College Adjunct Faculty to Unionize

Montgomery College's adjunct professors voted last week for union representation with Service Employees International Union Local 500, resolving three months of negotiations between the college and faculty.

The vote is a first for part-time college instructors in Maryland, union spokesman John VanDeventer said. The union also represents more than 1,200 part-time faculty members at George Washington University in the District and all supporting services workers at Montgomery County Public Schools.

The 365 to 105 vote was cast through mail-in ballots to the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation.

The union contract will include all 1,075 adjunct faculty members who were eligible to vote for representation.

The union plans to help the adjunct professors obtain more compensation, better job security and sufficient teaching materials, VanDeventer said.

Part-time faculty members teach 42 percent of the college's instructional hours, according to Steve Simon, the school's director of communications.

Simon said that officials want to pay faculty members as much as possible and have a long history of working successfully with the full-time faculty, which is unionized under the American Association of University Professors, and its staff, which is represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Montgomery College's employees are the only community college employees in Maryland with collective bargaining rights recognized by state legislation, Simon said.

Private Rockville School Switching to Wind Power

Green Acres School in Rockville will soon operate solely on wind power in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The school, which offers pre-kindergarten through eighth grade, signed a three-year agreement with green energy company Clean Currents to offset a total of more than 2 million pounds of carbon dioxide.

The offset will qualify the school for the Environmental Protection Agency's Green Power Leadership Club for energy-conserving organizations.

The company also signed a two-year deal in October to provide 50 percent wind power to the Bullis School in Potomac.