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"It's About Treating Everyone the Same"

In the University of Maine system, a largely female ESP unit wins retirement equity through persistence and community support.

Under her old retirement plan, university administrative assistant susan Robinson worked for 18 years for a rollover of just $8,500.

It just wasn't fair and it just couldn't last. For decades, union members in the University of Maine's largely female clerical support unit languished under a retirement scheme that yielded only about one-tenth of the benefits offered by the plan for for the UM system's predominantly male bargaining units.

That injustice finally came to an end this winter, thanks to a five-year battle waged by members of the NEA-affiliated Associated Clerical and Secretarial Unit of the University of Maine.

In a contract settlement reached in January, ACSUM won retirement-benefit equity with faculty and other male-dominated bargaining units. And because of persistent activism by university office staffers, this pact will be implemented two years ahead of schedule.

"We finally have retirement parity," declares ACSUM chief negotiator Suzanne Moulton, a history department support staffer at the Orono campus of the University of Maine. "We did this out of a deeply held conviction that gender discrimination is wrong. We put an end to the feminization of poverty at the University of Maine."

Under ACSUM's old retirement plan, the university made an annual fund contribution totaling only 1.25 percent of each employee's income. Employees could not make contributions of their own and had no survivor benefits.

At the same time, staffers in other university units were able to participate in a 403(b) plan that permitted an annual combined employer/ employee contribution of 10 percent.

ACSUM first made retirement equity a goal in 1996. Its bargaining team, comprised of Moulton, Susan Robinson of the University of Southern Maine, and Bob Coffin of University Network Services, worked to raise employee consciousness of the issue, then fought for it during negotiations for ACSUM's 1996-98 contract.

Despite strong university opposition, ACSUM members won their demand--but the university insisted on delaying implementation of retirement parity until 2003.

But during a round of benefit negotiations in 2000, ACSUM bargaining team members discovered that the university was financially capable of implementing retirement equity sooner than scheduled.

They called on their employer to do just that, and turned to fellow workers and the public for support.

"We put the pressure on," says Robinson, an administrative assistant at USM's Portland campus. "We circulated petitions among the faculty and staff. We sent letters to the university community, the press, and the legislature. We let them all know the university could afford what we were asking for.

"And they stood with us," Robinson notes. "The university community backed up our demands to the administration."

In the end, the university conceded, agreeing to implement retirement parity right away--by July of this year.

Under this agreement, ACSUM members will be able to participate in the university's 403(b) plan. The university will contribute 6 percent of each employee's salary to the plan, and will further match employee contributions of up to 4 percent. ACSUM members will become fully vested in the plan after five years of service.

"There's all the difference in the world between the new retirement plan and these employees' old one," says Maine Education Association UniServ Director Ross Ferrell. "Just by the numbers, it's the difference between poverty and retirement security. Beyond that, ACSUM members now have permanent contributions to a fund. If they're vested and they move on to other jobs, their benefit stays in the fund, waiting for them when they retire."

"The people working at the University of Maine are much better off today, and we should all be proud, because it's about fairness," says Robinson, who works in USM's telecommunications department.

"Certainly, the money was important, too," Robinson quickly adds. "Under the old retirement system, I worked 18 years for a rollover that was worth only $8,500. That obviously wouldn't have gone very far toward supporting me in retirement.

"But fairness is the key issue. It's about treating everyone the same," she stresses. "There is no reason why we, as women, as clerical workers, should accept being treated as second-class employees."

"This was a tremendous achievement," says Ferrell. "Our negotiators took on a giant challenge over many years. They stuck to their demands even though the university repeatedly made smaller offers and put up a very strong resistance.

"ACSUM's victory," the UniServ director concludes, "will better the lives of about a thousand employees right now and thousands more in the future. And it never would have happened without the diligent, dedicated work of this negotiating team."

Robinson says she was inspired to join the negotiating committee by talking to Moulton.

"Suzanne is a leader, and a great motivator of people," Robinson observes. "She made me understand that employees at all levels need to get involved in making their jobs better. Strength only comes through numbers."

Robinson stresses that it's always important for education employees to look ahead, beyond the issues that are affecting them today.

"Young workers don't think too much about retirement. I know I didn't," she admits. "But it's a critical issue. And now, when I reach retirement age, I'll be able to look back and know that by getting involved, I helped make things better for a lot of people."

The retirement-parity victory is not the first triumph that ACSUM has earned for employment equity in higher education. Ten years ago, ACSUM fought against a pay system that favored male-dominated jobs over female-dominated jobs.

After ACSUM pushed for a comparable worth study of university jobs, the university adopted a gender-neutral pay system with funding assistance from the state legislature.

--Matt Simon

Your Dues Did It

• NEA helps underwrite the Center for Education Research, Analysis, and Innovation at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. CERAI's independent research--in areas such as vouchers, class size reduction, high-stakes testing, and for-profit education--appears often in the media, academic journals, and legislative debates. For more, go to www.uwm.edu/Dept/CERAI.

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Ten Reasons to Speak Out for Public Schools

Never, ever stop speaking out for public education. There are some very wealthy folks out there--many of whom work together--who fuel America's pro-voucher movement. Some names for your file:

1. Wal-Mart heir John Walton, the movement's most prolific giver, gave seed money to the pro-voucher group CEO America and $2 million to Michigan's 2000 voucher ballot initiative. Walton bankrolls a massive private voucher program along with financier Ted Forstmann and runs a charter school management company. And through the Walton Family Foundation, Walton supports advocacy groups, think tanks, and legal nonprofits that promote vouchers and tax credits.

2. Financier Ted Forstmann recently funded a multimillion-dollar ad campaign attacking public education. Forstmann wants to scrap public schools in favor of an ATM-like system that would dispense taxpayer-funded vouchers for tuition at schools run by anyone who wanted to start one.

3. Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper spent more than $26 million last year on an unpopular California initiative--defeated by a 70-30 margin--to give publicly funded vouchers to children from even the wealthiest families.

4. Alticor Inc. President Dick DeVos directed the 2000 Michigan voucher initiative and, with family members, spent $5 million on this measure--which voters rejected by a 70-30 margin. DeVos and his wife, Betsy, are continuing their anti-public education assault through a new nonprofit organization that promotes a skewed report claiming that 90 percent of Michigan's public schools are failing.

5. The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in Milwaukee makes generous gifts to provide a reliable funding stream for vouchers, from courtroom to the classroom. Among the beneficiaries of the Bradley Foundation's largesse: Milwaukee's privately funded voucher program, Harvard researcher Paul Peterson, and the Institute for Justice, a pro-voucher legal defense group.

6. Texan James Leininger has poured money into political campaigns to promote a conservative agenda that includes vouchers. Leininger provides the bulk of the funding for the Horizon program in Texas, a privately funded voucher program that's draining money from San Antonio's Edgewood public schools.

7. Insurance company executive J. Patrick Rooney, the founder of an early privately funded voucher program, went national after unsuccessful attempts to push vouchers in his home state of Indiana. Rooney has been a key figure in several pro-voucher groups, including CEO America, the American Education Reform Council, and the Greater Educational Opportunities Foundation.

8. Economist Milton Friedman uses his modest-sized foundation to supplement his four decades of voucher advocacy. Friedman supports ad campaigns, conferences and publications, think tanks, and advocacy groups to promote public school "alternatives."

9. Richard Mellon Scaife exerts his financial reach through four family foundations. Scaife, who joined other voucher regulars in supporting the 1993 California voucher initiative, provides core support for think tanks and advocacy groups, private organizations that offer vouchers, and public interest law firms that promote vouchers and tuition tax credits.

10. In 2000, the voucher movement found itself new benefactors. Univision CEO Jerrold Perenchio gave more than $1 million to the California voucher initiative. Former Circuit City CEO Richard Sharp gave $100,000 to both the California and Michigan initiatives. Michigan's big-giver list included Wolverine Gas & Oil CEO Sidney Jansma, at $470,000; Domino's Pizza founder Thomas Monaghan, $350,000; and the computer company Compuware, $361,000.