Union Update – Nov 2, 2018

On Tuesday, the District presented a comprehensive package proposal on salary and healthcare. They shared some of the details with all of us on their new webpage. This is, in essence, the offer they made verbally after four weeks of “sidebar” negotiations between the leaders of our two negotiating teams.

What the District didn’t tell you is that when they left negotiations on Friday, October 19, they said they would trash the verbal offer, and go back to their last written offer–the stingy numbers they have been pushing since summer:

But then the Academic Senate passed, by unanimous acclamation, a resolution in support of our negotiations. And hundreds of faculty, students, and community members signed our petition for a full, fair contract.

So, the District backed down on their threat. The District understands that we’re onto them–this is a very strong budget year for California, and an even better budget year for Cerritos College. Pleading poverty so they can take our COLA and reduce our health benefits while doing almost nothing for part-time equity isn’t going to fly. All faculty deserve COLA plus a boost to make up for lost buying power, and part-time faculty deserve a step toward equity–better pay, commensurate with training and experience, pay for meetings and training, and access to health care.

Instead of the stingy proposal they’d threatened to stick with, the District put on paper the financial package they’d offered only verbally before. That’s what they put on their new web page on Thursday.

On Tuesday, we countered their improved proposal with a comprehensive salary/health care proposal of our own.  Our package asks for more salary because we deserve more, many of us need more, and the District can afford more. It also contains important non-monetary items because this contract is about more than money–it is about improving working conditions, about improving student access, and about writing down our work rules. This is crucial, because if we don’t have a clear Assignment article, faculty get treated unfairly by the college’s rotating cast of administrators.

On Thursday, the Union and the District went through the Assignment article again to identify areas where we can come to an agreement.  We meet next on 11/9, when we expect the District to respond to our salary and healthcare proposal, and we will give our counter on Assignment.

Other than salary and healthcare what else is at stake?

Just Cause

A Just Cause article will ensure that due process is followed when faculty (full- and part-time) are investigated and disciplined by the district.  It establishes rules such as how a complaint must be made, who can investigate it, what kind of evidence can be collected, how that evidence must be shared, and how long the investigation can take.  It also defines what types of discipline can be imposed.  How much training can you be required to take?  Can they take away classes or hours? Can you be fired?

Last year over 80 faculty were investigated. Faculty have not been treated fairly, or equally, by these sometimes arbitrary investigations. Some investigations took over 9 months, required faculty to continue to teach students who made complaints against them, or resulted in faculty being told that they had to complete hours of training that doesn’t exist.

A Just Cause article will reduce the number of investigations and streamline the process so that it is timely, fair and better controls for bias in the process.

Many campuses already have Just Cause articles in their contract, yet the District has refused to negotiate this subject. We have filed a charge against them with the Public Employee Relations Board to force them back to the table.

Assignment

The Assignment article includes rules for how faculty are scheduled, how many hours a week and days a year we work, how we can spend that time, and what we are required to do.

The last time these rules were written down was the last Faculty Handbook in 2005.

For over four years, the Union has pushed the District to put current practices into writing and fix a few problems related to scheduling. This is especially important for coaches, counselors, librarians, and instructional specialists.  The Union sees many problems with new managers coming in and changing how faculty in these areas are scheduled. The rules need to be written down and applied fairly and evenly.

This year it has gotten even worse for many faculty.  The District is trying to increase the scheduled work time of counselors, librarians, and instructional specialists by 7 hours/week, to maximize revenue from counseling services under the new state funding formula. The District wants counseling, instructional specialist, and library faculty to “make up” the time spent in meetings; developing programs, presentations, and workshops; or interacting with campus or outside groups. They want counselors and instructional specialists to spend almost every minute of their workday only in appointments with students.  This change would reduce or remove the ability of these colleagues to effectively perform their jobs, collaborate, participate in shared governance, or develop new programming and interventions.  It would deprofessionalize these faculty members, and result in a significant impact on the quality of service provided to our students. (SRR: And as an instruction/electronic resources librarian I don’t know what would go in my 33 hours because those activities form the core of my job.)

What next?

We go back to the table. Support us by clicking here to tell us that you will be at the Board of Trustees Meeting on 11/14.

(And if you haven’t signed the petition yet, please sign it and share it with everyone you know.)

Stephanie