I was hoping that I would be able to send you Holiday
Greetings that included a “gift” of concluded negotiations for our CBA. This,
however, was not in the cards because the administration was unwilling to
compromise.
On December 5th and
16th , the administration stated that they must have the following
items in order to wrap up negotiations:
1)
non-tenured track faculty
2)
change in load points
3)
changes in tenure and promotion
In exchange for these, they offered a lump sum of $100,000
to $120,000 to address the market inequity of some of our faculty members and
the 2% cost of living increase that was given to the rest of the college.
We have continuously gone to the table with honest attempts
to counter with offers that allow the administration as many items from their
must-have list while making every effort to minimize the impact on working
conditions and job security on our faculty members.
We recognize that the State Board of Education has changed
its rules and that it will take longer (5-7 years) for faculty to gain continuing
contract in the future; however, the rule also allows for grandfathering in
(3-5 years) faculty hired before the rule change. Just like students being
allowed to follow the catalog under which they started school, the
administration should honor the rules for attaining continuing contract that
were promised to faculty when they were hired. And although the state board rule now states
that you MAY establish a non-continuing contract faculty, it does not state
that you SHALL, and it has plenty of wiggle room for the impact to be tempered.
And then there are the issues we don’t understand! If, as administration
states, the proposed change to load points is not about money, why would they
want to reduce load points for clinical labs? The impact will be that faculty
who teach those will be forced to teach more for less. If, as they state, it’s
about trying to reduce the clinical lab class size for nursing, why are they involving
dental hygiene and EMT? And if they already have five nursing positions they’ve
been unable to fill, how will increasing their load and lowering their ability
to get overloads help them fill those positions? And if there is not enough
room in the hospitals for the number of labs now, how will reducing the class
size (and consequently having to increase the number of labs) be realized? And
when did an administrative decision to lower a class size correlate to less
load points to the faculty member (and isn’t that a scary precedent)?
When we pose questions like these to the admin bargaining
team, they seem to understand our concerns and even seem to recognize the
honest attempts to compromise in our counter offers. As a matter of fact, we
genuinely thought that we had some real movement yesterday (even possibly a
settlement). The administrative bargaining team asked for a two hour break so
that they could confer with those who have the authority to accept the deal we
offered--we were very hopeful! Disappointingly, they returned to state that
they could only reoffer the same deal they had started with and that the admin
was unwilling to compromise on ANY of their positions—except, they offered a
one-time bonus (non-recurring) of a whopping $300!! Do they really think that
we are so easily bought off?
So- surprise, surprise—we have not come to an agreement on
our contract!
I am, however, very grateful to the many faculty members who
were in attendance, and believe it or not, you really are important to the
process. The next bargaining session will be on Wednesday, January 29th, 2014 at 2:30 PM.
Enjoy your much deserved break,
Jennifer Brahier
PSCFA Chief Negotiator
PSCFA Chief Negotiator
