The University of Iowa’s Campaign to Organize Graduate Students (COGS) has called upon the Iowa Board of Regents to drop its lawsuit against them and honor their contract. “The Regents chose to disregard the contract they had agreed to in March and filed a lawsuit against COGS July 17 to free them from their contractual obligations,” UE Local 896/COGS President Gwen Gruber told the Iowa Independent in an interview. “Unfortunately, the Regents and the University of Iowa seemingly cannot distinguish between student records and employee records.”

Citing an interpretation of the 1974 Federal Employees Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), the Regents’ suit wants to nullify a portion of the contract (Article V) that requires the University of Iowa to provide COGS on a monthly basis “with a listing of employees to include the employee’s name, local address, local phone, work address, work phone, job classification, department of appointment, percent of appointment, pay basis for appointment, and the salary rate expressed as both appointed and monthly amounts.”

Carol Greta, the legal counsel for the Iowa Department of Education, agreed with the union’s understanding of the act’s regulations.”[The act] has nothing to do with employment records,” she told the Daily Iowan. “It only pertains to education records,”Greta said.

In an effort to draw attention to the lawsuit and persuade the Regents to drop it, COGS members held a rally in Iowa City Oct. 30 — the day before the Regents were scheduled to convene in Iowa City for a meeting. (see pic: COGS area steward Mark Warburton displays sign at rally)During bargaining last fall, Gruber says, the Regents’ bargaining side discussed wanting to eliminate this part of the contract, which is a mandatory bargaining item. “They were even throwing the FERPA argument around,” Gruber said. “Our side said we aren’t going to give on that, but the University side chose not to push it.” Both parties agreed to the final terms of the contact, which was signed and ratified in March.

Before the lawsuit was filed in July, COGS used this monthly information to help monitor and provide services for its collective bargaining unit, which includes all graduate employees, regardless of whether they are dues-paying members of the student union. More specifically, COGS double-checks to make sure employees are getting paid the right amount.

COGS contends that FERPA is ambiguous on how it is applied and that it generally covers protecting education records, not employment records. “All the information we’re asking for is employment-related,” Gruber said. “Our point of view is that FERPA does not apply and the Regents are using a misapplication of this to keep us from effectively representing and defending our members.”

Moreover, COGS is asking the Regents to drop the lawsuit because it argues that the Johnson County District Court, where the lawsuit was filed 15 days after the contract went into effect, is not the proper venue for addressing this issue. “The real problem with the lawsuit and why we called them to drop it is because that’s a pretty big jump between the two parties, and filing a lawsuit in court is pretty extreme,” Gruber said. “The contract lays out grievances and arbitration procedures, so disputes between the employees and employer should follow the grievance process and go to arbitration, not court.”

Another venue for this type of contractual grievance is the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB), which provides arbitration and individual bodies to listen to both sides of the issue before issuing a ruling. “By skipping the grievance process, we feel the Regents’ aggressive action disrespects the sanctity of the contract. We feel it’s a pretty union-busting action on their behalf,” Gruber said.

Gruber feels the Regents are using FERPA selectively, since they haven’t challenged the UI when it provides the same information they’re seeking to other third parties. For example, the university provides student information to the UI Alumni Association, which sells the same information to credit companies to use at their own disposal.

Similar Dispute Resolved in Oregon

This is not the first time the FERPA challenge has been issued by a public university as a means of withholding information from graduate student unions. While negotiating its contract in the spring of 2000, the University of Oregon announced that, under FERPA, it could not provide Oregon’s Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation (GTFF) with the names of the people the union represented because the employees had not signed waivers. This had an immediate impact on GTFF members’ health benefits, because the union administers the health plan.

The Oregon dispute was eventually resolved, but not until the union filed an unfair labor practices complaint with the state PERB. As part of the agreement, the students had the option to waive FERPA when they received their letters offering employment. Only 13 of the nearly 1,200 members opted to not sign the waiver.

Gruber hopes the courts will throw the issue back to PERB. In the meantime COGS intends to follow the stipulations spelled out in the contract and has filed a grievance and prohibitive practices complaint with the University of Iowa.

Meanwhile, the UI Department of Human Resources has been sending COGS non-aggregated information regarding its members, which Gruber says is useless information, because there is no correlation between names and other information, including the employees’ salaries. When contacted by the Iowa Independent, UI Associate Director of Human Resources Kevin Ward had no comment and referred the matter to the Regents’ lawyer Tom Evans, who is presiding over the case. Evans spoke to the Iowa Independent, but would not comment on record.

Kari Thompson, UE-COGS’ Vice President for Organizing, acted as emcee for the Oct. 30 rally, which was held in the northeast corner of Hubbard Park, in front of the IMU