Copyright Mechanicsburg Patriot News
HACC union faculty will begin a strike on Monday, union leadership announced Saturday afternoon, after additional bargaining sessions with HACC administrators this week failed to move the needle on a long-overdue initial contract. Faculty plan to hit the picket lines around 8:30 a.m. Monday, union leaders said, likely causing major disruptions to HACC’s programming and class schedules. Faculty voted the union into existence in April of 2022, but still do not have an initial contract despite three-and-a-half years of arduous negotiations with college leadership. Earlier this year, faculty voted to authorize union leadership to call a strike at any time. The union has about 250 active members, and its collective bargaining rights cover roughly 750 teaching positions. Union leaders expect significant numbers of adjunct professors and other instructors to join union members in striking. This past Tuesday, roughly 200 faculty members and students marched through campus prior to a last-ditch negotiation session with HACC administrators, which lasted into the wee hours of the next morning. Another bargaining meeting Thursday night lasted six hours, and while a few outstanding issues were addressed, major items remain unresolved, according to union leadership. These include HACC insisting on language that gives faculty no guaranteed input on curriculum development, and also mandates faculty accept the same tuition reimbursement as the college decides to grant non-union employees. HACC’s contract proposals, according to documents from the union, also contain a long list of management rights not subject to grievance by the union - including class sizes, scheduling, the creation of new faculty positions and the qualification for them, and other matters on which unions typically have input. Major differences also remain on pay, given that union faculty have been denied the raises given to non-union college staff over the past three years as contract negotiations dragged on. The college, according to the union, is offering a pay increase of just over 9% with no retro-activity; the union is pushing for faculty to be compensated for lost raises, either with retroactive percentages or a one-time flat-dollar salary hike. The average full-time faculty member has lost about $12,500 from the three-year pay freeze, according to the union. 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 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. 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.
