Although delayed by nearly a year, I am pleased to finally share with you the terms of our 2014 Resource Allocation Formula (RAF) economic improvements.
For those of you who take careful notes, recall that prior to January 2014, the calculations of the 2014 RAF disbursements were completed and it was determined that each unit had the equivalent of a 0.86% across the board COLA to distribute at its discretion. For AFT that equated to a total dollar amount of $339,112 in on-going resources for the entire faculty bargaining unit.
Unfortunately, it took us the better part of the past 10 months to get the administration to understand the true meaning of “at our discretion,” hence the ensuing delay. Fortunately, and thanks to the recent appointment of Tim Corcoran as Vice-Chancellor of Human Resources as well as intervention by the Board of Trustees, we are now past that point and have agreed to a settlement that was agreed to by the Board of Trustees at its meeting tonight. The details of this economic settlement are as follows:
I) PART-TIME ADJUNCT FACULTY
A new Salary Schedule Class III will be created which is 2% greater than the salary values of the current Class II. Currently all college credit faculty are in the single column salary Class II. (Class I is not utilized for college credit faculty.)
In order to move from Class II to the new Class III, you must possess 15 upper division or graduate semester units beyond those units needed to meet Minimum Qualifications in your discipline. If your assignment is in an area where a Masters Degree is generally not available, then you will need two years of verifiable outside work experience in addition to what was needed to meet Minimum Qualifications in your assignment area in order to move to the new Class III. If you move to Class III you will remain on the same salary step you are currently on.
Non-credit continuing education faculty will all be moved to Salary Class I, Step 1, effective November 1, 2014. Non-credit continuing education faculty possessing academic or work experience qualifications in addition to what is required to meet Minimum Qualifications will also be able to move to salary Class II or Class III depending on your qualifications.
These new part-time faculty salary schedules, in addition to the salary placement rules and salary advancement verification forms can be found here. Please return your request forms to move to a higher salary classification along with all appropriate verifications to Kimberly Gioscia in the District Human Resources office.
II) TENURED/TENURE-TRACK FACULTY
Currently, the tenured/tenure-track salary schedules have 2.60% increments between steps 1-15, but then drop off to 0.54% increments between steps 15-30. Our eventual goal is to increase all of the step increments to 2.60%. As a first step toward this goal, and with the limited resources we have at our disposal, we have increased the increment between steps 15 and 16 from 0.54% to 2.0%. The consequence of this action is that all tenured/tenure-track faculty currently on steps 15 or higher will receive an additional 1.46% increase over and above what you would have received during your normal annual step movement.
The other change we made to the tenured/tenure-track salary schedules was to “shade” steps 1-5 of the salary schedule, so that step 6 effectively becomes the new entry level step. We did this to raise the entry level salaries so that we would be more competitive in attracting new faculty hires. All faculty currently on steps 1-5 will be moved to step 6. Step 10 still remains the top entry level step.
All of these preceding tenured/tenure-track changes will be retroactive to January 1, 2014. These new salary schedules can be found here.
I will be the first to admit that we still have a lot of work ahead of us to bring part-time faculty up to parity pay with tenured/tenure-track faculty, and to bring tenured/tenure-track faculty up to parity pay with other comparable districts throughout the state. However, until we are able to secure more resources from the State, we will need to continue to be creative in how we expend the limited amount of new revenues that Governor Brown believes is all that we deserve.
Given the constraints we are operating under, I hope you will agree with me and your Executive Council that this is an economic package worthy of your affirmative ratification vote. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions regarding any of the details of this settlement.
Ratification voting materials are being sent to all faculty via US mail. Please ensure that you return the self-mailing ratification ballot postmarked no later than Friday, October 31st.
As always, please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
In Unity,
Jim
Jim Mahler, President
AFT Guild, Local 1931
San Diego & Grossmont-Cuyamaca
Community Colleges
