Faculty at UMass On Strike, Protest Contract Negotiations

Only 25 per cent of scheduled classes met yesterday and Tuesday at the University of Massachusetts-Boston as 150 striking faculty, staff and students picketed administrative offices Tuesday in protest of the six-month delay in faculty contract negotiations.

The ad hoc Committee for a Fair Contract encouraged faculty at the Columbia Point campus to report sick yesterday and Tuesday, although the State Labor Relations Commission barred the action Monday night.

Since the union contract expired last June, faculty have asked for salary increases, assurance that present workloads and class sizes will be maintained and security against layoffs. There have bbe 30 bargaining sessions in the past six months.

No Show, No Pay

University administrators said yesterday that faculty who participate in the sick-out will not receive full paychecks.

"According to state law," Carole Cohen, director for university affairs, said yesterday, "any public employee engaged in illegal work stoppage will not be paid for the work missed."

"The sick-out is an act of illegal work stoppage," she added.

President David C. Knapp said that because exam period is approaching the faculty is guilty of a "serious disservice to their students' educational objectives."

Charles Bowen, associate professor of English, expressed fear that some faculty members may be fired for participating in the protest, although Cohen denied this.

The administration monitored the faculty's class attendance by sending scouts to scheduled classes for visual confirmation, Cohen said. Officials reported that only 34 of 136 scheduled classes met Tuesday and figures for yesterday were similar.

Administrative officers also instructed departmental chairmen to report any cancellations to the dean's office.

Brian A. Thompson '63, chairman of the French department called the administration's tactics "un-American." "Anyone who is not reported to have met with classes is assumed to have cancelled," he said. "So you are guilty until proven innocent," he added.

Thompson said he would not comply with instructions to report any faculty absences to Michael Riccards, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. "It's not my job," he said.

The protestors assembled at 11 a.m. and picketed for two hours. Their enthusiasm carried them up to the chancellor's office. "We made lots of noise in the outside corridor," Bowen said. "It's a totally legal form of job action," he added.

Chancellor Robert Corrigan was reportedly in his office but did not come out to meet the protesters.

Deborah Holmes, a junior and spokesman for the Student Strike Committee, said the delay in contract settlement is an effort to reduce faculty participation at the State Board of Regents meeting on March 1, 1981, when officials will discuss reorganizing the state colleges in the Boston area.

"It's part of a general trend to centralize power under the Board of Regents so that individual colleges will have less say in administrative matters and more faculty can be cut back," Holmes said.

"Meanwhile the administration never gets cut back," she added. "It just grows."

Cohen denied there was any connection between the stalled negotiations and next year's Regents meeting