Union meetings at Longy

The Union has won permission to hold meetings at Longy (see negotiations update, below). Accordingly, our next membership meeting will be

• Friday, June 11, 12:00 noon to 2:00 pm, in the Wolfinsohn room.

All Longy Faculty Union members are invited to join us to discuss our ongoing negotiations with the administration. Bring your own lunch!

Negotiations update

We have had two more negotiating meetings with the administration since our last report, and several more meetings are in the works for June. We have been making progress on several fronts: (1) the Longy administration has agreed to allow us to hold Union meetings on campus, and to provide bulletin board space for us to post messages to our membership; (2) we have submitted proposals and initiated discussion with Longy negotiators about the substance of the ultimate contract between Longy and the Union; and (3) we have at last received a response to our queries about reasons for the "faculty realignment."

At the March 5 full faculty meeting, faculty were told that one of the primary reasons for the realignment of faculty was that "we are in a recession," implying that there is monetary gain to be had from realigning the faculty. The Union negotiating committee has repeatedly questioned this reasoning. In our first two negotiating sessions, the administration told the negotiating committee that the school is in a financial emergency and that the economic crisis was one reason for the realignment. But in recent sessions, the administration has said that — as we suspected — the decisions had nothing to do with financial issues, and that the realignment was not economically motivated; rather, that the realignment was motivated solely by the Strategic Plan and by the Board's desire to reshape the school for the future.

We have consistently maintained the position, which we presented to the administration in writing several weeks ago, that the terminations and reassignments issued unilaterally by the administration in the March 15 letters should be rescinded pending our negotiations over them.

In our discussions with the administration, we are building the contract one page at a time. We have proposed more than a dozen articles to the administration so far. One of these, for example, is a clause requiring the administration to follow well-defined procedures in firing a faculty member, instead of being allowed to fire a faculty member summarily for no cause.

At our June 11 membership meeting, we will discuss other possible aspects of the contract. Please join us and share your thoughts and ideas!

Virtual office hours

To help facitlitate communication among the Union Executive Board and faculty members, the LFU is offering virtual "office hours" on an experimental basis. During these hours, LFU Executive Board members have set aside special times to take your phone calls about the LFU. Upcoming virtual "office hours" are:

Tuesday, June 1, 9:00-10:00 pm
Liz Anker
617-522-0068

Wednesday, June 9, 8:30-9:30 pm
Deborah (Debbie) Beers
781-861-6884 (calls screened through answering machine)

Monday, June 21, 2:00-3:00 pm
Peter Evans
978-235-6463

Wednesday, June 30, 8:30-9:30 pm
Deborah (Debbie Beers)
781-861-6884 (calls screened through answering machine)

If these times are not good for you and you would like to speak with a Board member at a different time let us know by sending email to longyfacultyunion@gmail.com.

Cambridge Chronicle article

On May 20, Cambridge Chronicle ran an article about the recent changes at Longy headlined "Staff cuts at Cambridge music school sting for some" by Jillian Fennimore.