The Voice

If you used a computer, watched television, read a newspaper, drove on a highway, or rode the Long Island Rail Road last year, chances are you saw UUP advocacy in action.

We placed TV and newspaper ads, put up billboards and LIRR transit posters, ran a micro-website called SaveSUNY.org, and earned news coverage across the state as we fought for and against issues impacting UUPers.

And if you read The Voice, you got detailed breakdowns of those issues, as well as intriguing “big picture” stories about the effects of state budget cuts on SUNY, its teaching hospitals and its students. You also read interesting stories about our members in action at work, at home and with the union.

Kudos to UUP’s Communications Department for that.

In the closing hours of the legislative session in late June, the Legislature approved a watered-down version of NYSUNY 2020, notable to UUP for what it did not contain: no differential tuition, no public/private partnerships, no sale or lease of campus properties.

The original proposal—promoted under the guise of an economic development package—would have allowed differential tuition rates at SUNY’s four University Centers in Albany, Binghamton, Buffalo and Stony Brook, as well as the establishment of public/private partnerships.

What the legislation did include was maintenance of effort language requiring that state support for SUNY cannot be cut from the previous year’s level. That precludes future budget cuts for SUNY, although that provision could be disregarded if the governor declares a fiscal emergency. The new law also allows an annual $300 undergraduate tuition increase in each of the next five years. UUP earlier declared its support of a rational tuition program in principle.

How we got there

SUNY state-operated hospitals in Syracuse and Brooklyn have grown with the acquisition of nearby hospitals.

So have the ranks of UUP.

The acquisitions of Syracuse’s Community General Hospital by Upstate Medical University and the Long Island College Hospital (LICH) by Brooklyn’s SUNY Downstate Medical Center have brought more than 700 new members to UUP’s bargaining unit.

“This is clearly a win-win for all of us and the community,” said Upstate Chapter President Carol Braund.

“We welcome and look forward to working with them,” Downstate Chapter President Rowena Blackman-Stroud said.

In July, Upstate Medical University assumed ownership and operation of Community General Hospital, which has been renamed Upstate University Hospital at Community General. Nearly 1,000 employees who had worked for Community General are now employees of Upstate Medical. Of those, about 270 are new members of the UUP bargaining unit.

Ten years later and the pain remains.

And the images are forever etched in our minds.

Images of two hijacked commercial airliners ramming the World Trade Center that sunny morning of Sept. 11, 2001. Images of grayish billowing smoke followed by the towers’ collapse, first the North, then the South.

Images of thousands of disheveled, disoriented New Yorkers covered in a white soot that seemed to attach itself to everything. Images of anguish: thousands of missing person posters papered across lower Manhattan. Images of heroes aboard United Airlines Flight 93 and at the Pentagon.

And the indelible image of the World Trade Center’s jagged iron skeleton jutting up from the smoldering heaps of rubble.

We haven’t forgotten. We can’t forget.

“How can you possibly work there and forget?” said Laura Terriquez-Kasey, a Binghamton UUPer and a member of the Metro New York 2 Disaster Medical Assistance Team that was at Ground Zero two days after the attack. “Five, 10, 20 years, it impacts you every day.”

Communications Specialist Mike Lisi told UUP’s story—and won a prestigious international labor award in doing so.

The International Labor Communications Association (ILCA) Max Steinbock Award honors the best labor story written in the previous year. It is named after a longtime ILCA president.

Lisi’s winning entry, “Speaking up for SUNY” (January 2010), right, describes the impact that state budget cuts have had on students, parents, faculty and staff on SUNY campuses.

In all, UUP’s membership magazine The Voice and advertising campaign brought home four ILCA awards, including two first-place honors and one third-place finish. And in late July, the AFT Communicators Network (AFTCN) announced its list of communications award winners, and UUP won three first-place awards and one second-place award in the national competition.

UUP was contacted by the state in July to begin the process of contract negotiations.

As The Voice went to press, UUP and state negotiators tentatively scheduled Aug. 25 as their first meeting date.

UUP President Phil Smith and Chief Negotiator Jamie Dangler of Cortland held a joint meeting Aug. 11 of the union’s Negotiations Team, Negotiations Committee and chapter presidents to provide information about the negotiations process and to address questions from chapter leaders.

As negotiations proceed, chapter leaders will be provided with updates for distribution to members, and information will be regularly posted to the UUP website (www.uupinfo.org). Click on the “2011 Negotiations Information” link under Latest Information on the right hand side of the UUP home page.

Meanwhile, the Team continues to meet to discuss specific strategies on a number of issues previously outlined by the membership.

“Don’t you think we deserve respect?” UUP President Phil Smith asked nearly 1,500 unionists as he addressed a June labor rally at the Capitol in Albany. “Our members at SUNY teach a lot of valuable lessons. Among them is respect. But how can we educate our students about respect if we ourselves are not respected?”

Members from UUP, the Public Employees Federation (PEF), NYSUT and other unions attended the rally organized by PEF.

The rally—one of a dozen conducted across the state the same day—came in response to the threatened layoffs of state workers if state employee unions didn’t reach an agreement on terms and conditions of new labor contracts with the state. PEF later reached agreement on terms of a tentative five-year contract.

— Donald Feldstein

From state budget battles and bitter contract negotiations, to fighting to protect members in the classroom and on the job, Bill Simons has faced his share of challenges over the years.

So it made sense to see Oneonta’s longtime chapter president offering advice to new and returning UUP leaders during a panel discussion on what to expect as a new leader, one of several seminars held during the union’s two-day New Chapter Leaders Orientation in June.

“You don’t have to be an expert on everything,” said Simons. “You have good people around you. Keep calm in the eye of the storm.”

“My advice is to persevere,” added Buffalo Center Chap- ter President Mike Behun. “Work around the impediments you face.”

Simons and Behun were two of a handful of seasoned UUP chapter officers who led the June 20-22 orientation; 15 new chapter presidents and vice presidents representing 13 campuses attended the event.

Recent retirements and reassignments have changed the makeup of the NYSUT labor relations/field services staff assigned to UUP.

The following people comprise the union’s labor relations team:

Director of Staff Susan Bloom Jones was promoted in January following the retirement of Martin Coffey. Jones has worked for NYSUT for nearly 33 years and served as a labor relations specialist (LRS) at UUP since July 1998.

Associate Director of Staff John Marino stepped into the job in July after 11 years as UUP’s elected statewide vice president for professionals. He brings to the job a vast knowledge of the UUP contract, as well as hands-on experience with negotiations and grievance procedures.

Following the retirement of LRS and former UUP member Jack Procita, and the reassignment to K-12 of LRS Heather Sponenberg, UUP welcomes three new LRSs.