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AFT Local 1493 COPE Chapter Meeting, 9-24-03

Present: Katharine Harer, Victoria Clinton, Suzanne Russell, Jenny Saarloos, Dan Kaplan, Karen Oleson, Romy Thiele, Teeka James, Joaquín Rivera

Pre-meeting note: George Goth will no longer serve as secretary (retiring?). Teeka James agreed at Dan Kaplan's gentle insistence to take notes for this meeting only (which actually turned out to be two separate meetings). Katharine believes Kathleen Feinbloom of Skyline is interested in serving as secretary.

1) Discussion of Board of Trustees Candidates

Joaquín, Katharine, and Dan explain what COPE is (our union's political action committee), and invited anyone who was not already a member to become one by donating a pittance, which several did. Those who already were members were reminded of such.

Katharine and Joaquín distributed the list of candidates and then reported on their interviews with them at the Labor Council meeting. For the truly interested, Joaquín can give you the blow by blow, but the long and short of it is that the Labor Council after much consideration endorsed Dave Mandelkern, Pat Miljanich, and Karen Schwarz. Here are the candidates.

- Tullio Bertini

- Nylda Gemple

- Hien Kieu

- Dave Mandelkern-the EC endorsed him last term. We recruited him, he's smart, and he reads the Advocate. What else could we ask for?

- Pat Miljanich-incumbent, a lawyer. Curiously, she is mentoring Van Ton Quinlivan's candidacy perhaps to the point of sacrificing her own successful re-election.

- Van Ton Quinlivan-a double MA holder from Stanford who teaches part time at De Anza and who believes there is a cadre of employees known as "permanent part time faculty."

- Karen Schwarz-incumbent. Not wealthy. Generally has been good to us.

Karen raised the important point that the two incumbents have not proven themselves on the issue of taking action against the corruption at Cañada. Teeka suggested we make this a "deal breaking" issue this year, as we have in the past over part time equity issues.

2) Vote on candidates to be endorsed

After some discussion and a ballot vote, COPE voted to endorse Miljanich, Schwarz, and Mandelkern.

3) Report on COPE finances

COPE has $15153.28 in its account.

4) Campaign contributions to endorsed candidates

COPE agreed to allow Katharine, Dan, and Joaquín to decide how much to give to each candidate. They pledged to let Schwarz and Miljanich know that their blind eyes towards Cañada almost cost them the endorsement.

AFT Local 1493 Executive Committee Meeting 9-24-03

Present: Katharine Harer, Victoria Clinton, Suzanne Russell, Jenny Saarloos, Dan Kaplan, Karen Oleson, Romy Thiele, Teeka James, Durella Combs, Nina Floro, Chip Chandler, Tom Diskin, Eric Brenner, Joaquín Rivera

1) Statements from AFT members on Non-Agenda items

- This agenda item is meant to provide space for us to raise issues that don't fit into other items on the agenda. We need more time for discussion, and Katharine says she hopes we can do more of the reporting through email. If this agenda item drags on too long, Katharine, as facilitator, will cut people off.

- Romy respectfully requested, as she and her colleagues are doing at all gatherings, that we stop making derogatory comments and sniggering asides that defame Cañada College. The good, hard working faculty and staff are suffering with their administration, and are sick of being the butt of all jokes. Please qualify your comments by making them specific (e.g. "Cañada's president broke the law when she…"). All present agreed that this was absolutely the thing to do, and regretted all past transgressions.

- Katharine asked if we should put out a courtesy email to faculty that spring break is a week later than it has normally been. Somehow this fact escaped the attention of some EC members when we approved the calendar last year. We agreed to remind faculty, either through email or a boxed reminder in the Advocate, or both. (My notes aren't clear on this action point. Sorry.)

- Nina reported on her work on the District Hiring Task Force that she's been part of. They got the document back from the district office with strike outs-sending candidates forward ranked or unranked and committee involvement in writing job announcements are two examples of district edits-but without explanation or rationale. The Task Force will try to find out what the legal issues are behind these concerns and will continue to push for faculty involvement and control over this important process. Chip added that Skyline has an EEOC committee that looks at all stages of all hiring and that they love it.

2) Minutes of the May 21, 2003, EC meeting

- Approved with noted changes regarding spelling errors and striking out two derogatory asides about Cañada.

3) Co-Presidents Report: Katharine Harer and Joaquin Rivera

- Joaquín has "NO RECALL" buttons. Contact him if you want some.

- Katharine spoke about the "2+2" retirement legislation that has been in the news lately. We need to remind those who ask us that we won't get this benefit (adding two years to both service and age) unless we can successfully negotiate it. This program is costly up front, but may have long term benefits, Joaquín said, but noted that he had not yet read the legislation in detail.

Chip reported that someone she knows talked to Ron Galatolo about it on Opening Day, and Ron indicated that we could not afford this 2+2 program. Ours is the only district with a balanced budget in the Bay 10, thanks to the retirement incentives, according to Ron (and to the firing of 148 part time faculty, casualties of the "No Layoffs" policy, Jenny rightly reminds us).

Dan commented that our faculty retirement incentive ($25,000 out the door) was the highest in district history and one of the highest in the whole state. Dan also said that STRS is reviewing the 2+2 notion because it may be more costly than they first thought.

It was agreed that we need to research this issue and an article must materialize for the next issue of the Advocate. (Not sure who's writing that one.)

- Joaquín reported that the agenda for the 9-24-03 Board Meeting had an item on it regarding the 20% increase in salary for four administrative (district office) positions. These positions are already funded in the $100,000 range. The District Office researched salaries at other districts and found they were not competitive. Joaquín had called Trustee Holober to express concern about the wisdom behind this issue and its timing, noting that AFT had made the same argument about faculty salaries in the past but that we had not received a 20% increase. Students and Connie Berringer also called to complain. The item was removed from the agenda. As a side note, Joaquín said that Ron Galatolo's contract guarantees him a 5% raise each year plus $1000 per month in perks (what those are I don't know).

- Katharine asked about the privatization of the bookstore. Tom Diskin is on the committee review this, and was able to update us. Tom says the process seems good to him-all constituents are represented on the committee, and the discussion and investigation seems thorough, including visits to other bookstores following various models.

Dan warned that this bookstore issue may be the first in a wave of privatization efforts.

Teeka said she hoped service to students remained at the forefront of decision making priorities. Tom reminded us that as with all (?) shared governance, the committee's power was only to recommend, not to decide.

4) AFT Retreat review: Katharine Harer

- We got good suggestions from the retreat. Here are some of them. (We were super short on time at this point in the meeting, so Katharine raced through this list, which appears here only through the grace of her notes. This note taker just couldn't cut the mustard on speed-writing.)

o A lawyer wants to volunteer with us on the issue of intellectual property as it pertains to online classes.

o Katharine will ask the professional development chairs at each campus to work on strengthening the sabbatical guidelines language.

o We should write a statement on ethical standards for administrators.

o We need a higher profile AFT presence:

o A social event (perhaps including the other unions)-Katharine asked if anyone would spearhead this. No one responded. Let her know if you're interested.

o A poster-it was suggested that we have graphic arts students take a crack at something for us. Katharine will contact the appropriate folk.

o More contributors to the Advocate. We'll ask a question in each issue and invite readers to respond.

o We should participate more in voter registration drives. Campus chairs can take on this organization task.

o We need a volunteer pool from the EC. Dan will email us all requesting we identify our strengths and interests in serving.

o Chairs need to get helper/contact people in all divisions so we can be more efficient and effective on our campuses.

o Should we have one Saturday meeting a semester and/or a mid-year meeting in January? There was some discussion here-Teeka was the only one who said she couldn't really do Saturdays (she's not eager to give up time with her son). Dan will email us with potential dates. Please respond to it in a timely fashion.

o We're going to have two faculty surveys-one for FT, one for PT. Someone needs to write a cover letter for the PT survey.

5) Campus Equity Week: Jenny Saarloos

- Jenny is on the case for equity week-the last week in October. She, Suzanne, and Norman Prince got tons of great ideas from their summer Union Leadership Institute conference (?is the name right?). The focus this year is "Teachers' working conditions are students' learning conditions" (the buttons will have this slogan on them). Jenny is still trying to hammer out what our campuses will do. There is a big even planned at Foothill on 10/31, Friday of equity week. If anyone wants to help out or has ideas, please contact Jenny.

End of Meeting 4:50. The rest of the agenda got tabled (I think), because it was now 4:45 and Katharine, the facilitator, and Teeka, the note taker, both had to leave, and without us there was no longer a quorum. (Sorry!)

6) Negotiations update and survey: Joaquin Rivera and Katharine Harer

7) Chapter meetings schedule: Yaping Li and Teeka James, Chip Chandler, Romy Thiele

8) USLAW Labor Assembly: endorsement and delegate selection

9) Grievances: John Kirk

10) District Shared Governance Council: Dan Kaplan

11) Campus Reports

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