FRONT PAGE
UHPA strike averted
by Jene Nakayama

A six-year contract with UH faculty was ratified April 8, averting a system-wide strike and raising teachers’ salaries 31 percent by 2008.

But a potential tuition increase has some students worried about the contract.

In an effort to offer larger pay increases to the teachers, the university agreed to help the state pay for these increases in 2006, 2007 and 2008 when the current tuition schedule runs out.

One potential revenue source for the university to help fund these raises is tuition.

“With tuition here compared to the majority on the mainland, it still would be cheap so it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch,” said WCC student Dahson Gonzalez.

“Regardless, I still would rather have no increase as the tax to live in paradise already is high.”

“None of us likes the idea of raising tuition on the students,” said James Heasley, co-chair of the collective bargaining committee, but he added “they are modest increases.”
Under the new contract, teachers will receive increases of 1 percent for 2003, 3 percent for 2004, 2 percent for 2005, 5 percent for 2006, 9 percent for 2007 and 11 percent for 2008.

“The six-year aspect is both positive and negative,” said WCC professor Paul Field. “It’s positive because the university can do some planning. They’ll be able to tell potential faculty what pay raises will look like. It eliminates job insecurity.”
Field added that the negative aspect of a six-year contract is that “in effect, we are locked into the current contract for six years.”

Another concern is the schedule of pay increases since the highest increases come in 2006, 2007 and 2008.
“One of the things this will do is discourage senior faculty from retiring,” said Field.

A teacher’s retirement amount is based on the average of the three highest years of pay. With this new contract, the highest years will be at the end of 2008.

“Yes, it’s back loaded. Do we like that? No,” said Heasley. “We wanted more money up front. Every time we started trying to push for an up front, their (the state’s) heels dug in deeper. Their argument is that while the state’s wealth is up, the government is not capturing revenue right now.”