Contract negotiations began this week on November 1. After the hostile tone of last few years, administration says they want a more congenial and constructive relationship. The District has made several concrete steps in that direction. They have agreed to have open negotiations, which is something they rejected in the last round of negotiations. Faculty and members of the public are allowed to observe. We’ve established ground rules for observers of open negotiations. Also there are no lawyers on the District’s bargaining team for the first time in years! This will save our District money and help stop unnecessary delays. These are both welcome developments.
The thorniest issues in Negotiations, generally Salaries and Benefits will be discussed later in our Negotiations process. The District has not yet provided our union with information we requested about the budget. The District says they plan to be transparent, and we plan to hold them to that. After we have received the needed information we will continue to analyze the budget and develop our salary and benefits proposals.
Next week we’ll be talking about Article 16 about health and safety and Article 17 about leaves, and the District will respond to proposals we put forward on coaches’ compensation and categorical employees.
We will be meeting in MUB 248 (our team will be in 238 from 1 to 1:30)– please RSVP awaid@aft2121.org if you’re planning to go, so we have a rough count. Negotiations session starts at 1:30 and go until about 5pm.
On a sad note, Chris Hanzo took a few minutes at the end of negotiations to acknowledge the work of Cliff Liehe, part-time teacher and union activist, who passed away on October 31. Chris talked about Cliff’s exceptional work as a grievance officer for both part-timers and full-timers as well as the work he did statewide on service credits for part timers, who were only getting half of what they were supposed to. Cliff, changed that and figured out a way to handle the backlog of part-timers who hadn’t been credited fairly. Another part of his legacy was establishing the extremely popular Retirement Financial Planning days at CCSF, with representatives from HSS and CalSTRS. He is in our hearts and will be missed.
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