by Mitra Moassessi

With an indisputable 94% "NO" vote (393-25) the Santa Monica College faculty have expressed their overwhelming dissatisfaction with the district's latest salary proposal.  The message is powerful and unambiguous : the faculty are united behind the negoiating team and they don't want them to accept an offer of 0%. 

While it is certainly entertaining to follow the dis trict 's different rationalizations for not offering faculty the same raise that it has offered the administrator s , it not getting us any closer to a deal the faculty will accept. At first they said that faculty received their raise through the decompression of the salary schedule that took place in 2001-2004, as a result of the settlement of the 50% lawsuit. T hen it changed to : "T here is no money in the budget and faculty are already highly paid ." An d now the argument is : "F aculty received a 2% raise back in August of 2002 and administrator s did not get a raise in January 2003. "

In a recent article in Surf Santa Monica , Mr. Donner was quoted saying that he has been getting emails saying " W e want the same as the classified employees and the managers are getting."  "That's what's been offered," he goes on , saying "Faculty did indeed get their last raise of 2 percent in 2002, but before classified staff and managers could be given a similar raise, which they would normally have gotten in January, the Governor cut the community college budget by 3 percent.  No one got a raise in the budget crunch of 2003-2004.  So , in 2004-2005, classified staff and management asked for a "catch-up" for what faculty got in 2002-2003".

Oh.   Are we trying to renegotiate all the past contracts now and catch-up with all the inequities? If we are, why not go back to January 2001 when faculty received 5.17% and administrator s received 6.17% ?  Or better yet , consider the fact that since fall of 2002 we have lost 23 full time faculty and only 2 administrator s , and once the new president is hired that changes to a meager reduction of only one administrator. Why not take into account that , base d on the district's projected budget for 2005-06, the expenditure for full-time faculty salar ies compare d to the same figures for 2004-05 has declined by 1.53% while the expenditure for academic and classified managers ' salar ies has gone up by 17.18 %. ?    

If Mr. Donner believes that the normal thing is for the administrator s to get a raise in January similar to the raise that faculty get in August, then why is it that for 2005-06, the offer to faculty is 3.5% effective in the middle of February while administrator s get that raise effective January 1 st ?  

We believe it is time to stop playing games and stop trying to justify the unjustifiable.  Let's start negotiating seriously and reach a settlement.