Pact Reached Between Union of Professors and Pennsylvania State Schools

Angela Januzzi

July 5, 2007

A tentative agreement was made this past Monday between Pennsylvania’s 5,500 professors and the state school system they had threatened to strike against. However, the agreement must be approved by the school system’s governing board and the union before it is enacted.

The websites of both the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education and The Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties have announced that the agreements includes a one-time cash payment of $1,750 to each full-time faculty member at the 14 state schools, and a pay increase of 3 percent throughout both the 2008-9 and 2009-10 academic years, and then a 4 percent increase in 2010-11. Along with the general pay increases, faculty members at the lower end of the salary schedule will receive annual increments of 2.5 percent or 5 percent each year.

If an agreement had not been reached, the union had threatened to begin their strike as early as this past Monday, once the faculty members’ previous contracts had expired. For now, however, the strike seems to have been abated.