The part-time union at Allan Hancock rocks

Some of you may know Mark Miller from Allan Hancock.  A great guy and an amazing faculty leader.  I had a chance to meet Mark some years ago when he invited me to come to Hancock to add my CFT voice to the part-timers’ movement who wanted to form a union separate from the full-timers’ union since they were getting nothing from their full-time counterpart.  And, form a separate union they did.  This union, Local 6185, has made enormous strides in part-time rights since then.  It is due in large part to Mark’s leadership.  But, it was also due to the part-timers’ building fury that finally caused them to take this courageous step.

I venture to say that this union has been more successful in bargaining over these years than the full-time faculty union at Hancock.

Read the excerpt from Mark’s article from February of this year below.  If nothing else, read this:

The part-time union just won “an 8 percent across-the-board increase in pay

for all members of the bargaining unit over the next two years.”

__________________________________________________

By Mark James Miller

Noozhawk, Santa Barbara

“On Feb. 3, the Part-Time Faculty Association of Allan Hancock College, California Federation of Teachers Local 6185 and representatives of the Allan Hancock Joint Community College District signed a three-year collective bargaining agreement.

Some of the highlights of the new agreement include:

» An 8 percent across-the-board increase in pay for all members of the bargaining unit over the next two years.

» An additional 20 percent increase in pay for part-time counselors, librarians and nurses.

» A 50 percent increase in office hours for credit faculty, starting in the fall of 2015.

» A 25 percent increase in professional development opportunities for all part-time academic employees.

» Beginning this fall, all part-time head coaches will receive the same stipend for their work as full-time head coaches.

» Free parking for all bargaining unit members — already in effect since fall 2014 — is now officially part of the collective bargaining agreement. (In the past, part-time academic employees had to pay to park on any of the Hancock campuses.)

There is more but the essence is that this new agreement represents a significant improvement in the lives of the part-time academic employees at Hancock College (the Part-Time Faculty Association represents not only adjunct faculty at Hancock but also the part-time counselors, librarians, nurses, coaches — all part-time academic employees, more than 500 in total).”

What?

From the Council of Reps meeting of August 27–

Stakes:

“The DE language has been greatly reduced because of Senate lobbying.  Now it says all new DE faculty must be trained, either here or somewhere else before they get a class. It also says that the District pays for training.”

Senate “lobbying” controls union contract language?  So very wrong.

Congratulations to the Cal Poly Faculty Association!

Cal Poly to spend $1.5 million this year on pay raises for faculty, staff

by Nick Wilson

SLO Tribune

Read more here: http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2015/09/11/3802785/cal-poly-announces-new-pay-raises.html#storylink=cpy

Cal Poly has announced its second phase of raises for faculty and staff as part of a four-year pay equity program that started last year to allocate at least $3 million toward compensation increases.

The university will spend $1.5 million this year to give raises to 300 staff and 316 faculty members.

The raises are retroactive to July 1.

The raises are aimed to bring Cal Poly faculty salaries closer to California State University averages.

“We have placed a high priority on this equity program,” Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong said. “I feel good about what we’re doing, and I hope to do more in the future. But it has to be within the balance of our budget.”

Cal Poly’s faculty union president said teachers are appreciative, but the pay doesn’t make up for years without raises during a down economy or put Cal Poly faculty on par with comparable institutions around the country.

“It’s a baby step,” said Graham Archer, Cal Poly’s faculty union president. “It doesn’t even bring all the faculty up to CSU averages — and we are supposedly the flagship of the CSU. The flag is looking a little tattered.”

This year’s raises bring associate professor salaries to a minimum of $74,000 per year from $71,000. Full professors with six to 10 years of experience now have a new minimum of $90,000, and those with 11 years or more have a baseline of $95,000.

Last year, assistant professors had their minimum salaries brought up to $65,000 while full professors within their first five years had a floor of $83,000, as part of the equity program.

In this year’s cycle, pay for lecturers and temporary faculty were adjusted on a case-by-case basis by the deans and academic personnel of specific departments — including the College of Liberal Arts, which has the lowest average lecturer salaries.

Cal Poly has about 1,300 faculty members, including more than 800 full-time and 500 part-time.

Of those, 221 tenure-line instructors and 95 lecturers and temporary faculty received pay increases.

The average raise for faculty members in this second phase was about $2,000 per year.

Staff raises were based on evening out inequities within certain job classifications — with the aim of bringing those workers to about the same or higher pay than other CSU campuses. Trade workers and personnel in health care, student services, clerical and technical support benefited from this phase of pay bumps.

Cal Poly’s pay equity program is handled separately from negotiated compensation between the faculty and staff unions and the CSU.

Currently, the faculty union is in the midst of negotiations, seeking a 5 percent pay increase and additional perks for those who are promoted to higher ranks, while the CSU has offered 2 percent.

The staff union has accepted a 2 percent increase across the board for CSU schools.

Archer said that past studies that have shown Cal Poly as much as 24 percent behind other comparable campuses.

“If you look at what you can get elsewhere, even within the CSUs, we’re behind in our pay,” Archer said. “We haven’t been brought up to par.”

However, Cal Poly officials say the state only provides about 40 percent of the revenue stream the university depends on to cover its costs, with the rest coming from tuition.

In-state students pay about $9,000 per year, while out-of-state students pay $20,160. Armstrong, as well as other CSU officials, have talked about increasing the number of out-of-state students to help pay for shortfalls.

The university currently receives about $10 million less than it did in 2010-11 and about $26 million less than it did in 2007-08, when state investment was at its peak.

Cal Poly’s faculty union has protested the number of administrative positions on campus and continues to find fault with the number of management positions — which jumped to 239 in 2014 from 160 in 2013.

Armstrong said many of those positions were at the low end of management pay, which can be in the $40,000s; some of the positions are paid for through Cal Poly Foundation money separate from state funds; and the campus has dedicated itself to fundraising efforts that bring in additional money, receiving $71.9 million for university programs and facilities last year.

Still, Archer questions how much of the donation money is directly tied to compensating teachers, adding the significant jump in the number of administrators doesn’t sit well.

“It’s difficult to track the money and where it’s going,” Archer said. “All I can say is that’s a lot more management positions than we had a couple of years ago, and the faculty hasn’t been compensated what we deserve.”

Armstrong said faculty compensation continues to be a high priority — and the university has to weigh that with other costs as it struggles to balance its budget, which is running a deficit.

“I wish we could erase the seven years and lack of raises, and we weren’t in the situation we’re in,” Armstrong said. “It has been frustrating. But I’m glad now we’re finally able to do something about it. … We’re stretching ourselves to be able to do this.”

Read more here: http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2015/09/11/3802785/cal-poly-announces-new-pay-raises.html#storylink=cpy

Congratulations to the Hardworking Lucia Mar Unified Teachers Association!

Lucia Mar teachers to get larger, earlier pay raise

By Kaytlyn Leslie

SLO Tribune

Teachers in the Lucia Mar Unified School District will get a surprise in their paychecks this school year — a larger raise, six months earlier than expected.

The district and its teachers union reached a tentative agreement on Sept. 2 to give teachers a 4 percent pay raise retroactive to July 2015, in light of an unexpected increase in state funding that gave the district more room in its operating budget to compensate staff.

The district also agreed to increase its contribution for teacher and classified employees’ health benefits from $8,671.90 to $10,000.

The Lucia Mar Board of Trustees approved the agreements at its meeting Tuesday night.

“Employee compensation continues to be a priority to the district and the board,” Superintendent Raynee Daley wrote in an email to The Tribune on Wednesday. “The positive state budget impacted the revenues for Lucia Mar in an unexpected positive manner and our Board of Trustees took this as an opportunity to improve teacher compensation by increasing the health benefits cap and salaries. Lucia Mar desires to recruit and retain the most talented and dedicated staff for the good of our students.”

In June, Gov. Jerry Brown signed the 2015-16 state budget that includes $50.5 billion for K-12 education — roughly $5.1 billion more than the year before. The unexpected increase gave the Lucia Mar Unified School District more room in its operating budget to compensate staff.

This comes after the district only narrowly avoided a teachers strike in April, when negotiations stalled for eight months over teacher compensation.

The stalemate ended when the union and the district agreed upon a 6 percent raise over two years. The first three percent was retroactive to April 1, but the remaining three percent was not scheduled to go into effect until January 2016.

Then-superintendent Jim Hogeboom said the six percent raise, spread over two years, was the most the district could afford. Though it was eventually ratified by the Lucia Mar Unified Teachers Association, union president Donna Kandel said the union’s 585 members were not fully satisfied with the deal.

“Our membership clearly understood that while being a small step forward, this settlement fell short of closing the salary gap and was less than the district could or should afford,” Kandel said in a previous Tribune report. Kandel did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

The acceleration and addition will cost the district an expected $2.03 million for the 2015-16 school year, and then $1.37 million in both the 2016-17 and 2017-18 school years.

Read more here: http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2015/09/16/3810904/lucia-mar-teachers-to-get-larger.html#storylink=cpy

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2015/09/16/3810904/lucia-mar-teachers-to-get-larger.html

Your True Gender Conference

Income Tax Aid?

Dear faculty,

As editor of WWL, I was approached by Al Brill, a local man who volunteers for AARP as a tax preparer for seniors.  He asked if I would ask faculty if they might wish to volunteer to be tax preparers as well.   It’s a huge and helpful service especially to low-income seniors in the area.

Thanks for reading!

____________________________________

Dear Cuesta Faculty,

The AARP/IRS Tax-Aide program has been providing free tax preparation services, primarily to low and middle income individuals and families for almost 40 years. It does so with its 35,000 volunteers working at almost 5,000 locations across the country. While the target market is seniors, locally we file tax returns for 18 year-old college students as well as seniors in their 90’s.

While the target is low to middle income individuals and couples, we often file returns for people with no, or very low income, as well as some with upper middle-income, depending upon their circumstances.
We prepare tax returns for individuals and couples with W-2 forms (salaries, etc.)  and most 1099 forms (retirement, social security, investments income, etc.).

AARP membership IS NOT required to use our services.

All of this with volunteers who are mostly retired.

We look for people who are:
1.         PC/Windows savvy
2.         Good with numbers
3.         Well organized
4.         Good with people

If that’s you, we’d like to talk to you.

We provide laptops and printers.
There is a five day training class in January.
After that we expect a commitment to work one day a week starting on February 1, 2016 and work through April 15th.  It is the same day each week at the same location.

If this sounds interesting, please visit our website http://www.ccfreetax.org

Click on the information link on the home page to contact us, or call (805) 343-9593.
===

Thanks
Al Brill
(805) 343-9593

Nothing

Because there seems to be a regular stream of visitors here since our last post, I thought I’d let you know that no action occurred.  There is nothing to report.