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Full-time faculty members have unionized at two Maryland community colleges.
Erica Snipes, the Maryland Public Employee Relations Board’s acting executive director, said 57.5 percent of the 106 faculty members in the collective bargaining unit at Frederick Community College signed authorization cards to be represented by the American Federation of Teachers–Maryland.
Snipes said that more than 50 percent of the faculty members in Howard Community College’s bargaining unit signed cards to be represented by AFT-Maryland, but she didn’t provide an exact percentage last week. In a news release, AFT, which is also affiliated with the American Association of University Professors, said 170 faculty members will be represented at Howard.
That news release said both unions had more than 80 percent support, and an AFT spokesman said Friday he didn’t know what explains the union-state discrepancy in the level of support. Either way, there was majority support to unionize.
Snipes said both showings of interests to unionize were submitted Aug. 21, but her agency didn’t finish confirming majority support for the Howard union until last week.
In the union release, Kenya Campbell, president of the Maryland arm, said, “We welcome these new members into our union family and remember the deep roots AFT-Maryland has in organizing higher education faculty dating back to Local 1980 at the former Community College of Baltimore. We will continue to fight for higher education workers throughout Maryland to get the representation they deserve and democracy in the workplace.”
