District holds to meager salary proposal, rejects Union’s proposal on load and conference hours

District continues to misrepresent CCSF’s finances
District holds to meager salary proposal, rejects Union’s proposal on load and conference hours

Yesterday, at the bargaining table, we presented our analysis of the District’s proposed budget scenario to justify our compensation proposal, wage restoration and COLA plus a reasonable 12% increase in base pay over 3 years to make up for nearly a decade of wage cuts and lost purchasing power. View our bargaining team member, Doug Orr’s cost of living analysis.

District negotiators dismissed our analysis out of hand, claiming that our proposal would bankrupt the District. Mickey Branca insisted that their budget analysis would be the only scenario they will negotiate over. Their “Budget Scenario” includes a 26% cut to college programs over the next six years. View the Districts flawed budget scenario.

Why AFT’s 3-year salary proposal is reasonable, necessary, and doable

The actual budget figures, finally provided to AFT in recent weeks, show a very different picture from the District’s “doomsday” scenario: 

• At least $20 million is missing from the scenario the District wants to negotiate over. 
• There is a nearly $9 million discrepancy between the budget scenario presented to us and the budget the District already reported to the State. The District’s starting point for its 6-year budget scenario is a $28.4 million beginning Fund Balance on July 1, 2015. But the District’s own “CCFS-311” annual report, filed with the State in October, shows the District’s actual beginning balance to be $37.5 million.
• The District “Budget Scenario” still does not include the one-time $12.9 million refund for State Mandated Costs in District revenues it will receive next year.
• The District underspent budgeted faculty salaries by $6 million last year and by $5.6 million the year before that. The District could restore faculty salaries to 2007 levels just by spending what it has budgeted on faculty salaries. Instead, it has chosen to divert these monies each year into ballooning reserves.
• The current reserve Fund Balance translates to 20% of total expenditures. The State recommends a minimum 5% reserve Fund Balance, while CCSF Board policy calls for 5%-9%; the District administration is essentially hoarding money in a bank account at a critical moment funds should be used to rebuild the college.
• Finally, the District’s projected budget scenario accounts for no growth in student enrollment at all. Meanwhile, the daily enrollment comparison to last year in credit classes for Spring 2016 shows an increase of over 8%! This is the time to invest and grow, not cut and destroy!

Clearly, negotiations over compensation won’t be serious until the District negotiators admit the facts: there is more money available to be negotiated over than they claim. We will not be bullied into accepting their warped version of reality, faculty deserve to be negotiated with fairly and in good faith.

In negotiations, the District went on to:

• Reassert its previous compensation proposal but with 0.67% increase in the “off-schedule” bonus (compare the District’s  and our Union’s compensation proposals).
• Reject AFT proposals on load including improving inequitable lab loads in credit.
• Reject AFT proposals to stop unilateral reductions in pay/load credit arising from curriculum changes to align student units with State regs for faculty teaching conference hours, all Music courses, and others.

We informed them that we are prepared to file another Unfair Labor Practice charge over these unilateral changes to stop them from taking place. We will continue to organize and are prepared to call for another strike vote if necessary. We call on Susan Lamb to get serious about showing faculty respect and prioritizing fair compensation for the workers who make this college run.