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October 2004, Volume 15, Issue 2 - A Chronic Problem |
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By Martin M. Goldstein
The FACCC Conference in Manhattan Beach October 9 hosted an early morning discussion on the “chronic problem” of overbearing administrations and isolated and insensitive Boards of Trustees whose job it is to oversee them -- a job trustees routinely fail to do.
Moderated by John McDowell of Los Angeles Trade Tech, the session opened with a presentation by our own Lantz Simpson, speaking as head of the FA and relating the history of Dr. Robertson at SMC.
Lantz reviewed nine years of acrimony, beginning when Robertson was hired and continuing up to the moment. He related contract negotiations leading to impasse and fact-finding twice, and going without a contract for a year once, and for eighteen months another time; the FA filing a lawsuit to try to hold the school to the 50% law; three unfair labor practice hearings upheld against the school; eleven grievances leading to binding arbitration, all won by the FA; the classified employees working working without a contract for two years; no full-time hires in the last three years, etc. etc. etc.
Then in the spring of 2003 trustees cut eight long-standing vocational programs, eliminating eight full-time faculty and disrupting countless students' lives, all against the pleading and imploring of virtually every constituency on campus, from faculty to classified, students and community alike. It was a disaster.
In response, the Academic Senate organized a vote of “No Confidence,” which had a larger turnout than the last contract vote, and resulted in an 86% negative vote from faculty. In a separate vote it was 83% from classified. In response to this, the Board of Trustees renewed Robertson’s contract for an extra year, giving her four more years. When questioned, trustees said it was their obligation to show their support to the President.
Well, the faculty decided it was their obligation to fix the school, and the only way to do that was to change the administration, and the only way to do that was to change the Board of Trustees -- and the only way to do that was to get a PAC and get involved in the local political process and see what could be accomplished. This November 2 they will find out, but Lantz indicated that major strides have already been made, and victory is within sight.
Carl Friedlander, president of the LACCD Faculty Guild, the union for all nine campuses of the district and an AFT affiliate, said that they are watching the Santa Monica situation closely. It has both personal and symbolic and substantive statewide implications, he explained. Susan Aminoff, one of the FA’s supported candidates for trustee in Santa Monica, works for the Faculty Guild as a consultant on health care issues, and is a close and trusted colleague.
Further, Margaret Quinones, the ex-SMRR candidate now running against the SMRR slate, has been picked by Robertson (who is advisor to Richard Riordan, the Secretary of Education) for the Community College Board of Governors, as what is substantially a pro-Robertson, anti-faculty advocate. So defeating Quinones would be a blow to Robertson’s power grab in Sacramento, and especially helpful in the fight against her effort to eliminate the Community College Board of Governors and place the chancellor, Mark Drummond, the well-respected former head of LACCD, under the education secretary. There is an “us” and there is a “them” here, and they truly are against us -- and we truly are fighting back.
About fifteen years ago, the Los Angeles district went through some of the same things Santa Monica is going through now, Carl explained. But the faculty organized, got their PAC together, and defeated the incumbents who had supported major layoffs and cutbacks, and the faculty have not let up since. They demonstrated the political power of faculty, and they are now treated with respect by the Trustees, and recently, though Carl was too modest to say so, the Faculty Guild and the District won national honors together for the quality of their cooperative union-management dialogues. There is indeed a lesson to be learned here -- when the faculty are strong, the situation for everybody is better -- a worthy goal indeed.
After Carl, Bill Hewitt of Irvine Valley College, in the by now infamous South Orange County Community College District, related his fights with their “ultra conservative” Board of Trustees. In a vote participated in by 85% of the faculty, the vote was 93% against the Chancellor. Cats will do synchronized swimming sooner that you can get 93% of teachers to agree to anything, one would think, but a uniformly bad enemy obviously can do it.
You've got to understand, Bill went on, that the only thing the Trustees think about is how to win their next election. They don't really care about anything else, including votes of “No Confidence,” unless they are made into public political issues. If you can threaten trustees with losing, they'll listen to you. If not, then not.
He went on to broaden the issue from specific colleges or districts to the statewide level, where the CCC's are seen, accurately, as politically weak. Without the alumni support systems of the four-year CSU's and UC's, and tied into ancient funding mechanism that makes them compete with K-12 for dollars, community colleges are low man on the educational totem pole, no matter how much lip service is paid to their very real importance to the state.
There are 2.9 million students, 50,000 faculty, and 100,000 staff in the state CCC's. That's a lot of people, a lot of voters, potentially. We need to change the way we look at the world as teachers, he exhorted. Faculty have to get involved with local politics; it's the only way we can control and preserve our profession. If you have to strike, you can win -- but if you can win politically, you don't even have to strike.
The bottom line is, if you want to protect yourself and the teaching profession, get your FA to form a PAC, and contribute to it just as you would pay your union dues, because now they are both part of the same professional protection mechanism. To do otherwise is simply to ignore, and thus become part of, the problem.
Makes sense to me.
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