Our New Sick Leave Language Leaves Us Ill

For faculty, our new language includes the following:

There shall be no charge to a sick leave balance for days following the date on which grades are due or the date on which the semester ends, whichever is sooner.

This IS an improvement, but it falls far short of AFT language.

The AFT contract specifies in 8.3.12, “No Faculty Member shall be required to be on campus when he/she is not responsible for scheduled class and office hours, or for other professional obligations,” and a post-1992 merger grievance clarified this in terms of sick leave thusly:

AFT faculty are only charged for sick leave on the days they are scheduled to work.

For most AFT faculty, this means they are only charged for four days per week, plus any scheduled final exam days. 4C’s faculty are charged five days per week, leading up to the new language.

Again, our current union leaders agreed to less than what the AFT already has.

NEXT: Our Sick Bank is Broke(n)