Negotiations News: Looking Back at Fall 2009
and Making Plans
By Stan Spencer
Sierra College Faculty Association Chief Negotiator
January 7, 2010
The Fall 2009 semester at Sierra
was a gut-wrenching experience for many of us as we were forced to come to grips
with the current economic crisis and formulate plans for dealing with its
impact at our college. It has felt
at times like dancing barefoot on hot coals while listening to a funeral
polka. This report is an attempt
to summarize the major events of the semester from my perspective as the Chief Negotiator
for SCFA.
The Current Economic
Crisis
The difficult decisions we face as
we begin 2010 are, first and foremost, due to the nationwide economic
crisis. Our funding is controlled
by the state, and California’s economy is among the hardest-hit in the
nation. For the statewide
community college budget, 2009-10 is the first year that saw a large reduction in
funding as a consequence of the current crisis.
Before we explore the current
status of Sierra’s budget, some background information on the budget process
might be useful. Even in
prosperous times, managers of community college budgets face an unusual
complication of which most people are not aware. Schools do not know how much funding they will receive for a
given year until after the year has
passed. The Chancellor’s Office
holds a Budget Workshop at the end of each summer, and the representatives for
each district are given a preliminary estimate of their budget for the upcoming
year (this is sometimes called the Advance Apportionment). The funding levels reported at the
Budget Workshop are expected to change for most districts when the Chancellor’s
Office issues the First Principal Apportionment (commonly referred to as the
P1), which usually comes out in late February. These numbers are often adjusted through one or more P1
revisions, which are announced later during the Spring semester. Another revision to the funding levels
takes place when the Chancellor’s Office issues the Second Principal
Apportionment (the P2), which usually comes out in late June. Finally, or so you might think, a Recalculation Apportionment is typically issued by the Chancellor’s
Office in late February, in the middle of the school year that follows the funding year to which the Recalculation Apportionment applies. It is not unheard of, however, for the Recalculation
Apportionment to be revised further by the Chancellor’s Office.
While the timeline above may be
difficult to follow, it illustrates a hugely important issue relative to
community college budgets.
Districts have to budget for each school year based upon guesses about the level at which they
will be funded. The only thing we
can say for sure about Sierra’s budget is that it is uncertain.
Sierra’s Budget
The preliminary numbers presented
at the August 2009 Budget Workshop included very significant reductions in
funding levels. The first cut came
in the form of what the Chancellor’s Office called a “workload reduction.” The real meaning of this was that each
district would be subjected to a reduction in the number of FTES for which they
would be paid. For Sierra College,
the loss equates to roughly $2.6 million for 2009-10. The second reduction came through a massive cut in
categorical revenue. Initially,
Sierra’s share of categorical cuts was expected to be $2.2 million. More recently, the cuts to categorical
programs have been deepened, with Sierra’s loss now estimated at $2.5 million.
The Budget Workshop numbers were
used by the college’s Business Office to prepare a preliminary budget which was
approved by the Board of Trustees on September 8, 2009. In addition to the reduction in revenue
outlined above, the budget also included a sizeable increase in expected
costs. The trustees therefore
approved a budget with a beginning fund balance of $14.2 million, and an ending
fund balance of $8.7 million.
Stated differently, the trustees agreed to use $5.5 million from the
reserves to cover our 2009-10 budget shortfall. The trustees were assured, however, that we were working
diligently to find ways to reduce the current shortfall, and, more
significantly, address the structural deficit that imperils our future.
District Management’s
First Steps
Possible strategies for dealing with our funding crisis
were presented last summer. In his
July 2009 President’s Bulletin, Dr. Chavez, with the stated purpose being “to
initiate discussion,” offered a list of recommendations. There were ten items on the list, and
they included tapping into the reserves and reducing the number of course
sections offered. Three other
suggestions roused the interest of many faculty members: 1) reduce all faculty
contracts in excess of 175 days to 175 days, 2) restrict the number of
overloads available to full-time faculty, and 3) make the cuts where we receive
them. The meaning of the first two
of these items is obvious, but the third might be somewhat obscure. “Make the cuts where we receive them”
refers to the cuts in categorically-funded programs. I believe the idea was that we should cut those programs in
the same proportions that the state funding was reduced for each of them. Dr. Chavez also acknowledged that,
“these recommendations will require thoughtful and careful deliberation; some
will require negotiation with Omniparty and the bargaining units.”
SCFA Bargaining –
Initial Steps
SCFA and the District do not hold
bargaining sessions during the summer, so the first opportunity to address
these ideas at the table didn’t come until September. The SCFA Executive Board directed the bargaining team to
inform the District that we had no interest in modifying any of the contract articles,
particularly as they related to reducing the number of work days for
faculty. The E-Board also decided
to ask for legal council from CCA/CTA regarding bargaining strategies and the
rights of the faculty relative to District cutbacks. We were advised, in very strong terms, to not open up the contract
for negotiation, or to make any
concessions whatsoever to District-proposed cutbacks. When we asked legal counsel what the District could do
unilaterally, the answer was, “anything they want.”
This was, of course, an
overstatement. However, Education
Code gives the District enormous latitude in circumstances where there is
declining enrollment or declining funding. There is a complex set of rules and regulations that they
must follow, but the District has the right to reduce or eliminate programs and
services to generate cost savings.
Roughly 80% of the District’s expenses are related to personnel, so the
savings generated by cuts to programs and services will come primarily through
workload reductions or the elimination of positions through layoffs.
The District is well aware of its
rights in this area, and they informed us that, although they don’t need our
approval to make the cuts, they are obligated to bargain the “impact” of the
cuts at the table with SCFA. In
recognition of our ongoing commitment to the collaborative process, SCFA agreed
to continue to meet with the District at the bargaining table, where we have
had extensive discussions about
different possible approaches to our funding crisis. These discussions have been held under the clear
understanding that we were not negotiating
changes to our contract, but instead simply exploring different possible
scenarios to get us through these difficult times.
The District’s Next
Steps
Work was also being done in other
venues to address our situation.
At Strategic Council, the call went out for everyone at the college to
come up with ideas for cutting costs.
Suggestions came back from a broad variety of interested parties, and
two tiers of budget cuts and cost-saving measures were identified. The Business Office’s November revision
to our budget estimates that the total savings from these cuts will be about $1
million. It was clear that more
drastic measures were required, and a special two-day Omniparty retreat was
scheduled for November 11th and 12th to bring together
representatives from the District and all three bargaining units in an attempt
to hammer out an agreement that would address our structural imbalance in a
more meaningful manner.
Omniparty Two-day
Retreat
Prelude
Before we discuss the retreat, a
little background information is in order. Omniparty is a multi-headed beast whose history, purpose,
and operating parameters are murky at best to many of us at Sierra
College. This is true for me, and
I have held one of the seats at Omniparty for the past two years.
Omniparty includes up to five
representatives from each of four interest groups: the classified union (FUSE),
the faculty union (SCFA), the management union (SCMA), and “the District.” The meetings are coordinated by a
professional facilitator (not a District employee, but hired by the District as
a consultant). Omniparty discusses
and tries to reach consensus agreement on bargaining-related issues of mutual
interest to all of the represented groups. Typically, the meetings are focused on two general concerns:
benefit packages, and the oversight and implementation of the income formula. Although the exact method of
implementation is different for each of the bargaining units, the agreements
reached at Omniparty are brought back to each union separately for
approval. When the issues have
contract implications, they are then negotiated individually between each unit
and the District. When the
representatives for a particular unit have reached a consensus agreement at
Omniparty on a significant issue, therefore, they have not agreed to anything with the District, they have only agreed to
take the agreement back to their unit for discussion and possible approval.
In preparation for the meeting, the
SCFA E-Board discussed our interests relative to the purpose of the
meeting. Some general guidelines
were given to our representatives, including a desire to not agree to a
reduction in our salary schedule, given the significant cuts in income that the
faculty unit as a whole was already experiencing as a result of the reduced
number of class offerings. I then
prepared a document for distribution at the retreat that analyzed the number of
sections cut for the Fall 2009 semester as well as the cuts that were scheduled
for Spring and Summer of 2010. Using
the most recent data that I could get from the District, my analysis concluded
that the elimination of 837 class sections (a 15.3% reduction) would produce a
cost savings for the District of over $3 million (from not having to pay
faculty to teach those sections).
I also pointed out that this cost savings was, at the same time, a
reduction in income for the faculty as a whole of over $3 million. Additionally, the loss of 837 sections
was equivalent to laying-off 84 full-time faculty members. The brunt of this impact will be felt
by a very large number of part-time faculty who will lose teaching assignments,
and a significant hit will also be taken by full-time faculty who will lose
overload assignments.
The Process
The meeting began with a discussion
of the purpose of the retreat, identification of the issues to address, and a
description of the situation we were facing. The analysis of the effect of class section cuts was
presented to the group at this time.
As we moved on to the
identification of interests and the exploration of possible options, it was
pointed out that there were three different primary approaches to dealing with
the structural deficit. The first
approach was to make up the shortfall by reducing compensation levels through
some combination of pay cuts and furloughs. These areas were clearly bargaining issues and fell within
the purview of the representatives at Omniparty. The second approach was to maintain current pay rates and
work hours, and make up the shortfall instead through a reduction in programs
and services offered at the college.
The savings generated by this method would come primarily from the
reduction or elimination of positions, and the corresponding layoffs. Decisions regarding program reductions,
however, are outside the purview of the bargaining units, and would need to be
made somewhere other than at Omniparty.
Exploration of the first approach
quickly led to the general agreement that we could not solve the problem
entirely with reductions to compensation.
The extent of the cuts that would be required was simply too high. Likewise, the second approach would
require cuts to programs and services well beyond anything that we could find
acceptable. The cuts would
profoundly change Sierra College as it now exists. We were left, therefore, with the third approach, which was
the recognition that a solution had to include a combination of both of the
first two approaches.
All told, more than sixty options
were identified and evaluated. At
the start of the second day, SCFA presented a complicated option that combined
many other options. It included
the $3 million loss of income for faculty from cuts to course offerings as part
of a package that attempted to spread the cuts proportionally across the three
units. In accounting for that loss
of income, it would have allowed the faculty to contribute their share of the
cuts without reductions to our salary schedule. Given that section cuts do not impact the other units in the
direct way they affect faculty, the other units would have needed to make
salary rollbacks to reach their proportional share of the cuts. The other units found this option
absolutely unacceptable. They
could not agree to an option that required all of their members to accept
salary cuts while some faculty members would not be affected by the reduction
in class sections.
It became clear that no agreement
could be reached that included salary reductions unless the reductions included
all members of all three units. In
the last two hours of the retreat, a straw design was created that was
reluctantly agreed to by all of the representatives at Omniparty. I don’t think anyone in the room felt
good about the agreement. The SCFA
representatives felt sick about it.
The Straw Design
Here is the straw design, with
minor revisions and clarifications agreed to at the subsequent Omniparty
meeting:
Revised
Straw Design on Steps to Address the Fiscal Crisis
November
25, 2009
1. Growth funds:
a. Use a portion of the available on-going growth funds to make up the
highest unit bucket deficit and put a proportionate amount in the other unit
buckets.
b. Use the remainder of the available growth funds on a one-time basis to
reduce the ’09-’10 deficit.
2. Program savings:
a. Quantify program and service reductions and layoffs through
administrative processes and use the savings to reduce the deficit.
3. Attrition savings:
a. Apply attrition savings to the deficit in ’09-’10 and ’10-’11.
4. Salaries:
a. Reduce salary schedules for all employees by 5%, excluding overload and
part-time faculty salaries, beginning in ’10-‘11.
b. Reduce part-time faculty salaries and overload pay by 2.5% beginning in
’10-‘11.
c. To the extent legally permissible and permitted by STRS and PERS,
exclude employees from salary reduction who submit by July 12, 2010 an
irrevocable letter of resignation effective no later than June 30, 2011.
d. Review salary reductions annually.
5. Furlough days:
a. Apply six furlough days (non-work and unpaid days) to classified
employees, administrators, managers and non-represented employees beginning in
’10-’11.
b. Pro-rate the application of furlough days to classified employees who
work less than 2080 hours.
c. Employees take furlough days on non-instructional days.
d. Negotiate the specific furlough days to be taken at individual
bargaining tables.
e. Review furlough days annually.
6. The executive team is
expected to take the same salary reduction and furlough days.
7. Tell constituents that
these steps are not a complete solution to the deficit and we will need to
continue to talk.
The Straw Design – Further Notes and Explanations
Item number 1 is very similar to
the Mutual Interest Item agreed to last Spring at Omniparty. It is an agreement to use growth funds
in a manner that is different from the default process that is part of the
income formula. We have about $2.8
million of growth money (most of it from 2008-09, with $400,000 of it remaining
from 2007-08). These are on-going
funds – we get them every year moving forward. The formula specifies that growth funds should be spent on
expenses related to new personnel, unless Omniparty agrees by mutual interest
to do something else with the money.
This proposal would use a portion of the money, distributed
proportionally across the units, to cover ongoing expenses (like step and
column costs) that are paid for in normal years with COLA funds (we have zero
COLA dollars this year). This is
expected to consume roughly $1.6 million of the $2.8 million. The remaining portion will be used for
the 2009-10 year only to help pay for our budget shortfall. Next year, the $1.2 million will be
available again as ongoing funds, and Omniparty has chosen to delay any
decisions about how to allocate that money until next year.
The second item is the part of the
solution that falls outside of Omniparty’s purview. We will return to a discussion of these cuts later in this report.
Attrition savings, as referenced in
item number 3, are the savings that result from a position being vacated. In normal times, the savings are the
difference between what the person who left the position was paid and what the
new replacement is paid. The
formula specifies that these savings are credited to the relevant unit. In our current situation, positions
will be eliminated for the sole purpose of reducing costs. If these savings were credited to the
units, then there would be no net reduction in costs. Therefore, for the next two years we would suspend the
normal crediting of attrition savings to the units in order to be able to use
the savings to address our structural deficit.
Items 4 and 6 would, in essence,
establish an across-the-board pay cut for everyone who works at Sierra. The pay cut is 5% for everyone, with
the exception that pay earned from the part-time and overload faculty salary
schedule would be reduced by 2.5% instead of 5%. The cut for part-time faculty is reduced in recognition of
the huge costs that will be absorbed by our part-timers as they lose their
teaching assignments due to cutbacks in class sections offered. The total savings from all of the
salary cuts is estimated to be roughly $2.4 million.
A critical aspect of this pay
reduction is the clause that specifies that it will be reviewed annually. This agreement calls for a pay
reduction for the 2010-11 year only. For the faculty, we would implement the
cut through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that would specify that the cut
would override the salary schedules in our contract for one year only. The
salary schedules in the contract would not be changed. We would not open the articles of the
contract for modification. In the
absence of an agreement in the future to continue with the cuts, we would
revert by default to the current salary schedules specified in the
contract. I do not, however, want
to mislead. We do not have a
reasonable expectation at this time that our funding levels for 2011-12 would
be restored to the extent required to be able to go back to the current
schedules. As I stated earlier,
the only thing we know for sure about our funding levels is that they are
uncertain. This temporary pay cut
takes the uncertainty into consideration by waiting until later to make any
decision about pay cuts for 2011-12.
Items 5 and 6 would establish
furlough days for everyone except faculty. This was agreed to, in part, as a way to try to provide a
little balance to offset the lost income suffered by faculty through the loss
of class sections. The six
furlough days are expected to generate about $430,000 in savings. It was also explained during the
discussion of this item that the District can not furlough faculty working on
standard 175-day contracts, because Ed Code specifies that schools that do not
offer a full 175-day schedule will not receive full funding.
The last item in the straw design
was a commitment to spread the idea that the straw design is not likely to be a
complete solution. We might need
to revisit these topics and look for more ways to save money given the
uncertain nature of the situation we are facing.
Executive Plan for
Cuts to Programs and Services
The program savings generated by
the second item of the straw design are based upon decisions that are outside
the realm of bargaining. The
expectation at Omniparty was that we needed to generate roughly $2 million of
savings through cuts to programs and services. The plan for these cuts was developed by Dr. Chavez, working
with Sierra’s executive staff, in the weeks that followed the Omniparty
retreat. SCFA had no input on the
formulation of the plan, and we don’t know any of the details at this
time. The plan is scheduled to be
revealed on January 14th at the time we normally reserve for Spring
convocation. For me, this will
undoubtedly be one of the darkest days at Sierra College since I first arrived
as a student in 1975.
Although we don’t know any details
of the plan at this time, I think it is worthwhile to discuss some of the
possibilities and limitations faced by the executive team. As I stated earlier, roughly 80% of the
District’s expenses are related to personnel, so the savings generated by cuts
to programs and services will come primarily through workload reductions or the
elimination of positions through layoffs.
With respect to faculty, there are
several considerations that limit the District’s ability to save money. First of all, faculty are needed to
teach the classes that bring in the college’s income through the generation of
FTES. Decisions have already been
made to reduce the number of class sections offered to the level that will
generate the maximum FTES that we think the state will fund for us. If we reduce the number of class
offerings to a level that fails to take advantage of all of the FTES the state
will fund, then for each class we fail to offer we will lose roughly four times
as much income as the amount of money we save by not paying someone to teach
the class. Giving up four dollars
of income to reduce expenses by one dollar is a really bad strategy. The reduction in course offerings began
in earnest with the Fall 2009 semester.
The number of class sections was cut by about 10%, but the FTES
generated didn’t go down at all.
This was due primarily to the fill rate going up to 100%. Therefore, we have also already maxed
out the number of students we can pack into the classes.
The second limitation faced by the
executive team is the Faculty Obligation Number (FON), which is the minimum
number of full-time faculty that the school must employ. This requirement is enforced by the
Chancellor’s Office, and failure to comply produces a substantial reduction in
funding. If the District were to lay
off a faculty member as a consequence of eliminating a program, they would need
to hire back a replacement to work in another area in order to meet the FON
obligation.
A third limitation comes from Ed
code. If a full-time faculty
member loses their position as the result of a program reduction or
elimination, they will receive a pink slip notification from the District. This does not, however, necessarily
mean that they will be laid off.
It is unlikely that they will be laid off. Ed Code stipulates that full-time faculty can not be laid
off if they are qualified for work that would continue to be done by any
full-time faculty member with less seniority or any part-time faculty
member. For a faculty member
formerly serving in an eliminated position, the District must go through the
process of looking at that person’s list of minimum qualifications, and
transfer them into any available position for which they are qualified that is
currently held by someone with less seniority, or give them a schedule of
classes to teach in a discipline where they can displace part-time faculty. Also, Article 18 (Layoff) in the SCFA
contract stipulates that, “a faculty member who moves into a new discipline as
a result of an anticipated lay-off or to assist the District to avoid a
lay-off, is entitled to reassigned time for retraining.” The District has indicated to SCFA that
they do not think the retraining provision applies when the purpose of the
layoffs is to save money. SCFA has
told the District that if they fail to honor this provision they should expect
SCFA to make use of the grievance procedure and all other legal means available
to enforce their compliance with the article.
Despite these limitations, the
executive team no doubt wanted to spread the pain of the cuts to programs and
services as much as possible to all of the units. To generate savings from cuts to the faculty unit, they have
a very limited set of options. I
am sure this is part of the reason why Dr. Chavez made the three suggestions back
in July that roused the interest of many faculty members: 1) reduce all faculty
contracts in excess of 175 days to 175 days, 2) restrict the number of
overloads available to full-time faculty, and 3) make the cuts where we receive
them. The District had an interest
in modifying the SCFA contract to eliminate or reduce the faculty contract days
beyond 175, but SCFA does not share that interest, and we chose not to open up
the contract for modification. However,
while faculty with 175-day contracts can not be furloughed, the District could
furlough the contract days beyond 175.
Lacking an agreement on the furloughs, they could chose to cut back or
eliminate the programs served by the faculty with the extended number of days.
The executive team’s efforts to
save money through the elimination of faculty positions will therefore have two
compelling reasons to focus on faculty with contracts that extend beyond 175
days. First of all, if they can
furlough some or all of the extra days, they save the cost of paying for the
extra days. Secondly, the faculty with
more than 175 days do not have the additional days for classroom teaching, so
the elimination of their positions does not directly reduce the number of FTES
generated. For the faculty with contracts
that extend beyond 175 days whose primary job is something other than teaching
in the classroom, if their position is eliminated and they are moved into a
teaching position, the District saves the cost of their extra days, as well as
the cost of paying the teachers who previously taught their new load of
classes.
For all of the reasons listed in
this section, I think that the faculty with contracts that extend beyond 175
days are now in a precarious position in terms of retaining their current
assignments. I suspect that the
plan developed by Sierra’s executive staff for cuts to programs and services
will include pink slips for most, if not all, of the faculty with more than 175
days. I also think that very few
(perhaps none) of them will be laid off.
For the positions that the District ultimately decides to eliminate, I
think the seniority of most of the faculty in these positions would result in
their moving to another position at Sierra. The faculty who would lose their employment as a result of
this process would primarily be part-time faculty losing their teaching
assignments, although some full-time faculty recently hired to teaching
positions (who therefore have little seniority) might be laid off if their
position is taken by a full-timer with more seniority. Finally, my best guess is that the
executive team will have discovered that there is not much in the way of
savings that can be generated by shutting down academic programs, so the plan
will include only a small number of academic programs being discontinued.
SCFA Plan for
Faculty Vote on Straw Design
When the SCFA bargaining team
agreed to the straw design, we only agreed to take it back to the SCFA E-Board
for their consideration. The
E-Board, like the bargaining team, was not happy with it. We agreed that we could not ask faculty
to vote for pay cuts unless they had a clear sense of the cuts to programs and
services that were part of the straw design. We took this interest back to the next Omniparty meeting,
where the District agreed that they would announce their plan for cuts at the
Spring convocation. The E-Board
has not yet made an official decision about how to proceed with the straw
design, but I think we have the general agreement of at least a majority of our
officers to negotiate an MOU with the district that will contain the portions
of the straw design that affect faculty and are within SCFA’s purview.
We have therefore agreed to modify
the sunshine list by adding the following two faculty interests:
1) The faculty have an interest in pursuing solutions to the current
financial crisis that are time limited with specific end dates and that do not
require opening specific articles of the contract or changing contract
language,
2) The faculty have an interest in achieving solutions to the current
economic crisis without opening any of the articles of the current contract.
The modified sunshine list is on
the agenda for the January 12th Board of Trustees meeting. It also includes new District
interests.
My expectation is that we will
agree to a contingent MOU relative to the straw design in the days immediately following
the Board of Trustees meeting, and then the SCFA E-Board will agree to send the
MOU out for a ratification vote by our members. The ratification vote will most likely be called for one
week after convocation. This will
give faculty a little time to think about the ramifications of the plan for
cuts to programs and services before voting on the straw design. In recent years, we have not asked for
ratification of MOUs, because they have been time-limited and also very minor
in scope. The MOU relative to the
straw design will also be time-limited, but its significance and scope is so
large that the E-Board would not be willing to agree to it without getting the
approval of our members.
Another Possible
Option: Furloughs vs. Position Elimination
The last thing I want to talk about
in this report is another option that has become available to us through our
discussions with the District. We
have talked extensively about the District’s desire to reduce faculty contracts
that extend beyond 175 days, and SCFA’s unwillingness to alter the contract in
any way. SCFA has also received a
considerable amount of input from those faculty members, who have a wide
variety of ideas about the best way to approach the situation.
The District has recently offered
an alternative solution that involves multiple compromises. The District looked at the total amount
of savings that they think will be generated by their plan for cuts
to programs and services, specifically as they relate to the elimination
or reduction of faculty positions with more than 175 days. They then went through the list of
sixty-one positions and tried to achieve the same level of savings by applying
furlough days to the positions instead of reducing the number of
positions. The idea is that a similar
level of overall reduction for programs and services will be achieved by
reducing the number of days for the positions as would otherwise be achieved by
keeping the number of days the same for some of the positions while completely
eliminating other positions. They
have provided us with a list of positions, the number of contract days for each
position, and the number of furlough days for each position. Again, the furlough days would
collectively substitute for the elimination of positions that will occur if we
don’t choose the furloughs. The
number of furlough days and their distribution across the different positions was
determined entirely by the district. SCFA had no input whatsoever on
the creation of the list.
The District is willing to agree to
an MOU that would establish these furlough days for the 2010-11 and the 2011-12
school years. From the District’s
perspective, this alternative solution greatly reduces the amount of work they
will otherwise have to do in finding other positions for the faculty whose
positions would be eliminated, as well as eliminating all of the downstream
effects that would result from the bumping process. They are insisting that the MOU be for a two-year term,
because they don’t want to modify their plan for cuts to programs and services
for only one year, and then have to create a new plan a year from now.
This alternative is a solution that
would be much less disruptive in terms of the number of faculty who would be
affected. On the other hand, the
faculty with contracts that extend beyond 175 days who would retain their
positions after the cuts to programs and services are executed will take a much
larger reduction to their income with the alternative plan. Conversely, some of the faculty with
contracts that extend beyond 175 days can retain their current positions at a
reduced number of days with the alternative plan, when they would otherwise
have been moved to a 175-day teaching position.
The SCFA E-Board agreed that we
need to present the faculty with this option, and ask for your feedback before
deciding whether or not to agree to a conditional MOU. If we decide to negotiate the MOU, we
would send it out for a ratification vote at the same time as the straw design
MOU.
We discussed the pros and cons of providing
all the details about the specific positions and associated number of furlough
days. The downside of presenting
the details is that some of the positions are filled by only one person, and we
would prefer to protect the privacy of our members whenever possible. However, the E-Board decided that it
was more important for the faculty to have all of the relevant information
about the alternative plan. Also,
the number of contract days for these positions are already published in our
contract, so the only new information we are disclosing is the number of
furlough days proposed for each position.
Here are the details of the
alternative approach:
[Note: this schedule was revised
for the SCFA MOU January 20, 2010]
Position Contracted Furlough Days
# of Days
Each Year
Math Center
Coordinator 220 25
Tutor Center
Coordinator
220 25
Writing Center
Coordinator
220 25
EOPS CARE
Coordinator
220 30
Staff Development
Coordinator
212 22
Transfer Center
Coordinator 212 22
Assessment
Coordinator 212 22
Career Connect Coordinator
212 22
Matriculation
Coordinator 212 22
DSPS
Coordinator 212 22
Inst Research & Resources
Coord 212 22
PE Instructor - Head
Coach
212 22
Health Services Coordinator 205 15
Fire Tech
Instructor/Coordinator
205 20
PE Instructor
202 27
Faculty
Researcher 199 24
Counselor 199 9
CalWORKS Counselor
199 9
DSPS
Counselor 199 9
EOPS
Counselor 199 9
Learning Disabilities
Specialist
199 9
Learning Disabilities
Specialist 199 19
LRC Coordinator - Distance
Learning 195 20
Librarian
195 20
Counselor
190 15
Campus Life
Coordinator 190 10
Nursing (70%
load) 186 1
Nursing 186 1
ESL
Instructor/Coordinator
185 10
Admin of Justice
Instructor/Coord
185 0
Drama
Coordinator
180 5
Band
Coordinator
180 5
Music
Coordinator
180 5
Total Salary Savings $400,640
Total Benefit Savings
(12.79%) $51,242
Total Estimated Savings $451,882
January 21, 2010
The revised schedule used in the MOU:
Furlough Schedule
Position (# if more than 1) Contracted
Furlough Days
# of Days for Each Year,
2010-11 and 2011-12
Math Center
Coordinator
220 25
Tutor Center
Coordinator
220 25
Writing Center
Coordinator
220 25
EOPS CARE
Coordinator
220 30
Staff Development
Coordinator
212 37
Transfer Center Coordinator
212 22
Assessment
Coordinator
212 22
Career Connect Coordinator
212 22
Counseling & Orientation
Coordinator 212 22
DSPS
Coordinator 212 22
Inst Research & Resources
Coord
212 22
PE Instructor - Head
Coach (6)
212 22
PE Instructor - Head
Coach 207 17
Health Services
Coordinator 205 15
Fire Tech Instructor/Coordinator
205 20
PE Instructor - Head
Coach 202 12
Faculty
Researcher 199 24
Counselor (14) 199 9
CalWORKS
Counselor
199 9
DSPS Counselor (3) 199 9
EOPS Counselor (2) 199 9
Learning Disabilities
Specialist (2)
199 9
Distance
Learning Coordinator 195 0
LRC Coordinator - NCC
195 0
Counselor (3)
190 0
Campus Life
Coordinator
190 10
Nursing (7) 186 1
ESL
Instructor/Coordinator
185 10
Admin of Justice Instructor/Coord
185 0
Drama Coordinator (2)
180 5
Band
Coordinator
180 5
Music
Coordinator
180 5