Union Victories: Let’s keep up the fight!

In Fall 2023, our union finally ratified a contract (2022-2025) that raised our salaries between 15 to 22%, eventually putting more than a year of retroactive pay in our pockets. (The District miscalculated pay for many faculty and had to issue additional checks in Spring 2024). As we paid off our credit cards with interest, some rejoiced, but not all felt victorious. At recent union forums and Flex Day sessions and in this November’s bargaining survey, members expressed what we want to fight for in the next contract, which we’ll begin negotiating this February 2025. Here’s a brief run-down of what we won – and didn’t.  

Part-time faculty parity

Still to win! In our previous contract, the District promised to increase part-time faculty pay parity with full-time salaries to 85% of what full-time faculty earn — but without any timeline. In our current contract, the parity rate for part-time classroom faculty is up to an average of 78.5% (still only 7th in the Bay 10!). Fighting for the right to be paid by load (including for service work) rather than by hour would provide an equitable way to set adjunct instructional faculty pay rates at a uniform parity percentage of full-time faculty. Most of the Bay 10 community college districts have done this for years.    

Disability accommodations

Because relying on the ADA alone for District compliance hasn’t served anyone, AFT also fought and won our first-ever contract language on reasonable accommodations for faculty with disabilities (temporary or chronic). bit.ly/ContractArticle25 However, AFT couldn’t secure a timeline for the disability accommodations process, appeal processes and other agreements to make this Article more robust. Until that’s achieved, faculty with short and long-term disabilities may continue to wait indefinitely for the District to resolve and implement their accommodations plans — resulting in a myriad of consequences they don’t deserve. We will continue to fight for a required timeline for accommodations to be implemented.  

Part-time faculty healthcare

A one-year MOU signed in August 2023 significantly increased the health insurance reimbursement amount for part-time faculty to $1,041/mo. and expanded the pool of part-time faculty eligible for such.   While this was hard fought – in fact, the District tried repeatedly to eliminate the reimbursement benefit altogether – by the new terms, stipends will now be paid out every six months instead of quarterly. This ramps up the hardships for part-time faculty temporarily paying thousands of dollars in out of pocket insurance costs since they must now wait half a year for that refund. Additionally, the stipends will now be taxed as income.  In the Summer of 2024 AFT returned to the bargaining table to tackle “reopeners,” unresolved provisions that would have held up ratification of the main contract.  This resulted in a historic achievement of District sponsored healthcare for part-time faculty at SMCCCD (MOU (2024-2026), which is separate from the reimbursement program just mentioned. The District’s roll out was very poorly communicated such that for weeks, part-time faculty were left hanging without any District communications while the union demanded clarity and expediency. During the roll out, Human Resources did not respond to the union’s requests for meetings to answer key questions. Unfortunately, eligibility in the new District insurance plan has now rendered part-time faculty with Covered California ineligible for Covered CA’s subsidized rates. Additionally, while Covered CA includes dental plans for younger dependents, our District continues to refuse dental and vision benefits to adjunct faculty and their families. Faculty parents insuring their children can’t split their coverage between the two plans.   

Full-time faculty healthcare

Full-time faculty saw significant increases in District contributions to their health insurance premiums. (However, insurance premiums will increase significantly in 2025).   

Evaluation procedures

Through two years of collaborative work with our District Academic Senate, in July 2024 AFT successfully negotiated a revised set of faculty evaluation forms (Appendix G). The forms include unique forms for instructional designers and personal counselors and revised classroom observation forms, with a focus on equity and inclusion in pedagogy, among other improvements. AFT thanks all our campus designees who worked so diligently on the Evaluation Guidance Committee as well as the Senate leaders who successfully navigated this complex process. While AFT negotiated the new forms, the District was responsible for creating and posting the finalized PDF forms and implementing the student surveys. Faculty were frustrated by many delays by the District, with forms not ready in time for faculty evaluation orientations or student observations.   

Full-time Workload

After a contentious, multi-year effort by faculty to reverse “workload creep” the Workload Pilot project was ended and the new contract language seeks to limit workload by capping full-time faculty’s non-primary duties at 2.5 hrs of work/week, with faculty’s participation in service work now mainly self-determined, subject to limited review by their dean. This is our union’s first time placing a quantified time cap on how much extracurricular work is expected of full-time faculty outside of their primary duties.   

Reassigned time & class assignment preferences

The 2022-2025 contract also assigned stronger rights around reassigned time to full-time faculty. Before a faculty member’s reassigned time (including for coordination) goes on the books, they and their administrator must now agree to a list of duties and to the total % of reassigned time. This should help to eliminate unilateral decision making. Similarly, full-time faculty also won the right to submit class assignment preferences that deans cannot arbitrarily disregard. Now Deans must put any denials in writing.   

Continuing the fight

• Academic Freedom. For many years AFT1493 has fought unsuccessfully for an academic freedom clause with teeth (beyond a Board policy) that applies to curriculum, combats censorship, and allows for faculty activism without retaliation. While tenure provides some protections for academic freedom, as many as 70% of current SMCCCD faculty are employed without it.
• Dental and vision insurance for part-time Faculty. While full-time faculty receive dental and vision coverage, and while AFT costing has shown the District could pay for dental and vision for part-time faculty using the money it’s saving by becoming eligible for AB190 reimbursements from the state, our District continues to refuse dental and vision insurance to part-time faculty. Adjunct faculty at some other Bay 10 districts do enjoy these benefits.
• Dual Enrollment Protections. The District rejected AFT’s proposals limiting the required duties of our dual enrollment faculty to those duties required of all instructional faculty, and paying dual enrollment instructors for all days worked beyond the 175 days in our District’s academic calendar. It’s time for our union to win this multi-year fight to secure equity for dual enrollment faculty!
• Paid Family Leave. The standard paid leave for employees working for Google is 24 weeks. In SMCCCD, that number is easy to calculate; it’s zero! While full-time faculty can bank time toward their leaves, part-time faculty cannot. This inequity has far reaching consequences for our families.
• Other contract areas remaining to be tackled include codifying procedures around course assignments by deans, adding course cancellation clauses including timelines and compensation details, and better protections for faculty teaching distance education. 

Faculty participation is the key to winning a stronger contract

Our union’s campaign for the 2025-2028 contract has begun and the more members are engaged, the greater our chance to win a fair contract expediently!  You can join the campaign in several ways.

1. Consider becoming a steward for your department. Stewards help communicate information from the union to colleagues and bring feedback about issues and concerns back to the union. (In our District, union grievance officers rather than stewards work with faculty when the contract has been infringed.) Fill out an interest form to get started! bit.ly/AFT1493Stewards
2. Sign up to observe negotiations beginning in February 2025. bit.ly/ObserveBargaining2025
3. Join an article committee to help write new language in our contract. Sign up now! bit.ly/ArticleCommittees
4. Attend our next union membership meeting to hear about the work our union is doing and lend your voice to the effort. December 11, 2024 from 2:30pm-4:30pm at Skyline College, Building 5-134, or on Zoom at bit.ly/aft1493mm
5. Become a member of CAT, our Contract Action Team, in Spring 2025. Reach out to Mandy Lucas if interested.
6. Join our union! High membership numbers increase our union’s power to make a difference. Your voice matters. bit.ly/JoinAFT1493