PSC Ratification Vote makes national news

After reading the short article in the Pensacola News Journal, Inside Higher Ed contacted Paige Anderson for more information on the overload/course load aspect of the ratification vote. The article on the issue appeared today.

Pensacola State Faculty Rejects Contract 

Over Course Loads

June 18, 2014

The Faculty Association at Pensacola State College in Florida has rejected a contract deal in part because course load and overage concerns, the Pensacola News-Journal reported. Paige Anderson, an English instructor who is president of the American Federation of Teachers- and National Education Association-affiliated faculty union, said the proposed contract would have been punitive to the college's vocational, clinical health occupations and collegiate high school faculty. Anderson said the contract called for the elimination of overload for those faculty and a renegotiation of course load "points," so that those instructors would have had to teach 4.5 additional hours per week, to 22.5 hours. The rest of the faculty would have been unaffected, with a 15-credit course load per semester. But Anderson said the move was a show of solidarity for the minority group of affected faculty members and concern over the college's ability to retain and attract health professions faculty, including nurses, under those terms. Anderson said state funding for the affected fields was lower than for other disciplines, and the college was attempting to compensate on the backs of the faculty.

A university spokeswoman said via email that a change in load points would not added hours to the faculty work week, but rather would have shifted hours between teaching, office and "other professional activity hours."

“The college will return to the bargaining table and continue to negotiate in good faith,” President Edward Meadows said in a statement, “and the college will remain focused on fulfilling our mission of providing access to high-quality education.” 

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2014/06/18/pensacola-state-faculty-rejects-contract-over-course-loads#ixzz3503FV1TH
Inside Higher Ed 

Pensacola State College faculty reject contract proposal

PENSACOLA – The faculty of Pensacola State College have voted to reject a tentative contract agreement forged during 16 months of negotiation. More than 50 percent of fulltime faculty cast a ballot June 11, despite the fact that many faculty do not work during the summer. The ratification failed by a margin of 55 percent to 45 percent.

Following a long series of negotiating sessions that began in February 2013, the Pensacola State College Faculty Association (PSCFA) and the Board of Trustees of Pensacola State College tentatively agreed to proposals for the 2013-2014 collective bargaining agreement (CBA). PSCFA is conducting a survey of all faculty members to determine why the language, which included a 2 percent raise retroactive to August 2013 as well as $120,000 to address compression pay issues, was denied by a majority of faculty. However, several central issues that angered faculty during negotiations are likely to blame.

Among those contested issues were administrative proposals to reduce pay for several categories of classes, including vocational training, clinical classes for health care fields, and Collegiate High School classes. The proposed language required faculty members teaching these classes to both work more hours and earn less for doing so, as much as $6,000 less per year in some cases. With PSC salaries already in the bottom third in the state, such a cut was hard to stomach.

 

Another hot topic was the college’s desire to increase the time required to receive a promotion. Initial administration proposals would have barred any faculty without a master’s degree from ever becoming a full professor as well as mandating a minimum of 17 years to reach full professor for others. To offset this increased time period, PSC agreed to increase the promotion raise to 5 percent of base pay for each step, but that bump did not convince a majority of faculty to vote for the whole package.

 

“Generally, proposed changes to the CBA pass with more than 95 percent support from the faculty,” said PSCFA President Paige Anderson. “That such a large proportion of faculty voted ‘no’ despite a pay increase on the table speaks to the overall dissatisfaction with this negotiating cycle. We hope that when both parties return to the bargaining table, the Board of Trustees’ representatives will be more willing to give on some of the provisions that are causing most harm to hard-working faculty’s ability to support their families.” 

Florida bill calls for MOOC accreditation, FIU weighs options

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FIUSM-17 hours ago

As a professor in the realm of the humanities, she said that “there isn’t a lot of agreement about what areas of content should be covered and how we would define the skills that students would have to have to demonstrate the mastery of a course’s learning objectives.” “It’s also hard to test for general skills that we might all agree to, such as critical thinking,” Shrage said. “So, designing tests that allow students to earn college credit for a course will mean that we need to make similar courses across institutions more uniform.”

Tom Auxter, the president of United Faculty of Florida, warned the Inside Higher Ed of a “cheap and dirty” online education. “Online education can be done well or poorly, like anything else,” Shrage said. “ Like Auxter, I worry that educators will not be given the resources to produce high quality online courses, where students are able to interact with subject experts and their peers, and where students get a reasonable amount of individual attention.”

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FEA Frontline Report

Bargaining Update: December 16, 2013

Dearest Faculty,

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 5^th  and 16^th , 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 29^th, 2014 at 2:30 PM.

Enjoy your much deserved break,

Jennifer Brahier
PSCFA Chief Negotiator

 

 

 

Salary Comparisons

Beginning teacher with a Masters at Santa Rosa County Schools:

source: https://www.santarosa.k12.fl.us/contracts/1314InstructionalSalarySchedule.pdf
length: 196 days - https://www.santarosa.k12.fl.us/contracts/SRPE2011_2014.pdf

Beginning teacher with Masters at PSC:

source: http://www.pensacolastate.edu/docs/cba/ARTICLE_15.pdf

Faculty Member Speaks Out

It has been very disturbing to me to sit and watch the administration at each and every bargaining meeting completely disregard the role that full time faculty members play at PSC. What I really mean is how the administration’s lawyer interprets the role faculty plays, because nobody else on the administrative side ever says anything anyway (yet they get paid quite nicely to bargain, hmmmm?)

Without our quality instruction, we would not be known as one of the best community colleges to attend. Adjuncts are great, but let’s face it, a college can’t exist without the dedicated full-timers. There are so many of us who could be working at higher profile jobs, making more money, but we chose to stay local, give back to the community of Pensacola, and do what we love: TEACH. For the first time, I am second guessing my decision for working here. Instead of worrying about what lesson I am going to be teaching the following day, I find myself worrying more about how my job is going to be affected again by changes the administration is trying to make. At the root of this worry is how the administration is trying to change the load points for several departments. Have any of them (admin) visited these specific departments and really dug into what goes into running these various programs? Absolutely not. To say that because a program doesn’t make enough money for the college, we are going to reduce the money going to the instructors running it is just ridiculous. All this is managing to do is pit departments against each other, instead of uniting us. If this logic is what salaries should be based on, then why are department heads, deans, VPs, and even the president paid so much more? What money do they generate for their areas? Better yet if faculty have to suffer, then shouldn’t other PSC employees sacrifice something too? I want an administrator to explain to me, to my face, why my hour of instruction is worth less than someone else’s hour of instruction! Each department has a crucial role at the College, but more importantly, in the community. The college should be supporting every faculty member equally, because that is the right thing to do. I have an even better idea: if the administration wants to save money, then how about they consolidate some of the administrative positions for once?

I think it is time to get this story out to all the trustees and more importantly the public. It is time for our community to understand how little respect the faculty are receiving here at PSC and because of that we now have no RESPECT or CONFIDENCE in the abilities of our administration!!

Thank you to all those faculty members in leadership roles and on the bargaining team willing to put their time and essentially their careers on the line to represent the best interest of all faculty. They may be trying to get rid of some of our best faculty, but we will not give up the fight. WE ARE PSC….and students keep coming back for us, not the administration.