Letting state community college employees collectively bargain is right choice
It may sound strange to say that I am thankful right now. After all, the past year or so has been one of struggle, isolation, and for far too many among us, loss. Despite the bad news by which we’re inundated and our shared longing for normalcy, I am also looking at the positive side of things. As an adjunct professor at several of Maryland’s community colleges, I have good reason to be thankful these days.
After years of campaigning and lobbying our elected leaders, overwhelming majorities of both the Senate and the House of Delegates voted to extend collective bargaining rights to community college employees before the General Assembly’s annual crossover deadline. With passage of the House and Senate versions of the Maryland Community College Employees Freedom to Collectively Bargain Act of 2021, educators like me, are one step closer to having a voice on campus.
The support we have received this session has been unprecedented, and it’s no exaggeration to say that I am overwhelmed with gratitude. All stakeholders came together to work, refine, and defend this bill, no matter how scurrilous or specious the arguments from the opposition became. For a bill that is so benevolent in intent and so benign in its anticipated impacts, it generated some vitriol and tense exchanges between the plexiglass dividers of the House and Senate floors. Perhaps that was to be expected. That’s politics.
In years to come, I won’t remember the wrangling or grandstanding. What I will always remember, however, is the patience and consistency of leadership in both chambers, the committee chairs, the sponsors, floor leaders, and many other supporters in both the House and Senate. Not only did they speak, but they truly listened. In committees and on the floor of both chambers, they defended the research and the facts that underpinned the legislation. More touching still, they channeled the heartfelt hopes and concerns of the hundreds of community college faculty members, staff, and constituents who wrote to them and who testified via videoconference.
I also am so thankful for the magnitude of support Senate Bill 746 has received from beyond Annapolis. Recently, county executives including Steuart Pittman from Anne Arundel County and the mayor of Baltimore, who together serve three-quarters of Marylanders, penned letters in support of this bill. Now, they are joined by our own U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who sent his letter of support directly to House and Senate leadership in Annapolis.
In his letter, the senator sums up exactly what this bill will and will not do, noting, “[t]he choice to form a union should be up to the workers alone, and this legislation gives workers the freedom to choose whether to form a union without forcing them to do so.” He is exactly right: this bill is about those of us who work at community colleges having the freedom to make our own choice, nothing more and nothing less. I am so thankful to Senator Van Hollen for his deep understanding of our position and his unwavering support of us all as working people.
Those of us pushing for this bill have had a saying the past several months: “2021 is the year we get it done!” As Travis Simon, the director of political and legislative affairs at SEIU Local 500 and one of the main drivers of the bill this session, noted, “we now have champions at all levels of government. From city and county leaders to state legislators and now a member of the United States Senate, our elected officials know this is the bill to pass and this is the year to do it.”
Passing this bill into law is of course the right choice, and once that’s done, my colleagues and I will finally have a meaningful voice at work!