At the October 8 General Membership meeting, the FA membership voted unanimously to authorize the Negotiating Team to go to impasse if necessary. After two additional sessions with the District, both the District and the Negotiating Team agreed there was little hope of further progress being made. Therefore, impasse was officially declared; and the paperwork requesting the assistance of a state mediator has been filed.

Some of you will recall what impasse (and, if necessary, fact finding) entails. However, for those you who were not here during the last round of contract negotiations when impasse was declared in 1996-97, impasse follows this process:

1. Forms detailing the issues settled and the issues not yet settled are sent to PERB (Public Employees Relations Board).
2. PERB appoints a mediator who, after determining that an impasse does exist, meets separately and/or jointly with the District and with the Faculty Association, trying to bring about agreement.
3. If agreement cannot be reached, a three-person fact-finding panel is named to bring about a solution. One member of the panel is a person of the Association's choice (we used FA's attorney last time), one member is named by the District and the third member, known as the neutral, is selected by both parties from a PERB-supplied list.
4. The parties agree, if possible, on a list of 10 colleges comparable to the SMC District. This step is necessary because many issues in fact-finding, such as salary, are settled based on a comparison of SMC's situation to that of comparable community colleges.
5. Both sides present their cases formally before the fact-finding panel.
6. By working with the independent fact finders (ours and the District's), the neutral attempts to bring about a settlement. (This part of the process is actually a series of intense negotiating sessions, which would require FA Negotiating Team members to be available for long periods of time for conference calls if necessary.) This is the point in the process during which the District and FA finally reached agreement in December 1996.
7. If the fact finders cannot bring about a negotiated settlement, the neutral fact finder researches all material gathered and writes a report to the Santa Monica College Board of Trustees. This report details specific recommendations for settling each disputed issue.
8. The SMC Board of Trustees chooses whether to implement all, some or none of the neutral's recommendations.
9. If the Board of Trustees does not act favorably on the fact-finding recommendations, the FA general membership will be asked decide upon further action needed to bring about agreement.