Kathy Sicher, president of HACCEA, the union representing faculty, speaks on the capitol steps about HACC faculty's unionization effort on Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2023.
Suzette Wenger / LNP | LancasterOnline
HACC faculty rally at Pa. capitol against administration’s anti-union tactics
By Olivia M. Miller/LNP | LancasterOnline
Suzette Wenger / LNP | LancasterOnline
Kathy Sicher, president of HACCEA, the union representing faculty, speaks on the capitol steps about HACC faculty's unionization effort on Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2023.
A folding table sat on the steps in front of the Pennsylvania State Capitol on Wednesday. Behind it stood about 35 faculty members from Harrisburg Area Community College.
The table was the same one at the center of an Aug. 30 incident that saw two faculty union representatives arrested and removed from the school’s Lancaster campus at the request of school administrators.
“This is the dangerous table that caused HACC management to call the police, to threaten our faculty with arrest and to arrest our PSEA representatives for trespassing,” said Kathy Sicher, president of the Harrisburg Area Community College Education Association.
She told a crowd of about 50 people that HACC administration views the faculty union as “an outside entity with a special interest.”
“Let me set the record straight,” Sicher said. “We are not an outside entity. We are the faculty at Harrisburg Area Community College.”
Dozens of HACC faculty and their supporters listened to Sicher’s remarks, many wearing pro-union shirts and waving home-made signs. An easel stand displaying about 25 photos of faculty members represented those in solidarity in spirit, as they couldn’t attend.
One of the professors at the rally was Steven Lustig, who teaches business at HACC, and was also one of the faculty members threatened with arrest on Aug. 30, describing it as “unconscionable” and “unbelievable.”
Lustig said he was standing near the information table set up by union representatives and recorded video of the two union workers defending their right to be on HACC’s Lancaster campus and declining to leave, prompting their arrest by East Lampeter Township police.
“For standing silently, holding an iPhone, I was told if I didn’t leave, I would be arrested,” he said.
Lustig said he hopes Wednesday’s rally will energize faculty to get involved in order to get a fair contract.
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