Negotiations Report #18

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September 3, 2025

Some brief takeaways from our seventeenth negotiation session on Aug. 29th:

  • The important takeaway from last Friday is that the District isn’t moving in any meaningful sense, which means that if we want to win a fair and equitable contract, we need you to take action!

    • Friday, 9/5 at 4pm: Contract Forum with our Chief Negotiator, Monica Malamud.  Zoom here.
    • Wednesday, 9/10, 2:30-4:30pm: AFT 1493 Membership meeting—CSM room 14-213 or on zoom: bit.ly/aft1493mm
    • Wednesday, 9/10, 5pm: Speak at Board of Trustees Meeting. Please fill out our form to show your commitment!
      • For inspiration, check out the video from our powerful action last week at the Board of Trustees meeting!  (In case the link doesn’t take you there, go to 1:25:29 where our action really starts).

You can also sign up to join us at a future negotiation session.  Our next negotiation session is Friday, Sept. 12th from 1:00pm-4:00pm.

Red AFT shirts for Red Wednesdays: we have more sizes available!  Small, Medium, and Large just came in. Please contact me at lexvold@aft1493.org and I’ll make sure you get one!

As an example of the District’s lack of movement towards reaching agreement, Joe Morello’s participation seems more focused on performative “gotcha moves” than actually making progress in negotiations.  Morello repeatedly suggests that we need to abide by language in the previous contract, or in proposals we made prior to the previous contract being ratified, as if that argument legitimately undermines our current proposals.  This shows ignorance about the very nature of negotiations.  We re-open the entire contract every three years precisely to consider changes to the contract, and in this round of negotiations, we aren’t bound by proposals we made or agreed to for a contract that has since expired.

 

Current Bargaining Report

AFT Negotiation Team: Monica Malamud (Chief Negotiator), Chet Lexvold, Gil Perez, and Luis Zuñiga.  Also in attendance from AFT were President Rika Yonemura-Fabian and Observer Elsa Torres.

From the District: Ellen Wu, Richard Storti, Joe Morello, Julie Johnson, Aaron McVean, and Max Hartman.

 

Hours of Employment (Article 7)

The District presented their fourth counter on this article.

  • In 7.6.1, they again brought back language that for counselors performing professional duties, they must be on campus unless otherwise approved by their dean.  When questioned, the District’s Chief Negotiator’s initial explanation for why they were insisting counselors be on campus while performing these duties was because she thought all faculty are required to be on campus 30 hours/week (Monica pointed out this is not true); then Max Hartman said it was because counselors are different because they have to document case notes.  Monica pointed out this is a double standard, where instructional faculty are trusted to exercise their professional judgment for where they grade, for example, while the District isn’t allowing counselors to exercise that same professional judgment.
  • On 7.11 regarding Flex Days, they keep proposing increasing the number of required flex to 3, and mandating in person attendance. They said that faculty should be on campus even when participating in online flex activities on these required flex days. When Monica asked what day they are proposing would be the new “required on campus” day (besides the current practice of the two college flex days, one per semester), Joe Morello responded that it would be negotiable between the District and AFT.
    • The District again proposed that Flex Day activities be “Dean approved,” which they claim is not different from current practice because deans sign a form.  Monica pointed out that by the time the dean signs the form, the activity has already been completed, and this is a formality, not an actual “approval process.”  Further, Monica quoted language from the Senate Flex Memo with language stating that prior approval is not required for Fled Day activities because they are “self-certified.”

 

Safety Conditions of Employment (Article 16)

The District presented their second counter proposal on this article.

  • They struck out the specific language about emergency call boxes;
  • They struck out that this contract article is subject to arbitration (according to our grievance procedure in Article 17);
  • They struck out language about a faculty member being able to leave the classroom if they feel unsafe;
  • They struck out language about the District’s assistance in obtaining a restraining order when necessary; and
  • They struck out our language regarding making SMCCCD a Safe Workplace for transgender faculty.

 

Faculty Load Credit (FLC) Allocation (Appendix F )

The District cited their previous counter on this Appendix; in other words, they didn’t move on lab FLC increases, or class sizes for Calculus and English Composition.

 

Compensation, Article 8

  • We presented our fourth counter.  Monica presented numerous reasons why the District’s offers on compensation continue to be woefully inadequate.
    • Our District is very wealthy, and is a Basic Aid District with property tax assessments (aka the District’s revenue) consistently increasing annually, averaging a 6.76% increase over the past 10 years.
    • The District is illegally spending less than 50% of revenue on classroom instruction, and the District is a huge outlier in California in terms of how little of its budget it spends on classroom instruction.  It spends around 40-41%, and cumulatively, has underspent on instruction by over $100 million.
  • Our counter was very similar to our third counter, but since we have already started “Year 1” of this contract, we left the current salary schedules in place for Year 1 in this proposal, and proposed moving to pay-by-load (pay by FLC) for all instructional assignments in Year 2, starting August 2026.  This impacted several sections of our counter, where we mirrored this concept.
    • The District accused us of being regressive with our counter because under 8.1.1 (“Year 1”), we proposed that all salary schedules be increased by 7.5%, with an additional 2.75% for Instructional Adjuncts (the second set of salary schedules currently listed under 8.1.1).  This was included because we want to continue making progress toward parity for adjuncts while we wait to move to pay-by-load (our earlier proposal would have achieved pay parity in Year 1).  There was quite a bit of back-and-forth on this, as Monica explained we aren’t moving further apart – we offered a different way to achieve parity through pay-by-load for Years 2 and 3, and left the previous definition of parity in place for Year 1 based on existing salary schedules.

 

Workload (Article 6 and Appendix D)

The District did not present a counter on this article.

 

Article 9, Health and Welfare Benefits

We presented our third counter.

  • We again proposed the District would cover 100% of premiums for all Kaiser plans, including two-party and family plans (not just single).
  • Dental: We had first proposed $7,000, the District countered at $2,000, and we again countered at $5,000.
  • On Salary Continuation Insurance for FT faculty, we re-proposed an increase to $10,000/month, and Monica pointed out that administrators get $15,000 salary continuation insurance.

 

Academic Freedom (New Article)

The District did not present a counter to our proposal on this article, and has not presented a counter since we presented our original proposal on May 16th, which was six negotiation sessions ago.

 

Part-Time Employment (Article 19)

The District did not present a counter to our proposal on this article.

 

Summer Employment (Article 18)

We cannot present a counter on this article because it would reference sections that are currently being negotiated, so we’re setting it aside for now.

 

Dual Enrollment (New Article)

We did not present a counter on this article and told the District since there has been so little movement on it by either party, we are setting it aside for now.

 

Reasonable Accommodation (Article 25)

We’ve reached a tentative agreement on this article!

 

Grievance Procedure (Article 17)

We’ve reached a tentative agreement on this article!

 

Informal Complaints and Formal Misconduct Investigations (Article 23)

We’ve reached a tentative agreement on this article!

In solidarity,

Chet Lexvold
Executive Director, AFT 1493
lexvold@aft1493.org