“I’ve seen our future. It’s good. It’s cheering”: Jerry Yarnetsky

Jerry Yarnetsky, Web Services Librarian, spoke at FAM’s Rally for Raises on September 20, 2024 about his experience at a unionized institution:

These negotiations have been mentally, physically, and financially taxing for us all.

But here’s what keeps me kicking —

I’ve seen our future. It’s good. It’s cheering.

Before coming to Miami, I was a tenured faculty librarian at Montgomery County Community College in suburban Philadelphia.

A dozen years ago, our college fell in a hole financially and organizationally. We had gutted out the Great Recession teaching our most students ever while funding plunged from our county and state. 

As we did more with less, things fell between the cracks. Policy reached the board of trustees without being vetted and it exploded in the college’s face.

I was just stepping into college leadership positions, first as the librarian on our faculty contract negotiating team and second as chair of our all-college distance education committee.

This gave me a front-row seat to witnessing the power of having a union for the betterment of our working lives and helping our college thrive —

First— while negotiating our faculty contract renewal, we learned that management’s financial consultant’s solution to our fiscal crisis was to obliterate our benefits. Had we not had a union, that would have been the end of our story.

Rather, we had a seat at the table and addressed the key issues the college faced — exploding health care costs due to an aging faculty. Instead of obliterating our benefits we proposed a new solution — an early retirement buyout.

The plan was popular and based on the subsequent retirements, we not only preserved our benefits, but negotiated raises in the contract. Without the union? We would have been out of luck.

Second— after our college got blindsided by the unvetted policy proposals, my fellow co-chairs and I collaborated with our president and provost to rejuvenate our college’s shared governance. But we didn’t have to invent a thing. Why? Our constitution for shared governance was right there in our faculty contract.

A year later, we were hiring a new director for our online learning campus. Our favorite candidate was ecstatic that we had shared governance. Why? Because he could hit the ground running with a highly engaged faculty-admin committee and not have to spend prolonged time building a network for decision making. We landed our candidate because of shared governance — and, I might add, our continued solid benefits.

So Montco, as we affectionately called our college, is again thriving and repeatedly makes “best of” lists for community colleges nationwide, both as a place for students to learn and as a place to work. 

Right at the middle of this success? The faculty contract.

So, yeah, right now we’re all exhausted.  But I’m telling you. I’ve seen our future. We can have a contract that not only protects, but amplifies what makes Miami a great university for our students — and for us. 

With hard work we can emerge with a win-win contract we can all live with. That’s what keeps me kicking and that’s why I keep at this.

So keep the faith my friends. I’ve seen the future. This process works. We’re just starting to win.

What do we want? A fair contract! When do we want it? NOW!