AFA Goals & Progress Recap
Members of the Council, Cabinet, and Negotiating Team met on Saturday, October 27, for AFA's Fall 2012 Retreat. Our first order of business was to review goals that we'd set during our Fall 2011 Retreat, specify where we've made progress and where the ongoing work lies, and identify new tasks for the organization to work on during the current year—and into the future. While we have sent information about all of these accomplishments to the Membership over the past year, we know that faculty members' busy schedules make it difficult to read every email we send. With that in mind, we thought that we'd put it all in one easy-to-access list of highlights from the last year.
AFA has made progress on all of the following goals that we established last fall:
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Lab/lecture equity. A Workload Task Force has completed its study, and AFA and the District are currently working on making progress on lab/lecture equity at the negotiating table. Currently, for each hour in the lab, a faculty member earns 67% of the load credit that a faculty member earns for one lecture hour. Improving our lab equity rate will help departments compete for the strongest candidates during the hiring process.
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Article 16. Chaired by AFA's VP for the Santa Rosa Campus Mike Starkey, the Article 16 Committee is winding up its work of reviewing Departments' Hourly Assignment Procedures (HAPs) for Contract compliance. Article 16 is also currently "open"—that is, AFA and the District have agreed to engage in negotiations on revisions to the article.
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Budget information. Last year, AFA created its Budget Advisory Team, headed by Negotiator Will Baty. This Team researches the District's financial statements and accounts with the goal of providing accurate, full information about the District's finances to the Negotiations Team.
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Advocacy for California Community College faculty at the State level. For the last two years, AFA has sent faculty to March in March and also provided financial support for students who traveled to Sacramento to participate in this important event.
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AFA was involved in phone banking to help pass Prop 30.
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Last Spring, the AFA Membership voted to approve a slight dues increase to provide the financial support for our becoming a "Contract Member" of FACCC, the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges. FACCC is the only statewide organization that advocates solely for the state's community college faculty. Our Contract Membership strengthens FACCC's voice in Sacramento by providing financial resources and increasing their membership numbers. Also, our Contract Member status entitles SRJC to more support from FACCC, right here at home. During the past few weeks, FACCC has helped SRJC Associated Students in their voter registration drives, arranged for Wes Chesbro to talk with SRJC faculty at a recent Council meeting, and provided hands-on help to several SRJC adjunct faculty who were struggling with EDD issues.
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AFA supported the candidacy of Sharon Hendricks for the community college seat on the CalSTRS Teachers' Retirement Board.
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As a member of California Community College Independents (CCCI), SRJC has contributed with its member schools to hire a part-time advocate, David Balla-Hawkins, who works on our behalf in the Capitol, meeting with legislators, having input on proposed legislation, and keeping CCCI abreast of events in Sacramento. CCCI is comprised of independent faculty associations from thirteen Community Colleges in California and represents one quarter of community college faculty in the State.
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Include adjunct faculty in future AFA leadership. AFA created a dedicated adjunct seat on its Cabinet, which is currently filled by Lynn Harenberg-Miller, adjunct faculty member in the Communications Studies Department; our Vice President for the Santa Rosa Campus is Mike Starkey, adjunct faculty in Computer Studies. As always, adjunct faculty have a minimum of two (of a total of six) seats on the Negotiating Team. These seats are currently held by Lara Branen-Ahumada, adjunct faculty member in Kinesiology, Athletics, and Dance, and Theatre Arts, and Lynn Harenberg-Miller. Mike Starkey is also currently serving as an elected representative on the FACCC Board of Governors.
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Strengthen AFA's working relationships with the District and the Board of Trustees. For the first time—and thanks to the initiative of Warren Ruud, Chief Negotiator—AFA leadership is working directly with members of the Board to discuss the enormity of our fiscal challenges. Board members have also participated in recent voter registration events on both the Petaluma and Santa Rosa campuses. We continue to engage our Administration in conversations about salaries, benefits, and all manner of working conditions, discussing issues of State funding and revenues, grievance issues, and safety, among others. We have monthly meetings with Dr. Chong, SRJC President, and, Jane Saldana-Talley, Vice President of the Petaluma Campus; we meet at least twice a month with Mary Kay Rudolph, Vice President of Academic Affairs. Additionally, we have also worked with Karen Furukawa, Vice President of Human Resources, to successfully resolve grievances, as well as EDD issues for adjunct faculty whose unemployment benefits claims were denied.
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Active communication with AFA Membership. Terry Mulcaire, Publications Coordinator, has increased the frequency of communication through our newsletter, Update. We are also using Update to provide primers on many of the questions that faculty have about the work we do—for example, how does the negotiations process work, and which issues is AFA currently working on? We will continue to use Update to provide important information and context and to refer our Membership to outside resources (such as FACCC's excellent website).
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Chair and coordinator workload equity and compensation. A negotiations Task Force recently completed its study of workload for chairs and coordinators. As many of you are aware, a number of faculty members have been putting a lot of hours into administrative tasks in their departments, often receiving little or no compensation (reassigned time) for this work. Also, as departments have evolved over the last couple of decades, chair workload in various departments has increased and decreased. The existing formula used to determine the amount of reassigned time that chairs receive needed re-thinking to reflect the actual work that chairs do now; and we also needed to take into account the work of coordinators. After the Task Force completed its study and proposal, Warren Ruud, AFA's Chief Negotiator, presented the proposed new formula to the Department Chair Council. The proposal is now going to the AFA and District negotiating teams.
AFA continues to work on the above issues as well as others, and we are committed to keeping you informed as the story unfolds. As always, please contact us if you have questions or concerns, or better yet, join us at a Council meeting.