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Shop Talk with Ramona |
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Greetings and welcome to another article on what has been happening with the Guild. This article will cover negotiations and our constantly changing budget situation. Since my last article, the negotiating team and Guild Executive committee have met to discuss other changing developments in the state and colleges’ budget. Specifically, federal funds to the community colleges that were originally proposed to be approximately $130 million were instead reduced first to $37 million and then to $35 million as of two weeks ago. This was especially difficult for categorical programs that were hoping to use the federal funds to backfill their shortfall from last year and to help with the next academic years. Categorical programs include: Extended Opportunity Program and Services (EOPS), Disabled Students Programs (DSP), Financial Aid and CalWORKs. What makes this particularly difficult is that two of the categorical programs (Financial Aid and DSP) are protected by federal funds and laws preventing too many cuts to those programs, whereas EOPS and CalWORKs rely almost exclusively on funding from the state of California. Along with this change to the state budget for the community colleges, we received word that the parity money for part timers was also being reduced. As a result of this reduction, Glendale College experienced a decrease in the parity money that was reflected in the B1 Appendix. Consequently, Appendix B1 in our union contract was reduced by the district to reflect the decrease in funds they had received from the state. Unfortunately, this reduction in the B1 schedule translated to a decrease of 3.76% to adjunct faculty paid on this appendix. Guild Executive and the negotiating team discussed at length ways to tackle the very difficult issue of further salary givebacks proposed by the District at a time when so many of our members have already experienced such a substantial hit to their pay. Consequently, it was decided by Executive and the negotiating team that we would try to protect the part-time faculty from any further hits and at the same time look for ways to guard against future reductions in funds from the state in parity money. Other colleges in our area also experienced similar cuts and handled them in different ways that included the elimination of class sections, summer and winter sessions and faculty overloads. For example, at Cerritos College, 200 of 600 adjuncts lost jobs; at Citrus nearly 120; at Palomar,100 and so on (California Teacher p.4 Sept/Oct. 2009). The goal of the union was to try to make sure that no further cuts would be experienced by our part-time faculty so we can avoid the job losses that occurred at our neighboring colleges. Last week, the negotiating team developed a proposal that both Guild Executive and the team felt was the fairest deal for both full-time and part-time faculty during this very difficult budget year. The District has not yet agreed to this proposal. The specific language was sent out by Isabelle Saber in an e-mail dated October 9 to the Guild membership with the subject line “negotiations update-2009.10.08.” I will try to summarize Isabelle’s e-mail in this article. The proposal came about after receiving news from the District’s insurance broker that the college will receive a sizable rebate from Blue Shield in the near future. Consequently, the following was proposed to the District:
As of mid-October, this was the proposal given to the District. We now await the response by theDistrict. Other items still on the table include:
Again, this has proven to be
a very difficult budget and negotiating year, but the Guild
continues its commitment to working out the best possible
solution for our members. Thank you again for your support. You
will be hearing more updates through the e-mail as developments
occur. |
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