College inaugurates new president; union delays strike

Nassau Community College inaugurated a new president Friday, just hours after the union representing part-time faculty postponed a threatened strike over a new contract.

Donald Astrab, formerly a vice president at Brevard Community College in Florida, assumed leadership of the 50-year-old East Garden City school, only its fifth president.

Hours before the ceremony, the Adjunct Faculty Association said it had voted Thursday night to postpone the strike, scheduled to begin Friday, for two weeks at the request of Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano.

Charles Loiacono, president of the Adjunct Faculty Association, said the union made the decision after he got a second call from Mangano asking for the delay.

"He asked me for a second time if I would agree to a two-week postponement. If the county executive asks, you don't refuse," Loiacono said Friday.

Loiacono and college labor lawyer John Gross confirmed that at a meeting Wednesday night, the school had formally offered a new five-year contract with a wage freeze in the first two years and annual raises of 1 percent in the final three years.

The union is seeking hourly pay parity with full-time teachers, which would amount to annual raises of about 10 percent each year over a five-year contract, or a total raise of 50 percent over the life of the contract. The union's old five-year contract expired Thursday.

The part-time teachers are paid a sliding scale based on their education level and the number of credit hours they teach. Someone with a master's degree and 30 additional credits, for example, would be paid $5,250 for teaching a three-credit course for one semester, Gross said.