- When will the contract go into effect?If we ratify (in our electronic ratification vote May 3rd through 6th), the Board will vote on approving the contract at their meeting on May 12th. If they approve it, it will immediately go into effect.
- If we ratify, will negotiations begin on another contract soon?Yes, the current contract will expire June 30, 2022, so the idea would be to start working towards the next contract in the Fall by surveying faculty on their needs and priorities. We would then “sunshine” (publicly share) what we want to negotiate, then start negotiating late Fall 2021 or early Spring 2022.
- What is the schedule for raises?2019-2020: 3.44%
2020-2021: 5.68% (compounding with the previous year’s raise for a total of 9.32%)
2021-2022: additional raise to be determined once the San Mateo County property tax assessment for Fiscal Year 2020-2021 is known.Adjunct instructional faculty will get an additional 4% for 2020-2021, plus the District will add $1.5 million to the adjunct instructional schedule in 2021-2022. - When will we know the percentage raise for all faculty for 2021-2022?We will know in the summer. The fiscal year ends at the end of June, and then it takes the District a couple of weeks to figure everything out. Our raise will be determined by a formula that uses the property tax assessment.
- How will the pay scale and retro pay work?There will be retroactive pay going back to the beginning of 2019-2020.
- Will there be interest on the back pay?
Unfortunately, no, just the back pay itself. - What about overload? Is there also retro pay for that?Yes, for anything faculty have worked since the beginning of 2019-2020.
- Will overload get the special raises for adjunct instructors? What about non-instructional adjuncts—will they get these raises?Overload and non-instructional adjuncts will get the raises all faculty get, but not the special raises for instructional adjuncts.
- When will faculty first see the raises? What about the retro pay?The District has said that if we ratify the contract and they approve it at their meeting on May 12th, we will see the raises on May paychecks. We don’t know yet about the timing of the retro pay but will be in touch with faculty as soon as we have more information.
- What about pensions and retroactive contributions?If 2019-2020 or 2020-2021 is one of the years used to calculate your benefit payment (either your highest year or one of your three highest, depending on how many years of service you have), the benefit amount will be recalculated based on the new, increased salary. District payroll reports pay changes to CalPERS and CalSTRS every month so they can recalculate.
- What about health benefits? Are they going up?Yes. For full-time faculty, we are going to have a $50 increase to the per-month cap. This is a one-time increase.For part-time faculty, there will be an increase of $600 in the semesterly medical stipend each January 1st of the contract. So the stipend will be $2105 per semester effective Jan. 1, 2020; $2705 per semester effective Jan. 1, 2021; and $3305 per semester Jan. 1, 2022.
- Are health benefits subject to retro pay as well?Yes. We are figuring out the logistics for retro pay for the part-timer medical reimbursement, since part-timers generally have to submit documentation that they’ve spent the money in order to get the reimbursement. We will be in touch with more details once we have them.
- Is there going to be a new MOU that’s going to be in effect for the next academic year?Since the pandemic started, we’ve been negotiating an MOU for each new semester; we just surveyed membership around their needs for the Summer/Fall 2021 MOU and will be negotiating this soon.
- I have heard there are going to be more steps and columns added to the adjunct instructional schedule. What about summer salary scales? Are there going to be new steps here?We don’t have separate salary schedules for summer—for full-timers, this would be the overload schedule, for adjuncts, the salary schedules are the same as in the fall and spring semesters. There will be new steps and columns starting in 2022-2023 only for instructional part-timers, so the first summer when instructional adjuncts will be paid on this new salary schedule will be Summer 2023.
- What about the Discipline and Investigations article?This article sets forth a clear process and protections (like notification requirements) for faculty under investigation. In the past, we had no set process or protections, so faculty sometimes didn’t even know what they were being investigated or disciplined for, and the process was wholly up to the investigator. You can read more about the process and protections in Article 24 of the Tentative Agreement document.
- Do we know anything about HOW they will implement the Workload pilot project for the fall? Or is that all TBD still?Because most of instruction will be remote in Fall 2021, we have pushed the first year of the two-year pilot back to 2022-2023.
- Will the workload plan apply to part-timers?No, it’s for full-timers only. Our position is that part-timers shouldn’t do any work they don’t get paid for. Our hope, though, is that the workload plan might help us standardize part-time pay for committee and service work: as it is, part-time pay for service is often determined on a case-by-case basis.
- When will the pilot points system be open for negotiation?In Spring 2024.
- What happens if we don’t do all the points expected in the workload point program? Could we be fired or docked pay?If faculty are evaluated, that could go into the dean’s assessment of non-primary duties. However, at this point there are no clear consequences of what would happen if faculty don’t do enough points. The initial direction of the District was to take a very punitive approach, and we were able to push back and take that aspect out of the pilot program.
- Are the points per semester or per year?Anything that extends the entire year, you do for the entire year to get the points. Anything that doesn’t take the entire year, you get the points for doing it as long as it lasts.
- What about high-demand activities that don’t get points in the workload grid? Things like being principal investigator on a grant, or a counselor serving on the CRM task force?Other activities can be added or included if agreed upon by the faculty member and their dean, as we understand that not every service task will fit into the descriptions included in the points grid. If there isn’t agreement between a faculty member and their dean, there is a District-wide committee that can be appealed to.
- What if you’re assigned some new duty in the middle of the year? Can extra points carry over?The pilot is only for two years, so if you do more points in the first year, you can bank them for the second year. Otherwise you can get paid for the actual hours spent on the excess points. Plans can also be adjusted mid-year—you could talk to your dean about deleting some other activities to offset the new, excess activities.
- For counselors: what is the rule regarding whether meetings should be in prof time or out of prof time?Meetings part of the Professional Responsibilities Plan for the workload piece cannot be during prof time: the Professional Responsibilities Plan is meant to be something counselors complete beyond counseling time and prof time. Other meetings can be taken during prof time.
- Is immunization and vaccination addressed? Or is the contract even the place to address that?There is nothing about vaccinations in our contract. That would be a topic for discussion for a future MOU.