Copyright Mechanicsburg Patriot News
HACC’s faculty union is on the verge of a strike after a last-ditch negotiation session with college administrators that lasted late into Tuesday night. Nearly 200 HACC faculty and students marched through campus Tuesday evening before the negotiations, chanting “enough is enough” and planting pro-union flags outside the school’s administration building — the culmination of the union going three-and-a-half years without an initial contract since faculty first voted to organize in April 2022. “We are 40 months without a raise, 42 months without a contract,” Amy Withrow, a HACC English professor and the union’s lead negotiator, told her colleagues. “I can look at my faculty peers and say ‘we left no stone unturned to try to get a contract.’” Added Adam Weber, a negotiator with the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA), under which HACC’s faculty union is organized, “We are prepared to come to a deal this evening. However, if we do not, we are prepared to take the next steps. Tonight cannot be another business-as-usual session.” The outcome of that session was unknown as of 10:15 p.m., with negotiations having lasted nearly four hours. The union has about 250 active members, and its contract stands to encompass roughly 750 teaching positions, according to organizers. Many adjunct professors and other non-members who fall under the collective bargaining agreement are anticipated to join the strike, if one were to happen, creating a major disruption to HACC’s operations. Members voted earlier this month to authorize the union’s executive committee to call a strike at any time. Relations between the union and HACC’s administration — particularly college president John “Ski” Sygielski — have been strained from the start, with faculty accusing HACC leadership of illegal union-busting by intentionally drawing out negotiations, denying cost-of-living raises to union faculty, and cutting programs taught by union leaders. HACC’s union is organized under the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA), the state’s largest teachers’ union. In 2023, the college also had two PSEA organizers arrested for trespassing on its Lancaster branch campus, despite faculty saying they had reserved a table for a union drive. The charges were later dropped. The school was also the subject of a Sunshine Act lawsuit for failing to properly disclose its board minutes and agendas, eventually settling a contempt complaint after the union and PennLive began pointing out repeated violations. Through all of this, contract negotiations have made limited progress. A year ago, union members voted overwhelmingly to accept a compromise fact-finding agreement from the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board. The college said it had rejected the deal, although HACC’s poor record-keeping left it unclear if this was done by the college’s board of trustees or by Sygielski alone. HACC’s administration eventually dropped its initial demand to retain unilateral control over pay raises, offering union faculty a 9% bump in a contract proposal earlier this year. Union members voted overwhelmingly to reject the deal, given that the raise would not make up for the last three years of flat pay. Faculty also noted that the college was still insisting on having sole control over scheduling, programming, and even professors’ intellectual property rights, sometimes in contradiction of existing policies. “They have stalled, and they have refused to give us the things we have already,” said Steve Lustig, a HACC business professor and union leader. HACC is one of 15 community colleges established under a 1963 state law permitting them to receive state and local taxpayer support; HACC received $45 million from the state in 2024, according to the college’s last financial statement. That statement also shows HACC’s finances to be relatively stable – bolstered by a $1.7 million savings last year from staff cuts – leading many union members to conclude that the impasse is less about money and more about the power dynamic with the college’s board and Sygielski. “The math is indisputable,” Weber told union activists Tuesday. “The numbers — and your union — do not lie.”
