COORDINATION DAY SPEECH, AUGUST 23, 2005
Charlie Dee, Executive V.P. AFT Local 212

Good Morning Colleagues!!

Something happened last semester that perhaps some of the other old-timers have experienced. After the first night of class, one of my students told me that her father had been a student of mine here. “That’s impossible,” I started to say. But then I did the math.

I didn’t need another reminder of the aging process, but I thoroughly enjoyed the reminder that I’m part of a college that has served many generations of many families in Milwaukee.

I had that same feeling of pride in MATC when I had knee surgery last spring, and the nurse in the OR was one of our graduates. But it was more than pride: I felt confident and safe because I know the quality of our instruction meant I was in good hands.

Now we’ll be negotiating a new contract this year, and it’s important to recall what previous negotiations have yielded: one thing is that we have language in our contract that ensures small enough class size that my surgical nurse got individual attention from her instructor in her clinicals at MATC so she learned the skills necessary so that my knee, your knees and Milwaukee’s knees are treated properly.

We have new instructors with us today. I join Michael in welcoming you. I’m sure you’re aware that you’re teaching load is reduced your first year so that you can participate in our peer support program and get the support you need to become an excellent teacher. We didn’t have this benefit when I started teaching here in 1980. But Local 212 proposed and successfully negotiated this provision with the goal of making sure our students get the best prepared instructors in their classrooms.

Back in the mid-80’s, the administration under President Rus Slicker tried to take out of the contract all this language on quality education. Just two years ago, the current administration tried to change contract language that would have taken retiree health benefits away from new teachers, so that anybody hired after 2004 would have been treated differently from older employers. In both cases we stuck together to do what was right and to protect what thousands of faculty and staff before you risked their jobs to attain.

The negotiations that begin this year can be either collegial or acrimonious. The decision is not ours but the administration’s and the board’s. If they attempt to gut contract language that establishes high quality educational standards and practices such as I’ve mentioned, these negotiations will be contentious and difficult. Local 212 has a long history of pursuing educational excellence as well as professional salaries and benefits for our members.

We hope, however, that the opposite will be the case. The leadership of Local 212, and I’m sure all of you, would rather focus our energies on working together to make this college even more responsive to student needs and the changing marketplace than we already are. We hope that the administration will share this view, engage in focused, collegial negotiations, and allow all of us to concentrate on our students.

When I was a boy, I used to fantasize being a big league baseball player getting excited about opening day. The closest I’ve come, is the opening of each new semester and those new groups of students. So I’m psyched, I can hardly wait for Thursday. Have a great semester.