District ‘takeaway’ demands in negotiations threaten faculty and quality education as CCSF hits “Show Cause” deadline

The District’s contract proposal in current negotiations with AFT 2121 attacks the livelihoods of faculty and the quality of education. It represents a “race to the bottom” for faculty compensation and working conditions all done in the name of “keeping accreditation.” The losers will be faculty and students both. AFT 2121 opposes these demands and calls on all faculty, students, and community supporters to join us in protest at City Hall today, March 14 at 4:00 p.m.

• They insist on ongoing, permanent cuts in faculty salaries (5%) that would push full-time faculty pay to the bottom of Bay Ten community colleges, reversing CCSF’s goal of maintaining salaries above the Bay Area median and of attracting and retaining quality faculty.
• They propose an extra pay cut (10%) for all overload and part-time faculty assignments, while lifting all restrictions on seniority in making assignments, cynically incentivizing the hiring of a low-wage work force to replace higher-paid part-time and tenured faculty.

• They propose eliminating a number of workload restrictions, including the 20-student class size minimum and on overload assignments, which would result in ever-increasing class sizes and over-loaded faculty with less and less time for and access to students. Furthering this shift, office hour and tenure-review compensation as well as sabbaticals—one of the only significant professional development opportunities left—are all slated for cuts or elimination.

• They propose to “flat-line” all employer subsidies to employee healthcare at CCSF, shifting a much greater cost burden on the backs of faculty and erasing years of negotiated subsidies for higher cost plans (e.g. Blue Shield) and coverage for dependents in lieu of salary increases. This despite the fact that CCSF faculty already pay a greater share of health premiums than in other districts, and despite data that shows that the District’s healthcare costs are not significantly higher than other districts.

• They propose pay deductions from all employees to fund a Retiree Health Care Trust Fund—regardless of whether the employee would ever be eligible for retiree health care or not.
• They propose the elimination of reemployment rights for part-time faculty in favor of a provision that would give management the unfettered ability or “authority” to assign (or not assign) classes to faculty.