Texas AFT :Local Leader Spotlight: John Burghduff, President of AFT-Lone Star College

Release date: June 30, 2021 12:20 p.m.
Author: Texas AFT

Group photo of members and executives of the AFT-Lone Star College

AFT-Lone Star College was founded in 1980 and has had an impressive 41 years of leadership. Kevin Bailey, the first president of AFT-Lone Star College, later became a member of the Texas House of Representatives. He was succeeded in union leadership by Alan Hall, who held the presidency for 35 years, making Hall one of the longest serving presidents of a local union in Texas.

John Burghduff, who assumed the office of President in January this year, is the third President of the AFT-Lone Star College, which represents the employees of the Lone Star College system with its seven main locations.

“I’m just about to get my feet on the ground,” said John. “We’re a wall-to-wall union that includes teachers and staff. We have full-time and part-time employees as members. This is a hallmark of community colleges compared to K-12. Most of our staff are part-time and half of the courses we teach are run by part-time staff. You have very few rights. Working on behalf of the extraordinary faculty is an important goal of the union. “

We recently met with John to learn more about what unions for higher education are like and how he can be found in the labor movement.

John is one of our many exceptional leaders and members across Texas. Check out our Leader Spotlights so far to hear more from them.

How is union activism in higher education different from K-12?

There are some additional challenges that higher educated locals face – so as not to minimize the K-12 experience, we just have other issues. One is that we don’t have a standard work day like K-12. Community colleges open at 7:00 a.m. and close at 10:00 p.m. We are also open on weekends and have some online courses so staff come and go all day. Bringing people together is more of a challenge.

In faculties, the challenge we sometimes face is that people feel they are professionals and that unions are for professionals like plumbers and carpenters. This is a misunderstanding that we work with all the time. We’re paid very much like K-12 instructors. In fact, some of our employees in the school district would be paid better than in college. The idea that we are professionals doesn’t really work because we don’t set our own standards like a doctor or a lawyer.

We help people understand that even if they want to see ourselves as professionals and we act like professionals, we are not being treated like professionals. So having a union is incredibly important. As people face challenges with their job, we are available to help and help people understand the value of a union. We work for people and for politics.

“As people face challenges with their jobs, we are available to help people and understand the value of a union. We work for people and for politics. “

– John Burghduff

Can you outline an example where the collective action of your members showed the power of your union?

One of our challenges for many years has been due process issues for employees. We had something like the “six signature policy” for a while. This has been an administrative policy that has historically said that if a manager wants to fire someone, he can’t just fire them (which is a good thing), but that they must get a series of six signatures by hitting six other people convinced that the person’s dismissal is appropriate.

On the outside, that sounds like good business, except that the employee had no idea about it and had no way of getting involved or refuting. Instead, they would suddenly get a message that they had been fired. So we worked with the administration to convince them that there were some obvious injustices in this process.

We organized for a few months, got matching shirts, and contacted as many members as possible to plan for everyone to show up at the board meeting. We had a number of speakers to discuss the disciplinary process and filled more than half of the boardroom with our members. After a few months of these meetings, the administration turned to correct the problem.

We have worked very hard with them since we got their attention and the process we have now is very fair. Now the process is giving an employee a lot of notification and offering coaching so the whole purpose has been changed from punishment to mentoring to help them do their job better.

Tell me a little about yourself and your background.

I’ve been in college since 1992. The job I’m paid for is a math professor. I started on the Kingwood campus. The Cy-Fair Campus opened in 2003 and I’ve been there ever since.

I was in a previous job at a school that had an AFT local so I knew who AFT was and I appreciated what they were doing. When I found out that we had a local, I joined within six months and have been with the local since early 1993. Most of the time I was a member helping with whatever it took, but I wasn’t really involved in the leadership.

We have a union newsletter, and there were some issues that came up with trying to make more money online education, so I asked Alan (the then president) if I could write an article about it. This was my first actual participation in writing this article, and it met with great interest from faculty and administrators. The whole plan to monetize it failed and Alan noticed that so he asked me to write more articles afterward.

When I moved to Cy-Fair, there was already a vice president on campus, but he died after an uphill battle with cancer, so Alan asked me if I would be vice president. I wasn’t sure I could do it, but he said he believed I could do it and that he would help me, so I started meeting with him once a week about problems. I started to gain some confidence and taught myself college politics. I learned what human rights are.

Then some of the executives wanted me to be the union spokesman at board meetings and that was really terrifying. I remember my knees trembling the first time I did this. Nine years later, Alan reached out to me about the prospect of running for president after he retired, so I started going with him. Last fall we had our pick and I was elected president.

Why is this work important to you?

Education is something I’ve dedicated all of my life to. The only thing I ever wanted to do was get an education, become a teacher. For me, teaching is really a calling that I feel like I’m made for and that I love.

The mission of what we do is incredibly important. My college in particular is very important to me, the people in it are important to me. I work with an incredibly talented group of people who are very dedicated and want to help their students wherever they can. You can only help your students effectively if they feel confident and secure in their job. If they are afraid or threatened, it affects them and the students on a humane level. The employees themselves and their well-being are important to me, but also that we really offer the best service to improve the lives of our students.

Are you a Lone Star College employee? Check out our union membership benefits and join AFT-Lone Star College today.

source https://collegeeducationnewsllc.com/texas-aft-local-leader-spotlight-john-burghduff-president-of-aft-lone-star-college/