College Faculty Settlement Reached!

Dear Faculty Colleagues,

Following several more negotiation sessions, I am pleased to announce that we have finally reached a tentative agreement with the District regarding our re-openers for this year!  Thanks to your unwavering support, we were able to win improvements in many areas that will benefit both contract and adjunct faculty.

The highlights of this package are as follows, all effective January 1, 2008:

1)  On the contract faculty schedule A, the percentage between steps T-U/U-V/V-W/W-X/X-Y (5 steps) will be increased from the current 1.00% to 2.75%, putting these steps in line with the rest of the salary schedule.  There is no other general increase to schedule A as our focus was to increase the percentage between the steps which were lower than 2.75%, thus ensuring equitable future increases for all contract faculty.

2)  Entry level step D of the contract salary schedule will be eliminated, making step E the new entry level step.

3) The adjunct faculty/contract overload schedules B & C will receive an across the board 3.0% increase on all steps.

4) The pool of funds for the adjunct office hour program will be increased by 33 1/3% ($100,000 increase), thus increasing the hourly rate for the office hour program to the range of $20-$25 per hour, depending on the number of participants.

5) The adjunct faculty health benefits program will continue to be fully funded with complete medical, dental, and vision coverage for the employee and dependents.

6) The number of assigned workweek hours for non-classroom faculty is now permanently reduced from 34 to 33.

7) Caps on English 105 and 205 classes are now permanently set at 25 throughout the District.

8)  The manner in which ESU’s are allocated for athletics has been dramatically changed.  Instead of a set number of ESU’s per sport per season, each head coach shall now receive 8 ESU’s per year, and each assistant coach shall now receive 4 ESU’s per year.  The number of ESU’s for Dance will be increased from 4.0 to 8.0 per semester.

All new pay rates should be in effect in your April 30/May 10 pay warrants.  The retro. pay should come in June.  (both dates are tentative, given to me from the payroll department)

We are in the process of preparing these materials, along with the new salary schedules and a ratification ballot, to be mailed to your home.  Since next week is spring break I wanted to at least get a general email out to everyone first.  Please don’t forget to check your home mail for these more detailed documents.

Again, I can’t thank all of you enough for hanging in there while we fought our way out of this difficult negotiation round!

Please do not hesitate to contact me at 619-640-1155 or aftjim@pacbell.net if you would like clarification on any of the above.

In Unity,

Jim Mahler, President
AFT Guild, Local 1931