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AFT 1493’s response to the suggestion of employing a professional negotiator

 

The article below will be published in the May issue of AFT 1493’s  Advocate newsletter.

 

Like all of you, the members of our union’s executive committee received Jacqueline Gamelin and Rick Ambrose’s letter in our faculty boxes on Monday, May 1, 2006.  We appreciate and share Jacqueline and Rick’s concern about our current negotiations, as we are sure many of you do, and, as always, we are happy to hear faculty voices making constructive suggestions for union strategy and direction.

 

While we have several disagreements with some of the underlying logic and assumptions in the letter—that the union is culpable for the District’s opening offer of 0%; that a professional negotiator would “level the playing field” (indeed that the playing field is currently not level); that objectivity is a desirable characteristic in negotiating a contract; that a professional negotiator would in fact be objective—we want to clear up two important facts.

 

First, the letter expresses concern that the AFT negotiating team is operating based on “preconceived views as to what is most important to faculty.” In fact, the negotiating team consistently polls the executive committee in order to plan strategy for negotiating the best contract possible for faculty. In turn, the executive committee members periodically have surveyed the entire district faculty in order to identify issues of specific importance and to guide your faculty union’s course. Campus co-chairs and representatives talk by phone and in person with colleagues every week and listen carefully to ideas, suggestions, and criticisms, which they then report to the entire executive committee. We understand that sometimes faculty at different points in their careers will have quite disparate concerns and interests. We do our best to balance those views and have representation of faculty from most areas: full time and part time, nearing retirement and just starting, instructional and student services, male and female, single and coupled, with dependents and without.


Second, we too often feel demoralized and unappreciated when we compare our salaries with those of teachers in other places and with professionals in other fields. We know it can be difficult to see these comparisons in newspapers and professional journals. However, the comparison between our salaries at a community college and those of K-12 teachers is not a helpful one. The two educational tiers are not funded equally by the state; K-12 districts receive an average of $7,402 per student while community colleges only receive $4,497. All the districts listed in the Daily Journal articled and that are cited in Jacqueline and Rick’s letter, with the exception of Portola Valley and Woodside, are basic aid districts, so their state funding may be even higher.   Also, most of the school districts on the list have a school year between 186 and 189 days while ours is 175 days. If you do the calculation on a per day basis, then SMCCD salaries are higher or quite competitive despite the discrepancy in funding. In fact, we would like to point out that in addition to achieving many improvements in contract language and working conditions, over the past six years AFT Local 1493 has negotiated a 24.5% total compensation increase.  Over that time, the state COLA was just 13.86%.


Although the union has looked at the idea of hiring a professional negotiator in the past, we agree that it is a notion that could be revisited. To make that switch now, however, would not be efficacious. On the other hand, it’s important to remember that a professional negotiator is not a silver bullet. For example, AFSCME is currently using an outside negotiator, but they are not getting any better results than AFT is. We would argue that what has “gone wrong with our negotiations” is that the professional negotiator the District has employed has not proven to be very skillful.

 

In fact, the District’s negotiating team, led by a newly hired professional negotiator, does not “negotiate” but merely brings in a proposal and then refuses to go any further; they have neither responded to our creative or collaborative ideas, nor suggested any of their own so that we can come closer to agreement. This round of bargaining has taken so long precisely because the District’s team has presented unclear or incorrect data and has been ill-prepared to address issues that are clearly on the table.  We have wasted months sitting at a stalemate because the District wasn't actually negotiating—responding to and countering our proposals—but instead holding fast to proposals that clearly were not going to lead us to a settlement.

 

In closing, we appreciate Jacqueline and Rick’s intent to make a constructive suggestion. We encourage all faculty who would like input into how AFT conducts business to become active union members by attending meetings and becoming part of the union leadership process.

 

In unity,

 

The AFT 1493 Executive Committee

 

 

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last updated: 5-12-06