March 2021 Advocate: Negotiations Overview

negotiations

As contract negotiations near a settlement,
a review of what we’ve won so far

by Marianne Kaletzky, AFT 1493 Executive Secretary

We are in the final stage of bargaining a new multi-year contract for faculty. Our AFT negotiating team knows these negotiations have been especially long, and so we want to give you an overview of what we’ve won so far. In this round of contract negotiations, AFT and the District have:

  • Agreed to create a pilot program to quantify the service work of full-time faculty, set a clear expectation for the amount of service work full-timers can be asked to take on, and compensate full-time faculty who exceed the expectation, either through payment or banked units. For decades, the District had refused AFT’s proposals to quantify service work—even as faculty reported substantial increases in the amount of service they were expected to do. We hope the pilot program will create a more sustainable workload for full-timers in our District.
  • Agreed on a set of protections for faculty members subject to investigations and discipline. These provisions include the stipulation that the District will use a progressive discipline framework (meaning that administrators will begin by applying the lowest level of discipline reasonably calculated to produce a particular result) and that adjuncts who meet the requirements for reappointment preference can only be suspended or dismissed for cause.
  • Agreed on a pilot program for binding arbitration, meaning that AFT will be able to bring grievances before a third-party arbitrator whose decision the District will be bound to comply with. Previously, AFT only had access to advisory arbitration, meaning that the Board of Trustees could overrule an arbitrator’s decision and/or award.
  • Agreed that adjuncts will be able to attend District Flex Days and receive compensation, regardless of whether they usually teach on the particular day of the week that Flex sessions are scheduled.
  • Agreed on a number of provisions affecting counselors, including a collaborative approach to determining appointment lengths and scheduling procedures, as well as additional “prof time” for appointment preparation and follow-up with students.

In this final stage of negotiations, we continue working to win:

  • Agreement on a few essential details of our parity plan for adjunct instructors.
  • The best possible compensation and benefits package for all faculty, including a compensation package that ensures full-time salaries are highly competitive within the Bay 10 community college districts.

You can read more about our March 17th negotiation session, and all our previous negotiations, here.

Next bargaining dates:

In hopes of arriving at an agreement on outstanding issues soon, we met Tuesday, March 23, and have scheduled negotiation another sessions today, Thursday, March 25th (9-12): compensation, including part-time parity