Good news! AFT and SMCCD reach agreement on new multiyear contract
Dear faculty colleagues,
We write with good news: yesterday, March 25, AFT and the District arrived at a tentative agreement on compensation and benefits—the final issue that remained outstanding for the contract we are currently negotiating. Yesterday’s agreement means that negotiations for our new multi-year contract have come to a close, and we will soon be presenting our Executive Committee and our members with the full contract we have tentatively agreed on. We appreciate our members’ solidarity, persistence, and energy throughout this unusually long negotiations cycle. Working together, we were able to win, in addition to improvements in compensation and benefits, a pilot program to quantify how much service work full-time faculty are expected to do and compensate those who go beyond the expectation, new protections for faculty subject to investigations and discipline, a pilot program allowing the union to bring grievances before a third-party arbitrator whose award will be binding, new provisions for adjuncts regarding Flex days, and new provisions for counselors.
The compensation and benefits agreement includes:
- Significant salary increases for all faculty for 2019-2020 and 2020-2021, with an additional increase for 2021-2022 to be determined based on San Mateo County property tax revenue. Raises will apply retroactively; we will share more information about exact percentage raises and the timing of checks for retroactive pay as soon as these matters are finalized.
- A $600 per year increase in the semesterly medical reimbursement stipend available to part-timers. The part-time medical stipend will be $2105 per semester for calendar year 2020, $2705 per semester for calendar year 2021 and will increase to $3305 per semester effective January 1, 2022.
- New lab rates that assign .8 FLC per hour for all labs across the arts, sciences, and KAD.
The tentative agreement on compensation and benefits also includes a landmark set of provisions for instructional adjunct faculty. These provisions include:
- Setting the District’s parity goal at 85%, meaning that adjunct instructors should make at least 85% of what similarly qualified full-timers make for the same work.
- For adjunct instructors, an additional raise of 4% over and above the salary increase for all faculty for 2020-2021. The District has also allocated an additional $1.5 million for adjunct instructional raises in 2021-2022, which will similarly be given over and above the increase for all faculty in that year.
- The creation of a new adjunct instructional schedule that includes all 5 educational columns and 25 experience-based steps available to full-timers. Adjunct instructors will have until September 30, 2021, to submit documentation of their educational qualifications, and the District will begin paying adjunct instructors on the new schedule at the start of academic year 2022-2023. The new schedule will be created by making Steps 1-11 on the 2021-2022 adjunct instructional schedule Steps 1-11 of the Master’s column on the new schedule, then building out the other columns and steps using the percentage differences between columns and steps on the full-time salary schedule. The following special conditions will apply:
- Adjunct instructors with a Master’s, MA+45 units, MA+60 units, or PhD/EdD/JD will be placed into the column corresponding to that degree.
- Adjunct instructors who do not have a Master’s, and who are on a 2021-2022 SMCCD seniority list, will be placed into the Master’s column.
- Adjunct instructors who have been at Step 11 for at least three years will be placed at Step 14. All other adjunct instructors will be placed one step above their 2021-2022 step.
- An ongoing commitment that, until SMCCD achieves parity for instructional adjuncts, the District will commit funds to closing the parity gap over and above the money it makes available for compensation and benefits improvements for all faculty. This commitment extends beyond the life of the current contract and will be in effect until the District reaches the parity goal of 85%.
We look forward to presenting our members with more information very soon. In the meantime, you can read more about all the provisions we’ve agreed on here. Thank you again for your support, advocacy, and organizing as we work together to achieve more equitable conditions for all faculty.
In solidarity,
The AFT 1493 Negotiating Team (Joaquín Rivera, Monica Malamud, and Marianne Kaletzky)