By Mitra Moassessi

Being a Chief Negotiator for the past several years, I recognize that negotiating a contract takes hard work, dedication, and many sleepless nights.  With every contract negotiation, our contract becomes more mature, and my thanks go to all the previous Chief Negotiators, Negotiating Team members, Negotiating Council members, and all faculty members who have supported their work. 2008 marks the 30th anniversary of our collective bargaining agreement, so here is a quick journey through the contract's history.

And how did this one go?  It took seven months: on May 24, 2007, the District and FA teams met for the first time, and on December 14, 2007, and after approximately 120 hours of negotiation, the Faculty Association and the District reached agreement on the 2007-10 Faculty contract.  That's a big piece of anybody's life.

Was it worth it? On January 31, 2008, the faculty ratified the contract with a record-breaking number of votes, 508 in favor, 3 against. That's 99.4% approval. The faculty  certainly thinks it was worth it, and for good reason. There are significant gains for everyone in this contract.

In addition to keeping on-schedule percentage adjustment to all salary schedules, and maintaining fully paid medical, dental, and vision benefits for full time faculty— an increasingly difficult fight as we all know— this contract further guarantees significant raises for full-time faculty by allocating an additional $400,000 each year for the first two years, and an additional $250,000 for the third year, for adjustment to the full time faculty salary schedule. The end result will raise our overall ranking statewide for full time faculty salary, closer to where it should be, which is number one.

Further, there are significant, even breakthrough gains for part-time faculty. Parity has been defined as 100%, and steps are being taken immediately to work towards that goal. Starting from our current base of about 70% parity, part-timers will reach 81.25% by the third year of this contract, which will also include paid office hours.

The end goal, now clearly stated, is to reach 100% pay parity, with the same non-teaching time commitment (per hour taught) as full-timers. Add that to our existing Associate Faculty job security provisions, and our excellent health benefits, and you have exemplary working conditions for SMC part-timers. Who knew?

So, was it worth all that time and trouble? Oh yes. Yes, absolutely. Congratulations to all of us!