Negotiations Update

Contract negotiations are down to one final issue

On Tuesday, March 23, AFT negotiators came to an agreement with the District as to what will be required for adjunct instructors to advance a step once we reach parity. That means we have only one issue outstanding: whether the existing, single-column adjunct instructional schedule should become the Master’s column (Column 2) when the new step-and-column schedule is created, or whether it should be the Base Pay column (Column 1). AFT is proposing the existing column become the Base column, whereas the district is proposing the existing column become the Master’s column. While it may sound like a minor disagreement, AFT’s proposal will move adjuncts 3 percentage points closer to the 85% parity goal. Under the District’s proposal, adjuncts would still be in the high 60s (68% or 69% parity) on the new, step-and-column schedule.  The district is already committing to transitioning to the step-and-column schedule in 2022-2023 and the union wants to make sure it’s a schedule that makes significant progress towards parity. The AFT has estimated the cost of setting the current single-column adjunct instructional schedule as the new Base column rather the Master’s column would be about $720,000. To put this amount in perspective relative to the district’s total budget, total district revenues for 2019-20 were $208.2 million and the district spent $12.2 million less on classroom instruction salaries in 2019 than they were legally required to do to meet the 50% law.

AFT 1493 Chief Negotiator Joaquin Rivera briefly discussed this final outstanding contract issue when he addressed the Board of Trustees on Wednesday, March 24, before they went into closed session. Watch his comments:

AFT and District negotiators are scheduled to meet again Thursday morning (March 25) from 9am to noon.