BC3 approves collective bargaining agreement
BUTLER TWP — Butler County Community College trustees approved a three-year contract Wednesday between the college and the BC3 Education Association, the union that represents 95 full-time and regular part-time faculty members at the college.
The contract will be retroactive to July 1 and end June 30, 2025. BC3’s previous contract with the BC3 Education Association expired June 30. The agreement includes increases in base salaries, in overload payments and in health care contributions; one-time payments and an early retirement incentive.
Additionally, 66 full-time faculty members will also receive a one-time $3,500 payment in the first year of the contract.
“This contract speaks volumes to how much we value and appreciate our faculty,” said BC3 president Nick Neupauer. “While other institutions compensated faculty with federal funds during the pandemic, our approach was to add the compensation during these contract negotiations.”
Tenured faculty will receive $350 increases to base salaries in each year of the three-year contract, full-time faculty’s base salaries will increase 3% the first year, 3.5% the second and $2,300 in the third year. Regular part-time faculty members will receive a one-time payment of $1,000 in the first year of the agreement. Nearly two-thirds of BC3’s faculty are tenured, according to a Wednesday news release from the college.
Nursing clinical faculty will receive additional compensation throughout the three-year contract, the news release said.
Overload payments, which are made to full-time faculty members who teach more than 30 credits in an academic year, will increase from $825 in the previous contract to $860 in the spring semester, to $875 in the second year of the contract and to $890 in the third. Faculty contributions toward medical insurance premiums will increase to 11% in 2023.
BC3 trustees also approved a $25,000 early retirement incentive for full-time faculty members with at least 15 years of service.
Brian Opitz, BC3’s executive director of operations, said at the meeting that the BC3 @ Armstrong campus in Ford City is planned to open March 13, during students’ spring break.
According to Opitz, students who attend classes in the current Armstrong County campus in Manor Township will return to their classes after spring break at the new campus.
“We’re kind of coming down the home stretch right now, looking to have the facility complete by the end of January,” Opitz said. “BC3 staff does a tremendous amount of work for moving, we do all the furniture, we do all the technology ... so that gives us about a month to do that.”
Neupauer told the trustees Wednesday that BC3 has raised around $4.22 million for the Armstrong County campus, which is a high number for a college of its size.
Opitz pointed out to the trustees that the new campus in Armstrong will immediately create a footprint for BC3 in the region, which has excited a lot of campus and community members.
“This is a very different site — the location, the interest in the community, everything about it is just a lot of fun,” Opitz said. “We’re putting a brand new building in an older town, and it has to fit, and there’s just a lot of elements of that town going into this building.”
