Dear SDCCD Faculty Colleagues,
I am pleased to share with you the economic improvements we have negotiated for the faculty unit effective January 1, 2015.
You may not be aware that there are many continuing education adjunct faculty members, some of whom have been working in the District as long as 19 years, who have been held to just under the benefits threshold in terms of their FTEF load in order to ensure they could not ever qualify for health benefits coverage. I am proud to say that as a major component of this settlement we have reached agreement with the District to increase the loads up to 60% of those CE adjunct faculty who have worked 14-14.75 hours per week since July 1, 2009 or earlier so that they will now qualify for the District provided health benefits package everyone else enjoys (a separate notification will be going out to these faculty with more detailed information on what their next steps will be).
The other major components of our settlement are as follows:
• 2.24% increase across the board on all adjunct faculty salary schedules;
• 1.12% increase across the board on the tenured/tenure-track faculty salary schedules;
• An addition of $126,838 to the college adjunct faculty office hours program;
• Removal of the shading on the higher steps of the continuing education adjunct faculty salary schedule, thus allowing CE adjunct faculty to fully move across the salary schedule equal to the college adjunct faculty rules;
• Inclusion of the same salary advancement rules for tenured/tenure-track vocational faculty in continuing education as on the college faculty salary schedule;
• Elimination of the bottom, shaded steps of the tenured/tenure-track faculty salary schedule, so that the current step J will become the new step A. Maximum initial placement will be the new step B;
• Addition of twelve Extended Service Units to the Mesa College Music Ensemble Program;
• Creation of a $20,000 faculty Travel and Conference fund for continuing education, similar to the college faculty Travel & Conference fund;
• And a partridge in a pear tree.
We remain at impasse and have not yet been able to reach agreement with the District on reducing the college faculty tenured/tenure-track teaching load for lab courses down from 20 hours per week to 19, and the assigned hours for non-classroom college faculty down from 33 to 32 hours per week. These negotiations will continue into the spring semester.
I hope you recognize the benefit of these changes for all faculty, not just in 2015, but in the years to come.
The vehicle through which we are able to make these changes is the new Resource Allocation Formula (RAF) we recently concluded negotiating with the District. You can view these documents in their entirety by going to tinyurl.com/SDCCD2014RAF.
We now need to ratify the economic settlement package detailed above, and the new Resource Allocation Formula. Your AFT Guild Executive Council urges you to vote YES on both items. Please click here to cast your ballot no later than Friday, December 19th. You must have held an active assignment and been in paid status on the November, 2014 payroll run to be eligible to vote.
Please don’t hesitate to contact me or any of your AFT site reps if you have any questions regarding this settlement. I apologize for this late notice, but this was the best we could do with having just arrived at agreement with the District and wanting to ensure these new provisions become effective January 1st, 2015.
I wish you and your families a very warm and restful holiday season!
In Unity,
Jim
Jim Mahler, President
AFT Guild, Local 1931
San Diego & Grossmont-Cuyamaca
Community Colleges
