at the end of the school year. She’s been president of the college for 17 years.

She said that in all of those years the MEA has represented the faculty, and she’s always had a good relationship with them.

“We enjoy solid working relationships with both the faculty, support staff, and administrators,” she said. “We will continue to work with all of our staff to improve the working environment at the college.”