Arbitrator orders community college union to certify adjunct election;

BOSTON - Aug. 28, 2015 - PRLog -- BOSTON, Aug. 28 -- The union representing Massachusetts’ community college professors has been ordered by an independent arbitrator to uphold the results of a March statewide election for two adjunct representatives to its board.

         The Massachusetts Community College Council represents nearly 1,600 full time and more than 4,000 adjunct professors teaching at the state’s 15 community colleges. The MCCC is the largest affiliate of the Massachusetts Teachers Association.

Despite the fact that adjunct professors and part-time professional staff make up two-thirds of the union membership and contribute 40 percent of its dues revenue, many feel the union fails to represent them adequately. Of the 21 seats on the union’s board of directors, only the two at the center of the appeal are set aside for adjuncts.

The board’s action to decertify the adjunct-only election was the result of a complaint that Professor Diana Yohe, president of the Bristol Community College Council, had violated union rules when she sent her chapter’s members an email endorsing one of the three candidates in the adjunct election.

Arbitrator Tammy Brynie, hired by the MTA, accepted the position of the appellants and wrote in her opinion that the MCCC’s decision to decertify the election was “arbitrary and capricious” and that “the determination that Yohe utilized Association resources was in error and it was made without a critical examination of, or inquiry into, relevant facts and circumstances…The Board's further determination that the March 2015 election would be declared null and void, and that the election…would be re-run, compounded the error.”

Brynie ruled that Yohe’s endorsement letter did not violate the union’s election by-laws because she did not use union resources and endorsements are a common practice within the union. Brynie noted in her decision that a member of the union’s executive committee sent a similar endorsement email in the re-run election.

Brynie wrote, “this endorsement e-mail, sent by a MCCC Executive Committee member, undermines any assertion that endorsing any particular candidate necessarily constitutes a violation of MCCC election policies, rules and/or requirements.”

Yohe called the decision a “complete victory for transparency and a fair and democratic election process within the union. I hope the union leadership learns from this decision that elections matter, that member voices must be respected, and that members deserve transparency.”