This year the negotiations team will keep members informed by posting MOUs, Proposals, and other items as we can. This update provides information from our February 14, 2019 meeting.
Wages
Already made public, is our wages proposal that was presented to the District in September of 2018. Our proposal included a 10% increase to cell C1, that would also increase all other cells according to our proposed stratification increases. Five months later, on February 14th, the District presented their first counter proposal. As a reminder, our current contract states that the District will work toward getting faculty to median within the next three years. Even after the raise negotiated last year, some of our faculty were still almost 10% below the median.
The District’s offer on the 14th was to increase full-time salaries by 1% with no increase in any future year. The District’s first counterproposal has denied any increase to part-time faculty. We asked if they knew what the 1% raise to full-time faculty would cost the District but they were unable to answer without being pressed to leave the room to calculate the value. When we compared the 1% offer to the current agreed upon salary study, some faculty are now almost 12% below median.
The District is pushing faculty further away from the median instead of fulfilling their contractual obligation to move us toward the median. We asked why the District did not value or make its faculty a priority. The District insisted that faculty were the cornerstone of its work. We must wonder, why then, did the District present such an insulting offer? Why, when creating their budget, did they not even bother to calculate or understand what their 1% offer would cost? Without knowing the cost of 1% how could they possibly plan to get faculty to median? Why is the amount they offered less than the cost of living adjustment they receive for our work each year?
The answer is simple: The District does not value its faculty.
Clearly, the District has no intention of negotiating wages, but is merely presenting a proposal that gives the appearance of negotiating.
Learning Communities
We requested additional information from the District. This request will inform future actions related to learning communities.
Comentários