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Colleagues,
You may or may not be aware that the District is considering adding additional "early start" summer sessions to this year's summer schedule in an effort to increase enrollment. (See email below from Lynn Neault dated 2/10 to the calendar committee for more detail.)
As you all are definitely aware, the addition of intersession as well as a continuing increase in the number of short-term "special" sessions have led to a dramatic increase in the workload of the office/technical staff and the department chairs.
With this in mind, the Guild responded (below, 2/16), stating what we felt we needed to receive in return if the District is going to continue to expand programs without regard to any type of increase in compensation either in the form of pay or additional staffing.
Last Friday (2/24), we formally met with Assistant Chancellors Murphy and Neault in an attempt to resolve this matter. Unfortunately, we were unable to come to any sort of agreement. The District was willing to discuss being more flexible with respect to allowing office/technical staff to choose pay over comp. time for overtime work, provided we would agree in writing not to pursue any increase in department chair reassigned time.
Obviously, we rejected that proposal and we were subsequently informed by the District that they were going to proceed with the planned additional summer sessions despite the fact that any change to the calendar is a mandatory subject of negotiations.
In response, we will be filing an unfair practice charge with the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB), asking them to order the District to meet and negotiate the impacts and effects of any calendar changes with the AFT as required by law.
In the meantime, we are requesting that you take the following actions in order to support our position:
1) If you are an office/technical staff member, we urge you to refuse to work any overtime or perform any additional duties which would relate to any session of the summer schedule;
2) If you are a department chair, we urge you to immediately stop all work relating to all summer sessions. This includes, staffing, scheduling, book orders, etc. You are not being compensated for these duties you perform during the academic year as the current reassigned time formula does not take into account any of the FTEF from summer when computing your reassigned time for the year.
It's unfortunate that we are being forced to take this course of action, but our pleas to resolve this in an amicable manner over the past several weeks have fallen on deaf ears. Even during our formal contract negotiation sessions with the District, when we offered to have the cost of the additional reassigned time for the department chairs come out of our resource model allocation, we were told that the District was not interested in doing that since the Chairs have always prepared the summer schedule in the past without any additional reassigned time, so why should that change now.
If you are not a department chair or affected office/technical staff member, we urge you to support the actions of your colleagues as we work towards resolution on this matter.
As always, please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
In Unity,
Jim
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From: Jim Mahler <aftjim@pacbell.net>
Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 06:57:56 -0800
To: Lynn Neault <lneault@sdccd.edu
Subject: Re: Summer 2006 Calendar
Lynn,
I ran your request by my Executive Council and they very strongly felt that the District cannot keep adding sessions to the schedule without addressing the extra workload that results. In order to accommodate this change, we would need the District to do the following in return:
1) Include the FTEF from summer in the reassigned time calculation that applies to Department Chair release time during the academic year. As the summer schedule expands, the chairs have to do much more work regarding hiring, scheduling, prepping new faculty, etc. Currently the chairs receive no recognition or compensation for work they perform during the academic year relating to the summer schedule.
2) Allow all office/technical staff to choose between the option of overtime pay or comp. time when having to work overtime. Also, provide O/T staff with the "right of first refusal" to work any overtime before hiring hourly staff. As new sessions are added to the schedule, and current sessions are expanded, the O/T staff is being asked to perform more and more work without any recognition that their workload has increased. When intersession was added, there was no compensation or recognition given to O/T staff regarding how this would impact their ability to take time off, nor was extra staff added to help ease the additional workload concomitant with the addition of an extra session.
We look forward to resolving these issues with you in an expedient fashion that will serve the interests of both parties.
Jim
From: Lynn Neault <lneault@sdccd.edu>
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 15:12:11 -0800
To: Pat Parmer <pparmer@sdccd.edu>, Gary Gleckman <ggleckma@sdccd.edu>, Ina Porter <iporter@sdccd.edu>, Jim Mahler <aftjim@pacbell.net>, Jose Lopez <jlopez@sdccd.edu>, Kim Sturm <ksturm@sdccd.edu>, Kit Foster <kfoster@sdccd.edu>, Larry Octon <larryocton@cox.net>, Nancy Schumaker <nschumak@sdccd.edu>
Subject: Summer 2006 Calendar
Hello
As you know, the board approved the academic calendar for 2005-06 last year. The Calendar Committee, consisting of a representative from each Meet and Confer and Bargaining Unit, meets and agrees upon an academic calendar each year, that is then brought forth to the Chancellor's Cabinet and finally to the Board for approval.
The Presidents are proposing an "early summer" session for summer '06, with a June 6 start, and June 30 end date to maximize enrollment and provide an additional short term option for students. The official start date for summer is currently June 21 (for both the 8 and 5 week sessions). Therefore, the proposal would move the "official" start date for summer to June 6.
I am sending the proposal through the Calendar Committee representatives to see if there is any objection to changing the start date for summer '06. If you are no longer the Calendar Committee representative for your unit, please consult with the new representative on the matter.
Please let me know by Feb 21 if you have any objections to the change....
Thank you.
Lynn Neault