Copyright Mechanicsburg Patriot News
HACC faculty will pause their strike tomorrow in anticipation of a Wednesday night bargaining session where they hope to reach a deal with college administration after a three-and-a-half-year-long battle for an initial union contract. Union faculty, along with student supporters, have been on picket lines at the entrance to HACC’s Harrisburg campus for the past two days. In an announcement Tuesday evening, union leaders said faculty “believes the college wants to reach a contract on behalf of the students as much as HACCEA [HACC Education Association] does and will work with faculty negotiators to reach a tentative agreement Wednesday night.” “Faculty members said they wanted to get back with their students on Wednesday, with the expectation that an agreement can be reached,” union leaders said. A decision on whether to return to striking will be made depending on how Wednesday’s negotiations pan out. HACC has not announced any campus-wide class cancellations, and it remains unclear how many courses have been affected over the past two days. The college has told students that substitute instructors will be available, and has solicited faculty to fill in classes during the strike. Union members said their students have told them that they’ve shown up to empty classrooms, or to classes being taught by administrators with limited knowledge of the subject. HACCEA was voted into existence by faculty in April 2022 as an affiliate of the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA), the state’s largest teachers’ union. HACC’s bargaining unit has about 250 active members, and its contract stands to encompass roughly 750 teaching positions, according to the union. As previously reported, major differences remain between the union and HACC’s administration. The college’s most recent proposed deal still gives HACC management sole power over class sizes, scheduling, the creation of new faculty positions and the qualification for them, and other matters on which the union wants to have some input. The college has also offered to increase faculty wages by 9.28% to bring them up to where they would be if union faculty hadn’t been denied their last three cost-of-living adjustments. But the college’s offer is only retroactive to July of this year, with the union pushing for two more years of retroactivity.
