Veteran teachers are aware, though newer faculty may not be, that the Local 1650 constitution calls for an annual report by the Federation President on the state of our Union. The purpose of the report is to assess the achievements of the concluding year and the challenges of the upcoming. At the outset, though, I must digress for a moment from the purpose of this report to express my very deep appreciation to the Local 1650 membership and retirees for their concern, support, well wishes, and patience during my recent illness and disability. Your calls, cards, and visits lifted my plummeting spirits and speeded, I am sure, my recovery - which admittedly remains a work in progress.
While I am sure to overlook many, I must particularly thank the Federation officers who ran the Local so ably - perhaps too ably - in my absence. Let it be known that some transitions should not appear seamless! Most of the day-to-day responsibility fell to Local 1650 Vice-presidents Betsy Cohn and Nancy Widman, who were already overburdened with extensive committee and governance obligations at the College, and to Local 1650's office secretary Joanne Dalton. Given that my absence coincided, fortuitously, with a political campaign season, special mention must also be made of the Local 1650 Legislative/Political Action Committee, chaired by Jim Wanless, which produced comprehensive, dare I say "fair and balanced," information on the federal and State races. During my absence, Nancy Widman, Jim Wanless, and Hal Friedman also represented the Federation in the very important HFCC Trustee interview and endorsement process.
As I have told so many of you individually, I am most grateful to be able again to stand, walk, and sit. I have learned a great deal about debilitating pain and disability over the last several months. I have also learned a great deal about the frustrations of navigating our health system and the pressing need all have for the kind of comprehensive health insurance the Federation has secured and preserved for its members over the years. Again, I am deeply appreciative to each of you for your support and patience. Now to test your patience further - this year's report on the state of our Union.
45 New Faculty
First, this report must acknowledge the recent and dramatic transformation of HFCC's faculty - and the welcome challenge that this presents the Union. Given the impact of two Voluntary Early Retirement Programs and the Union's bargaining additional full-time positions, 45 new teachers, 25% of HFCC faculty, have been hired in the last two and one-half years. Faculty new to the College may or may not come with an understanding of teacher unions. Most certainly, they will not have an understanding of this Union. These new faculty may appreciate the wages, benefits, and faculty role in collegiate governance at HFCC, but they will not know of the 38 years of difficult negotiations - near strikes and strikes - that led reluctant, often recalcitrant, administrators and Trustees to regard, compensate, and empower HFCC teachers as professionals.
These new faculty need to know that their very presence on this campus is due to Union, not administrative or Trustee, commitment and effort. Full-time faculty at HFCC once numbered 225. That number fell to and held at 205 for many years. By 2003, full-time faculty numbered 180. Local 1650 long recognized, and with great difficulty brought the College Administration and Board of Trustees to recognize, that curriculum and program development, quality instruction, and collegiate governance require a critical mass of full-time faculty - and to recognize that the necessary critical mass of full-time faculty at HFCC far exceeds 180 teachers. As a result of our reopening the contract in 2003, Local 1650 secured full-time staffing levels amounting to 190 faculty by January 2004, 195 by January 2005, 200 by January 2006, and 205 by January 2007. Unchecked by such contractual language, full-time faculty lines at HFCC would have plummeted to well below 180. The Union faced a difficult choice in reopening the contract - whether to leave starting salaries where they were and see few, if any, faculty replacements and no additions to staff or whether to reduce starting salaries, hire full-time faculty, and staff this College properly. The Union membership chose the latter, and we now welcome our new colleagues and all that they will contribute to HFCC's curriculum and students. State Deficits and Local 1650 Contract
2004, for Henry Ford Community College and the College Federation, was a relatively stable and quiet year. Despite the need to close a State deficit of $270 million in 2003-04, Governor Granholm stood by her pledge not to cut higher education funding. While that commitment certainly benefitted the College, Local 1650's voluntary contract revisions from 2002 through 2004 truly brought the College fiscal stability last year. The voluntary wage freeze of 2002-03, a forgone 3% wage increase and the compounding thereof, continues to contribute to a balanced College budget.
During this period the Federation also agreed to postpone faculty replacements and reduce starting salaries at the College, rather than cut personnel and programs to close the College's budget deficit. In return, the Federation secured full-time staffing minimums in the contract. HFCC is finally adding full-time faculty who can devote their full professional energies to this College and its students, unlike underpaid adjunct faculty who must cobble together a livelihood at several institutions. Successfully negotiating minimum full-time faculty staffing levels was an historic achievement for this Union. Unlike faculty at nearly every other college and university across the country, HFCC teachers will no longer see their full-time numbers erode with every retirement and every revenue shortfall. Because of the contractual sacrifices of Local 1650 members in addressing the loss of $2.3 million in State aid in 2002-03 and static State funding in 2003-04, HFCC teachers and Administrators could focus their energies on the College mission, with far less budgetary anxiety and distraction than in recent memory.
However calm last year was for the College, 2004 witnessed, nevertheless, political events which will impact HFCC in 2005 and beyond, political events which will severely challenge our College and Union and may again require sacrifices by the College community. First, the State has yet to address its "structural budget deficit." Analysts have long contended that even when the economic recovery reaches Michigan, the State will still face significant budget deficits, absent drastic budget cuts or increased revenue - and this despite the fact that Governor Granholm has cut the State budget by $3 billion since taking office. The State has exhausted all of the "easy budget fixes," which have been none too easy - and it still faces 2004-06 deficits totaling $1 billion. Closing that gap will clearly impact State higher education funding. In addition, the State's schools and colleges must contend with increased retiree healthcare costs, amounting to $1.5 million for HFCC over the next three years.
Federal Funding
At the federal level, 2004 witnessed the re-election of President Bush, whose agenda includes revamping the Higher Education Act, by bringing some of the worst features of the under-funded K-12 "No Child Left Behind Act" to higher education. Thus, the level of Pell Grant funding is in serious jeopardy, and even diminished federal revenue may well be tied to a College's graduation rate, this despite the nature community college's mission and despite the nature of a community college's student body. The President has made several overtures to eliminate Perkins funding as well. At risk, then, for HFCC and its student are the $27 million in federal funds HFCC students now receive, primarily through Pell Grants, and virtually all of the College' s Perkins funding, which, while declining under President Bush, still amounted to $800,000 last year.
Social Security
The President also has well publicized designs on Social Security. The President asserts that there is a "clear and imminent" threat to Social Security and that unprecedented action must be taken immediately to address it. His alarmist rhetoric, here focused on a domestic "crisis," sounds ominously familiar. While the President asserts that there is a Social Security crisis of dire dimension, all objective analysts, including the Congressional Budget Office, contend otherwise. They maintain that Social Security faces no difficulties covering its obligations until 2042 at the earliest and probably no difficulties until well beyond 2052. They also maintain that even should problems befall Social Security, (1) it will still be able to provide 70 to 80% of benefits without any adjustments in the System and (2) relatively minor adjustments in benefit and/or taxation levels in the near future can easily secure the scheduled benefits for the next 75 years as required by its actuaries. The President, however, proposes that we immediately privatize a portion - a portion at least for now - of social security with individual investment accounts, making social security, in part, a defined contribution system. Such a change will add $2 trillion to the nation's debt, bring millions of dollars in windfall profits to Wall Street brokers, and expose what is now a guaranteed retirement benefit to the vagaries of the stock market. There are many reasons to be very cautious in taking unprecedented action relative to this bedrock domestic program, as there are many reasons to be cautious about unprecedented international undertakings. Perhaps there is one reason which teachers comfortably ensconced in the middle class too often overlook. It is only within the last 50 years - with the rise of the teacher union movement - that many teachers achieved middle class economic standing - and in several southern and southwestern anti-union states, teachers have yet to achieve it. None of us in teaching is immune from falling out of the middle class. It could happen to us collectively with the outlawing of teacher bargaining rights, as recently called for in the Wall Street Journal. It could happen to us individually. None of us is immune, nor are our children and grandchildren immune, from a catastrophic illness or event which could quickly exhaust our resources, particularly if the event strikes early in a wage-earner's life. I know of HFCC faculty and staff, past and present, whose children and grandchildren have been economically devastated by illness, injury, and divorce. No investment scenario can guarantee returns sufficient to provide for an unknowable future and unknowable life span. Thus, we have social security which is a defined, open-ended insurance benefit, not an investment gamble.
Underlying the Administration's compulsion to "reform" social security is ideology, not economics, and its strategy of driving state and federal budgets so far into deficit and debt that dramatic under-funding or dismantling of social programs, including public education, becomes unavoidable.
Health Care Costs
Also disturbing in all of this is that the President is fixated on social security "reform" rather addressing ever-escalating healthcare costs, which are devastating education budgets directly and indirectly. While double digit healthcare costs annually and heavily cut into college budgets such as ours, healthcare costs are also dramatically undercutting the competitiveness and sales of our nation's manufacturing industries, which must compete with nations which subsidize health care costs. Particularly hurt is Michigan's auto industry and, in turn, State revenues and the State's ability to fund higher education and other social services.
Ideology, Party, and Policy
To some who might view the above as partisan in nature, I offer the following. I first delivered this annual report in 1978, and for over 20 years, I studiously avoided critiquing the performance of any political party or office holder because I knew our membership included both Republicans and Democrats. It was not until the Engler Administration commenced its attacks on teacher bargaining rights and undermined State revenues by bestowing tax breaks on its corporate supporters that these reports began to single out State Republican polices inimical to our College and careers. With the exception of President Reagan's treatment of PATCO, only recently with President Bush's reckless economic policies, and their devastating impact on State and local governments, have these reports singled out national Republican policies inimical to our College and careers.
HFCC teachers have repeatedly elected me to the Local 1650 presidency to preserve, if not enhance, their economic and professional standing. This can not be done without adequate State and federal revenues, and it is the avowed policy of the Republican Party to diminish both. Whether we like it or not, we are employees of elected officials. When "social programs" come under assault by these officials, the attacks include public education, because public K-12 and public higher education are social programs. When social programs are attacked, so too are our students. Many of the students we serve are first generation college students from working class families, for whom social programs, including public education, are especially important. I, like you, am comfortably ensconced in the middle class, but earlier generations of my family were not, and I can not forget from where I came. Most of our ancestors were of the working class. Some of them benefitted from the nation's social programs. Some of them endured great hardship in the absence of social programs. Those now in need of social programs, including affordable education, are very much like my ancestors and, I suspect, yours. The mission of a community college, our mission as college teachers, is to help realize the aspirations of our community and its members -- and the ability to do so is undermined by the reckless, narrow, short-sighted economic policies now emanating from Washington.
One final observation in this regard: were you to tell Lansing and Washington officials the level of income, insurance benefits, and voice in governing this College that you believe you as a teacher deserve, I can assure you that many of those officials would begrudge you anything approaching what you believe you deserve. I can also assure you that most officials of this persuasion are concentrated in one political party.
The point in all of this is abundantly clear: the fate of this College and, in turn, our careers rests in the decisions made - or not made - in the political arena. The Federation leadership and the Union Negotiating Team can not secure professional wages and professional standing for HFCC faculty - for that matter President Mazzara and his administration can not operate this College - with "smoke and mirrors." The Union and the Management of this College - HFCC's programs and its students - need stable, adequate State and federal revenue. Student tuition and local tax support should supplement, not supplant, State and federal responsibilities.
State and Local Funding
At one time, State funding amounted to 48% of HFCC revenues, tuition 32%, and local tax support nearly 20%. Despite referenda limiting local property tax revenues, local support for the College has remained relatively constant - thanks in large part to the Dearborn voters' recent support of a 0.5 operating mill increase, which takes effect this January. State funding, however, has dropped over the years from 48% to 35% of HFCC revenue, while student tuition, has risen from 32% to 46%, to cover the State shortfall. Recent reductions in State funding stem in large part from reductions in federal revenues to the State, and ultimately from President Bush's $1.2 trillion in tax cuts, which he hopes to make permanent, despite soaring federal deficits and despite a $7 trillion federal debt.
Aggravating reduced State revenue to HFCC, is the College's unique dependence upon State revenue, a dependence far exceeding that other urban community colleges which enjoy county-wide or multi-municipality tax bases. Even with the additional 0.5 mill for operations provided by the Dearborn citizens, because of its small tax base, HFCC's local property revenue is the lowest, by far, of any metropolitan Detroit community college. In fact, HFCC's local property tax support per full-time equated student is among the very lowest in the entire State, ranking only above Gogebic and Bay-de-Noc Community Colleges. In terms of local property tax support, HFCC ranks 26 out of 28 community colleges in the State, while HFCC's reliance upon tuition is among the highest in the State, ranking third out of 28 State community colleges.
Given HFCC's small property tax base, given the magnitude of recent cuts in State funding, given looming State deficits in 2005 and beyond, and given the limits to which this College can push tuition increases, given all of these, HFCC must secure additional revenue sources. Without an improved and dependable revenue stream, something has to give, meaning cuts in programs, additional cuts in benefits, additional cuts in wages, or reduced staffing levels. This Union and this College, like the State, long ago exhausted all of its "easy" alternatives.
Inadequate State and federal funding, elected officials ideologically hostile to public education and collective bargaining, ideologically driven politicians who cut government revenue and drive deficits in order to dismantle programs supportive of the working and middle class students and families we serve at HFCC, these are the "clear and imminent" domestic threats that confront our college, our students, and our profession. The triumph of narrow self interest and ideology over a sense of community and obligation to posterity, these are responsible for our challenges in recent years and those in the year upcoming.
Such challenges are not new. This Union, both its veteran and newer teachers, again must rise to the occasion. The election is over, but the debate over major social policy changes is just beginning. We must make our voices heard and our priorities known in both Lansing and Washington. Failing to engage in this debate would be a disservice to the teachers who built this College and Union. Losing this debate will be devastating to the students and families we serve.
John McDonald
January 24, 2005
Henry Ford Community College
Federation of Teachers
5101 Evergreen Road
Dearborn, MI 48128-1495
jmcdon@hfcc.net
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