Letter from the President

Folks:

We’ll be getting minutes out for last Tuesday’s meeting, of course. But I still wanted to thank everybody for attending ONE MORE ENTMOOT when we’re all so busy, and for their lively and useful comments. I learned a great deal about faculty’s ideas and choices, and I was impressed with the way the discussion jumped along. It’ll pay off, in our negotiations this year. And it’s the sort of thing that’ll make our union stronger.

Now I did want to repeat what I hope I said several times: if some of the things I listed as for-sure facts aren’t for-sure facts, let us know—and I will get your fact and your evidence out to everybody ASAP. Same thing with the Health Insurance options—let me, or your Exec Board (me, Irma, Dory Sandy, Barbara), or a member of the negotiations team (Bill, Peter, Dory, Henry), know.

I’d added two options, since our meet:

Drop the health care; put all that money on a much-increased salary scale. Advantages: money, choice, STRS benefit increase. Disadvantages: we’d never get paid health care again; health care increases more than inflation by a considerable margin, so we’d always lose money; higher taxes.
Make dental, vision, life unpaid-by District options. Advantage: focuses bucks on major issue; cheaper costs for District. Disadvantage: dental, vision, life, are cheap benefits with small cost inceases year to year, so cutting them wouldn’t save anything like enough to solve our problem with costs.

As for your Exec Board, we’re going to wedge in a meeting before the end of the semester. Please let one of us know if you’ve an Agenda item, or want us to get into some issue—we’ll be putting out an agenda today or tomorrow.

One last thing was brought to my attention, concerning salary schedule placement—good thing, since ‘tis the season to consider CTLCs and overload money. Apparently there was a bit of uncertaintly concerning the salary figures, graphs, and scattergram Bill Ponder presented two meetings ago.

So let me say first of all that you should know that Bill (without getting paid, I might add) spent a lot of time with Debbie Mitchell (who gets paid, but who works hard to help us out) to get the figures used in BOTH the salary schedule and the scattergram.

Second of all, please remember what we discussed at the CTA/CCA meeting on the matter: the salary schedule is theoretical while the scattergram is actual. The figures may differ, because while both show base salary, we have faculty on 177, 185, and 199-day schedules (if memory serves), and we also have faculty fulfilling various, “special assignments,” either mandated by the Board or categorically funded. Basically it’s this: more work, higher salary.

CTA/CCA’s Alan Frey says it’s essential in negotiations to have both sets of figures, so you can negotiate on salary in ways that attend to what your real people are really making, which is why Debbie and Bill worked so hard to get those numbers done right.

But having brought up salary, let me ask this: if you have ANY reason to think that you’re incorrectly placed for step and column, let me know and I will look into it? I’ll talk to Bill today, too, and see if we can’t get the toad on the road for overload pay.

Let me close, then, by thanking you for all the work. There’ll be more work for the Spring, but because folks have done so much this Fall, we can get our meeting schedule on a regular schedule—one of the issues, of course, for the Exec Board.

Sincerely,
R.M. Robertson

P.S. Please send items for the Newsletter to Ms. Dagnino, who has come roarin’ back, or Linda Martin!