Faculty,
Negotiations have been ongoing all summer. We have been meeting twice a month for class caps and twice a month for contract negotiations. We are making very slow progress on class caps, but are continuing to meet regularly with the District and communicate regularly with impacted departments. Everyone’s patience and input has been very appreciated. Our next class caps negotiations meeting is scheduled for 7/31.
We are nearing the end of contract negotiations for our 2019-2022 contract. Since the last contract update (week of 7/8), we have:
TA’ed on Article 8 (Class Maximums and Minimums)- this article took a protracted amount of negotiation to come to an agreement. We were unsuccessful in negotiating a percentage based minimum for courses, but were able to hold off attempts to increase the minimum substantially. We were also able to negotiate some clarifications in the language in this article, and codify that online class caps are 42 or the face to face maximum, whichever is lower.
TA’ed on Article 12 (Department Chairs)- we were able to clarify situations related to department chair elections, codify winter chair duties, and get COLA applied to SLO facilitator stipends.
Our next contract negotiations meeting is scheduled for 8/13. At that meeting we expect to TA on Article 20 (Working Conditions) and will be continuing negotiations related to Article 15 (Compensation), Article 16 (Benefits), Article 25 (Intellectual Property), and Appendices B (Workload) and F (Faculty Assigned Time and Stipends). The fiscal situation facing the District is real, and unfortunately is not favorable, making it challenging for us to achieve the gains we were hoping for in this contract, however we are being very mindful of how we craft language to help give us opportunities when we reopen certain sections in upcoming years.
Our team was very disappointed to learn of Dr. Norman’s resignation. Negotiations with her have been productive, respectful, mostly reciprocal, and definitely faster than with any previous District lead negotiator. We are relieved that she will be negotiating on behalf of the District at least until our contract is finalized, but are apprehensive about who might take her place at the table for future negotiations.
Jenny Fererro, M.S.
Professor, Child Development Palomar College
Lead Negotiator, Palomar Faculty Federation Region 10 Co-Catalyst, CCCECE
760-744-1150 x2314 Office: MD-358