The ACCCEA 2006-2007 Negotiating Team met May 10 at 5:00 for hor dourves at Sugar Hill Inn. Attending the gathering were Michelle Bevan, Phil Cragg, Renee DeAngleo, Dennis Huey, Dom Nigro, Will Parsons, Ed Perkins, Rhonda Petruzzi, John Stratton, Jim Taggart, and Jim Usilton.

Don Nigro was there with a friend Kathleen who is a fellow labor consultant. Don said he might not have come back this year except that he thought it would be an easy negotiation. He knows the players on both sides and he has friends on the ACCCEA Team. (He has sent his crystal ball out for repairs.)

Dom first started as our NJEA representative when Dick Kirchoffer and Mary Tower were the Faculty Association negotiating team in 1974. The seventeen years olds at the College then are now fifty. Don has played an important role in the working conditions here and knows our contracts better most employees.

The Team talked about the protracted negotiations and what caused them. Not everyone agreed on the cause or causes, but everyone did agree that next time negotiations should start earlier and job actions should start earlier. Some people feel that the President would have gotten involved sooner if we had shut done registration on the first day.

I said that this team was the “best one I have ever worked with”. “We all worked together and supported each other”. We have been used at other NJ community colleges as a model of how it is possible to do unified negotiations.

It might seem too soon to be talking about the next negotiations, because we have a four year contract. The contract runs from July 1, 2006 to June 30, 2010. The first year of the contract is past and we need to start negotiations almost a year before it runs out. We should begin negotiations October 2009 – only about two years away.
Will Parsons, Former ACCCEA President