Members of the NSHE Community Petition for a Safe Fall Semester

Open petition sponsored by the Nevada Faculty Alliance (www.NevadaFacultyAlliance.org)

Update: Over 1270 members of the NSHE community have signed this petition. This petition has been closed to new signatures. To view the signatures, please go to  at https://forms.gle/MV761ZDk5EpnWpXP8 .  [December 2021: A new Petition for Safe NSHE Campuses has been started.] 

To the members of the Nevada State Board of Health, the NSHE Board of Regents, Chancellor Melody Rose, and institutional Presidents:

• Full in-person instruction resumes at the colleges and universities of the Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE) in August 2021 for the Fall semester.
• The shared goals of faculty, students, and the NSHE administration are to teach in-person in a safe manner and to avoid another transition to remote instruction due to the pandemic.
• The coronavirus delta variant has surged in Nevada leading to renewed indoor mask requirements for businesses and on NSHE campuses.
• Widespread vaccination is the most effective way to prevent serious illness and reduce transmission from all current variants of the coronavirus. The available vaccines are remarkably safe and effective.
• Over 650 universities and colleges nationally (https://bit.ly/3Ck5kFH), including large public education systems in many states experiencing lower transmission rates, are implementing mandatory vaccinations for students and/or faculty and staff, many under the Emergency Use Authorization without waiting for full FDA approval.
• Governor Sisolak has ordered state employees including NSHE faculty and staff to show proof of vaccination or else undergo weekly COVID testing (https://bit.ly/2VspFIr).
• As part of their employment duties, faculty and staff work with the much larger number of students in close quarters where social distancing is difficult and often impossible.
• Although faculty and staff will all be vaccinated (or tested weekly), the vaccine is not 100% effective, nor are masks, so the presence of unvaccinated students on campus, even if masked, will result in an entirely preventable transmission of this deadly disease from students to other students, faculty, and staff.
• The current spread of the delta variant has been described by the CDC as a pandemic of the unvaccinated (https://bit.ly/37kKfwG).
• Students tend to be in age groups with lower vaccinations rates (https://bit.ly/2VAfRvP).
• NSHE students are already required to show proof of immunizations for other diseases as a preventive public health measure (with exemptions for bona fide medical or religious reasons).
• Chancellor Rose issued a statement on May 6, 2021, indicating that NSHE was planning for mandatory vaccinations and that "NSHE is asking all students and their families to be prepared for this possibility.” (https://bit.ly/3rTYd2a)
• Full FDA approval of the Pfizer vaccine is reportedly expected imminently, within weeks.
• On August 2, 2021, NSHE legal counsel advised that only the State Board of Health is authorized to require vaccinations for NSHE university students. (https://bit.ly/2VmaAbw)

We, the undersigned members of the NSHE community, respectfully request the Nevada State Board of Health to consider mandatory vaccinations for college and university students based on sound medical evidence and to issue emergency regulations giving guidance and authorization to NSHE. We further request that NSHE and its institutions implement strong proven measures against the further spread of COVID-19 including mandatory student vaccinations until the community public health risk has subsided.

View signatures at https://forms.gle/MV761ZDk5EpnWpXP8  

The state Nevada Faculty Alliance has released a statement advocating for mandatory COVID vaccinations and other strong measures for safe in-person instruction in the Fall Semester:

NFA Statement on COVID Precautions

6/4/2021 Update: NFA 2021 Legislative Session Summary

NFA has prepared fact sheets on our legislative priorities and various bills and budgets. The links here will be updated throughout the session.

• NFA Priorities for the 2021 Legislative Session
• Collective Bargaining for NSHE Professionals - SB373
• PEBP Budget and Benefits Restoration (updated 5/26)
• Restore Benefits and Compensation (new 5/23)
• PEBP Excess Cash Reserves 2011-2021
  
• NSHE Budget and Caseload Growth
• Higher Education Funding from the American Rescue Plan (updated 5/10)
• NSHE Budget Restoration
• SJR7 (new Question 1) Proposed Alternative

Nevada Faculty Alliance PAC

2020 Election Endorsements

Board of Regents
	Regent District 2	Bret Whipple
	Regent District 3	Swadeep Nigam
	Regent District 10	Joe Arrascada
Senate
SD 1	Patricia Spearman	SD   7	Roberta Lange
SD 3	Chris Brooks	SD 11	Dallas Harris
SD 4	Dina Neal	SD 15	Wendy Jauregui-Jackins
SD 5	Kristee Watson	SD 18	Elizabeth Becker
SD 6	Nicole Cannizzaro
Assembly
AD   1	Daniele Monroe-Moreno	AD 21	Elaine Marzola
AD   2	Radhika Kunnel	AD 23	Brent Footz
AD   3	Selena Torres	AD 24	Sarah Peters
AD   4	Connie Munk	AD 25	Jill Tolles
AD   6	Shondra Summers-Armstrong	AD 26	Lisa Krasner
AD   8	Jason Frierson	AD 26	Teresa Benitez-Thompson
AD   9	Steve Yeager	AD 28	Edgar Flores
AD 10	Rochelle Nguyen	AD 29	Lesley Cohen
AD 11	Beatrice Duran	AD 30	Natha Anderson
AD 12	Susan Martinez	AD 31	Skip Daly
AD 14	Maggie Carlton	AD 34	Shannon Bilbray-Axelrod
AD 15	Howard Watts III	AD 35	Michelle Gorelow
AD 16	Cecelia González	AD 37	Shea Backus
AD 17	Clara Thomas	AD 41	Sandra Jauregui
AD 18	Veneicia Considine	AD 42	Alexander Assefa
AD 20	David Orrentlicher

The Nevada Faculty Alliance (www.nevadafacultyalliance.org) is an affiliate of the American Association of University Professors (www.aaup.org), whose mission is to advance academic freedom, enhance shared governance, and promote the economic security of faculty and graduate students. The NFA membership includes academic and administrative faculty at all eight institutions of the Nevada System of Higher Education. The NFA Political Action Committee, which is comprised of NFA members in northern and southern Nevada, is proud to make these political endorsements. We will be encouraging the winning candidates to fight with us to address the various issues related to higher education in Nevada.

The Nevada Faculty Alliance has endorsed the following Northern Nevada candidates:

NSHE Board of Regents:

District 10 Joseph Arrascada (NP)

Nevada State Senate:

District 15 Wendy Jauregui-Jackins (D)

Nevada State Assembly:

Sarah Peters (D) (incumbent)

Jill Tolles (R) (incumbent)

Lisa Krasner (R) (incumbent)

Teresa Benitez-Thompson (D) (incumbent)

Natha Anderson (D)

Skip Daly (D) (incumbent)

-------------------------------------------

Approved by the NFA State Political Action Committee on August 29, 2020. The Nevada Faculty Alliance (www.nevadafacultyalliance.org) is an affiliate of the American Association of University Professors (www.aaup.org), whose mission is to advance academic freedom, enhance shared governance, and promote the economic security of faculty and graduate students. The NFA membership includes academic and administrative faculty at all eight institutions of the Nevada System of Higher Education. The NFA Political Action Committee, which is comprised of NFA members in northern and southern Nevada, is proud to make these political endorsements. We will be encouraging the winning candidates to fight with us to address the various issues related to higher education in Nevada.

CSN FACULTY SENATE OVERWHELMINGLY URGES CSN TO HONOR BARGAINING AGREEMENT

On Friday Sept 14, CSN Faculty Senate voted by a margin of 28-3 to urge CSN to honor all settled tentative agreements.

NFA President Robert Manis explained to Senate how in August, CSN had approached NFA with an offer to end the bargaining impasse by offering an approximate $1000/ person bonus which could be split into two parts, along with raises in summer pay,  B+ contracts, overload pay, and clinical hours.

 However, hours before NFA could consider this proposal, CSN stated it was withdrawing from an agreement settled a year ago to allow market hires a path to tenure for the reason that it modified NSHE code.  Revoking a settled TA is a virtually unprecedented violation of labor law.  The reason is that if a previously settled tentative agreement is allowed to be revoked, all the others (of which CSN and NFA have settled 15) could be held hostage for leverage on other issues, lab hours being one of the major ones outstanding

 Moreover, NSHE TItle 4, Chapter 4 Section 13.2-3 specifically allows the modification of code by collective bargaining contracts. Furthermore, prior to making the agreement, NFA showed how market hires were paid less than faculty and in fact were, in many cases, not offered the chance to choose the tenure track option, which is itself a violation of code.

 The significant issue, however, is whether any agreement, once settled, can be held hostage for leverage. In fact, what then would prevent CSN from renouncing their latest offer if this is allowed to stand?

 

Bargaining at CSN reached impasse as CSN continued its refusal to bargain over salary in violation of labor law. The process now moves to fact-finding. For more info see the following article.

https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/csn-faculty-trying-to-negotiate-a-pay-raise-hit-impasse-with-administration

On June 8th, the Nevada Faculty Alliance imposed a deadline for the College of Southern Nevada to make significant progress towards agreement on matters related to compensation, by midnight June 30.

These compensation-related items include lab pay, overload pay, and pay equity (compression adjustments which have historically been funded at the institutional level.

It's the opinion of  our lawyers at the NFA’s national affiliate the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) that the failure to make any tangible counter-offer on these topics constitute “bad faith”  surface bargaining, an Unfair Labor Practice.

During the same time period, the NFA will decide whether to file an unfair labor practice in District Court, or to declare an Impasse and refer the matter to a Fact-finder as provided in Nevada System of Higher Education code, should there be no agreement or significant enough progress.

The college claims it has no money to make any agreement, which NFA disputes. They have also falsely alleged to the Chancellor and Legislators that NFA has asked for merit pay and/or Cost of living allowances funded by the legislature which is also untrue.  

NFA hopes that the imposition of a deadline will make the college take the compensation issues more seriously, since there’s been no progress even after 19 months. Should they not, having done our research, we expect success whether through the Courts or Fact-finding.

Updates can be found on the negotiations blog: https://nfacsnnegotiations.blogspot.com/