UUP Outreach Committee Co-chairs Glenn McNitt, Center, and Tom Tucker, and Vice Chair Kathy Southerton review the union’s draft 2008 legislative agenda with committee members during a recent two-day retreat.

It took a mighty effort by UUP last year to stop the Berger Commission’s plan to privatize SUNY’s Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. But that doesn’t mean that the threat to SUNY’s three public hospitals is over.

That stark reality is acknowledged in UUP’s 2008 Legislative Agenda, approved by the union’s Executive Board in late November following the recommendation of the UUP Outreach Committee.

“Proposals to privatize the SUNY hospitals in Brooklyn, Stony Brook and Syracuse have come up far too often in the past,” said UUP Acting President Frederick Floss. “We need to remain vigilant against any new attempts to advance privatization.”

Beyond safeguarding their status as public hospitals, UUP’s legislative agenda calls for a long-term solution to the state-imposed fiscal crisis at the hospitals. The union also asks for increased state support for the SUNY health science centers, and the establishment of a SUNY hospital in Buffalo.

Also topping the union’s 2008 legislative agenda is the call to hire more full-time academic and professional faculty. While the last two state budgets have included funds for SUNY to hire additional full-time faculty, Floss said there’s still a long way to go.

“The lingering effects of nearly two decades of underfunding continue to this day,” Floss said. “SUNY would need to hire 1,600 new full-time faculty just to return to the student-faculty ratio that existed in 1990.”

The SUNY Board of Trustees’ budget request for 2008-2009 calls for the hiring of 1,000 more full-time faculty during the next three years. Floss urged UUP advocates to advance that initiative in their meetings with state lawmakers.

“The collective efforts by our members are critical to convincing lawmakers that this is a priority budget item,” he said.

The ultimate goal is to have at least 70 percent full-time academic and professional faculty at each campus.

UUP’s other budgetary priorities include a call to fully fund:
• SUNY’s multicultural initiatives, especially the Office for Diversity and Educational Equity;
• Enrollment growth;
• Infrastructure improvements, including libraries, labs and information technologies; and
• SUNY’s opportunity programs.
The Executive Board also approved an ambitious list of legislative priorities in the union’s 2008 legislative agenda, including a call to:
• Provide unemployment insurance for part-timers;
• Bar public employers from diminishing health insurance benefits to SUNY retirees;
• Make SUNY Research Foundation staffers public employees;
• Pass sovereign immunity legislation to restore public employees’ rights; and
• Enact paid family medical leave and health care benefits for all New Yorkers.

UUP’s legislative agenda will be officially released at the union’s annual Legislative Luncheon Feb. 12 in Albany, an annual event that draws participation from dozens of lawmakers, their staffs, and UUP members from across the state.

— Donald Feldstein