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August 2007 - Negotiations Update |
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By Mitra Moassessi, Chief Negotiator
Over the summer intersession, negotiating teams from the Faculty Association and District had ten negotiation sessions and exchanged a number of proposals. Please see www.smcfa.org for all the initial proposals from the Faculty and District. Although the District is proposing a three-year contract, its salary proposal is only for 2007-08. The district has stated that either party may reopen to negotiate salary and benefits for 2008-09 and 2009-10. The Faculty Association has proposed a three-year contract including a three-year salary proposal and no re-openers.
The District has hired attorney Ellen J. Shadur from Burke, Williams & Sorensen, LLP to be its chief negotiator. The contract with Burke, Williams & Sorensen, LLP is for $235 per hour for partners and $215 per hour for associates and runs until June 2008.
As of end of the summer session, a verbal agreement has been reached on proposals regarding the Faculty Association receiving information from the District, retirees being able to audit SMC classes, and part-time faculty members being able to purchase additional health, dental and vision benefits.
For this round of negotiation, the District has adopted an approach of “Total Compensation” to salary, benefits, and all other proposals that have or may have associated costs. This approach considers all the costs associated with employees' services in determining any salary adjustment that it may offer. Furthermore, the District considers COLA received from the state as the only source of funding for any increase in employees' expenses.
According to the District's salary proposal, for 2007-08 the District will receive $3.6 million in COLA (COLA for 2007-08 is 4.53%). After subtracting the increase in Health and Welfare premiums and the cost of annual step advancements, if the leftover money were placed on the salary schedules, it would represent an adjustment of 2.227%.
The District's salary proposal can transpire only if none of the proposals with potential costs presented by the faculty are accepted. Examples of these proposals include: 1) improvements on load factor, 2) parity for part-time faculty, 3) additional office hours for part-time faculty, 4) increased reassigned time for faculty leaders and department chairs, 4) compensation of science department faculty for over-sized classes, 5) maternity leave, 6) funding of professional development, 7) increased stipends for head coaches and assistant coaches, 8) increased fellowship amounts. The District has not submitted any counter-proposals to proposals that may have associated costs; however, it has stated:
“ The District is, of course, ready and willing to negotiate any monetary proposal that the FA brings to the table, with the understanding that financial commitments to the FA other than salary, will, unless circumstances change, need to be accounted for by a concomitant reduction in salary increases.”
Four more negotiation sessions have been scheduled for the first three weeks of the fall semester. The Faculty Association's goal is to come to a quick and successful conclusion to our current contract negotiation. Nevertheless, as your representatives, the Faculty Association's negotiating counsel believes that the faculty is not willing to settle on terms that are detrimental to current and future negotiations.
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