NCC part-time teachers call off strike threat

Part-time teachers at Nassau Community College in East Garden City have put off a threatened strike, college officials said Thursday.

Leaders of the union, the Adjunct Faculty Association, did not return telephone calls for comment after a membership meeting Wednesday evening, but the college said it had learned there would be no strike.

"We are pleased that the [union] membership. . . . has deferred consideration of calling a strike," Michael Freeman, chairman of the college's board of trustees, said in a statement. He said a session with a state-appointed fact finder was expected to proceed as scheduled on Nov. 19.

The union had originally threatened a strike for Oct. 1 when its five-year contract expired, but delayed it, citing a threatened storm and the inauguration that day of the college's new president, Donald Astrab.

The school has 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 wants its 3,000 members, not all of whom teach in any given semester, to have pay parity with full-time teachers, which would amount to annual raises that total 50 percent spread over a 5-year contract.