The Voice

Bill Buxton of Cortland outlines the union's legislative agenda to Assemblyman William Magee (D-Nelson), right.

"Our job is to ensure that UUP's message is delivered."

That directive to UUP advocates came from UUP Outreach Committee Co-chair Glenn McNitt prior to their descent on the state Capitol for NYSUT Higher Ed Lobby Day Feb. 26.

Fresh from a visit with state legislative leaders and a top aide to the governor, UUP President Phillip Smith told the UUPers, "We're all singing the same song," referring to a consensus that improving higher education is a top priority. But to achieve the union's legislative agenda, Smith added, "We have to sing it again."

Nearly 30 members of the union’s Negotiations Committee took their seats Jan. 10 in NYSUT’s Albert Shanker Conference Center to hear and discuss details of the tentative contract agreement reached after eight months of intensive bargaining between the UUP Negotiations Team and New York state representatives.

And after the daylong briefing by UUP Acting President and Chief Negotiator Frederick Floss, the decision to move forward was clear: The committee voted unanimously to recommend ratification of the 2007-2011 tentative agreement.

The Negotiations Committee is made up of one member from each UUP chapter, as well as one academic and one professional part-timer.

Floss said the tentative agreement is “fair and equitable for all our members — academic and professional, full time and part time — and provides salaries and benefits that will attract and retain top-quality faculty.”

William E. Scheuerman

For 14 years, William E. Scheuerman has been the voice and face of UUP — representing union members at legislative hearings, on picket lines, behind microphones and megaphones. Even behind bars. That fearless spirit helps explain why Scheuerman decided to accept a new challenge: serving as president of the National Labor College (NLC) in Silver Spring, Md.

“The world has changed,” Scheuerman said. “Fifty years ago when you went to places like the Midwest, you saw industry; wealth was produced by muscle power. In today’s economy, brainpower has replaced muscle power,” he added. “Workers need intellectual skills to compete in a knowledge-based society to get a chunk of that economy. That’s why the National Labor College is so important for working people and for the labor movement.”

UUPer and Physician Jeanine Morelli takes the blood pressure of a patient receiving care at Elsie Owens North Brookhaven Health Center in Coram

UUP is proud to represent thousands of health care professionals. That number includes hundreds of physicians who work at SUNY’s hospitals, health science centers and the College of Optometry. In addition to their union membership, these health care experts share a commitment to do much more than treat patients and teach students.

For them, the bottom line isn’t about finances, but about delivering top-quality health care. That’s why they work in a public health care venue.

They care for those in their community who lack health insurance. They provide excellent care regardless of a patient’s ability to pay. They see patients in neighborhood clinics, where residents often receive life-saving care.

What makes a university great? First and foremost, the answer is faculty.

That’s why UUP has worked so aggressively to ensure that all UUP faculty have the resources they need to perform their jobs —delivering high-quality services to students and the community in classrooms, residence halls, financial aid offices, opportunity centers, athletic centers, teaching hospitals and more.

Our members are the key to SUNY’s status as among the finest public universities in the nation.

Happily, the University itself acknowledges our outstanding academic faculty in particular, with special honors every year.

This year, the SUNY Board of Trustees recognized the academic excellence of dozens of UUP members by appointing them to the ranks of the University’s “distinguished” faculty.

What follows are profiles of some of these UUP members, whose academic achievements typify the high standards of the union that makes SUNY a great institution of higher education.

Satrajit Sinha knew achieving continuing appointment would be a long, arduous journey filled with potential pitfalls and roadblocks. So Sinha did what many of his colleagues often don’t know they can do — he turned to his union for guidance.

“UUP was very helpful,” said Sinha, an associate professor of biochemistry at Buffalo HSC, who was granted continuing appointment effective in September. “The union allowed me to understand how the system works and made it possible for me to network with faculty who had gone through the tenure process.”

Sinha also took advantage of a negotiated Joint Labor/Management Committees grant, which lent him the financial support necessary to attend a scientific meeting at the beginning of his SUNY career. These meetings not only offer professional development, they are a necessary step to presenting papers and developing peer relationships that may well be the cornerstones to achieving continuing appointment.

“Tenure is a very important part of a person’s professional life,” Sinha said. “If one day you realize you are up for tenure and you haven’t begun preparing documents, then it may very well be too late. It’s not like you can keep trying again and again and again.”

Sinha is one of dozens of UUP members each year who are eligible for continuing appointment, as tenure is known at SUNY. Based on a full professional obligation, the review process involves three key components: research, teaching and service. Though criteria differ among campuses, candidates for tenure must attain

positive reviews from campus-based tenure committees, departmental chairs, deans or provosts, and be recommended by their college presidents for approval by the chancellor — all prior to the end of the academic employee’s sixth consecutive year of employment.

Ten years ago, Edward Schwarzschild initially visited Spain to take his first faculty job with Sweet Briar College in Virginia. He fell in love with the country and has been eager to return ever since.

In February 2008, his dream will come true. Not only is he returning to teach in Spain — he’ll be doing so as a Fulbright Scholar.

Schwarzschild, an associate professor of English at UAlbany, will be teaching courses in American literature and American writing and visual arts to students at the University of Zaragoza during their spring semester.

The Fulbright program’s mission is to build mutual understanding between the citizens of the U.S. and other nations, a role Schwarzschild firmly buys into.

“I believe in cultural exchange,” he said. “If you spend time teaching abroad, you’ll foster a better world.” He admires the program and its emphasis on international collaboration, and is pleased that the U.S. Department of State sponsors it.

“Most Americans don’t know what it’s like to live in other countries. I want to encourage my students to experience other places, to meet other people,” Schwarzschild said in describing how the program makes us better global citizens.

In one classroom, immigrant students concentrate on a test. Across the hall, students in white lab coats practice their dental assisting techniques, while medical assisting students labor away at their computers. Three floors below, two young women in an advanced essay class share their stories and receive constant guidance from their professor.

These classes are not unlike hundreds of others being taught throughout SUNY. Thousands of first-rate academic and professional faculty are committed to giving students a well-rounded, high-quality education.

But these classes are unique in two fundamental ways: They are being taught for free at a state-operated Educational Opportunity Center (EOC); and the students are academically and economically underserved.

The demographics of SUNY EOC students are as wide-ranging as their needs: refugees from war-torn African countries and immigrants searching for the American dream; non-English speakers looking for work, promotion or U.S. citizenship; baby boomers forced to retrain due to outsourcing; people from poverty-stricken neighborhoods and rural communities looking to earn a high-school diploma, prepare for college or learn a vocation.

The Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) is a nonpartisan organization within the union movement that can boast three decades dedicated to improving the participation and influence of women in labor unions and society.

That’s why longtime UUP activist and Executive Board member Lorna Arrington is encouraging members to sign up for this politically influential and ambitious organization, which represents members from 60 international and national unions across the U.S. and Canada.

“United together, women are more empowered to address their issues,” said Arrington, an associate professor of math at the University of Buffalo’s Educational Opportunity Center. “CLUW provides the means to make inroads and to take the lead in effecting change.”

Arrington said CLUW tackles the issues that affect working women — pay equity, balancing work and family needs, affirmative action and job discrimination — and finds a way for women to have a stronger voice in leading the labor movement.

“Women receive 77 cents for every dollar a man earns,” noted Arrington, a decade-long member of CLUW’s National Executive Board and an elected delegate through UUP’s national affiliate, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). “CLUW is a good vehicle for addressing this inequity.” She also notes that CLUW provides a “forum for encouraging women to become union leaders” and to try their hands at political offices within their communities.

The making of an advocate often has its roots in a single defining moment, when a worker realizes there’s no other place to turn except the union.

Barbara Habenstreit, one of UUP’s most stalwart activists, can remember the day 20 years ago when she sought help from her union for the first time. She’s never looked back since then.

New York state had instituted a systemwide job reclassification for professionals at SUNY, and Habenstreit — a journalist and author turned administrator at Brooklyn HSC — suddenly realized that she needed help appealing the much lower salary cap in her new classification.

“So I turned to the union, which I had never needed before,” recalled Habenstreit, the chapter vice president for professionals at Brooklyn HSC. “And suddenly I needed it, because I was going to appeal, and that was the only way you could appeal it — through the union.”

Habenstreit ended up volunteering to help her chapter process the more than 300 appeals during the reclassification, in a gesture that set the pattern for her hands-on approach to unionism. And UUP came through for her: She ended up with a higher salary cap for her job classification.