AFT Serves Bailey with Lawsuit as District Inaction Fails Students

Last week, AFT 2121 served Interim Chancellor Bailey & the District with a lawsuit for violating the rights of full-time faculty and failing to meet the needs of our students. Layoffs are only legal when justified, and many of Chancellor Martin’s were not: they were baseless, arbitrary, and left thousands of students locked out of the classes needed to advance their educations.

AFT has provided Interim Chancellor Bailey with overwhelming evidence of the enrollment demand in departments such as English and Chemistry. But he has refused to act to restore those services in a lawful manner, and the result is a preventable lawsuit and a persistent failure to fulfill our mission.

This failure was on full display last week. For the past year, Chemistry students, faculty, and AFT have raised the alarm about dire shortages of seats in Chem 32 and 40 that leave hundreds of students every semester locked out of these gateway courses to vital programs in healthcare and the sciences. AFT’s enrollment team has made the crisis in Chemistry very clear to Bailey and Interim VC of Academic and Institutional Affairs David Yee, and they have responded with half-measures and excuses.

And Thursday at the Board Meeting, Interim VC Yee and Interim Chancellor Bailey acknowledged the crisis (a testament to our community’s ongoing advocacy), but presented it as breaking news. And, adding insult to injury, they paired their belated urgency with new excuses.

After dragging their feet all year, Interim Chancellor Bailey and VC Yee blamed a belated hiring process for full-time Chemistry faculty–a process they chose–and the Full-time Faculty Position Allocation Committee (FPAC) for the uncertain fate of staffing in Chemistry. Both of these excuses are entirely within administrative control: Bailey and Yee had the power to hire in the fall and FPAC answers to the administration (i.e. it’s not a shared governance space). Our community deserves more than shallow excuses.

City College is at an important inflection point. We are close to welcoming a whole host of new leadership, enrollment demand is increasing, and we can finally see the way to full recovery from the attempts to shut us down more than a decade ago. We need leaders with the courage and vision to break from old, bad habits, to admit the mistakes of previous administrations, and make the investment in our students and in our future, so we can best serve this city.

STRS restoration grievance settled, checks being issued

As early as last week, some faculty have begun receiving off-cycle checks from the college. These payouts are a result of a grievance AFT 2121 filed in Spring 2024 with the District over their implementation of the restoration of our salary concessions from 2021/2022.

In December 2023, your bargaining team had negotiated what was a win-win agreement that saved faculty money in their restoration payments and also saved the District approximately $1 million. Instead of implementing this agreement, John Al-Amin’s budget office under the direction of Chancellor David Martin chose to violate it by treating your restoration as a standard salary increase with a Defined Benefit rate rather than a supplemental payment with a lower deduction. This action harmed the college’s budget and your paycheck.  

AFT 2121 has won a settlement with the District, and they are now correcting the issue. To be clear–this is a correction of incorrectly reported concessions repayment to STRS. Because of the interaction with STRS, the payouts for faculty are happening in various ways.

Per the MOU, the District’s Payroll Department is currently in the process of paying faculty members in the 2% at 62 benefit tier (joined CalSTRS on or after 1/1/13) and the non-members (cash balance) group. These payments are currently happening via off-cycle checks and should be completed by the end of March 2025. CalSTRS will be paying faculty in the 2% at 60 group directly later this year.

How do I know the amount is correct? You should be receiving the difference between your Defined Benefit Program Supplement rate and the 10.25% applied to the gross amount of your salary restoration in your 4/30/24 paycheck. If you are in the 2% at 60 CalSTRS benefit group, your DBP Supplement rate is 8%. If you are in the 2% at 62 group, it is 9%.

Your AFT contract enforcement team has achieved another win for faculty–a correction of accounting mistakes by our previous administration that cost both faculty and the college. Your union continues to protect your contractual rights, supporting and strengthening the faculty community and working for the college we and our students deserve.

Reminder: Delegate Assembly tomorrow, Tues 2/18, 3-5 PM

A reminder that your union’s democratic governing body, the Delegate Assembly (DA) will be meeting online Tuesday. All members are welcome to participate! Among other things, we’ll be discussing ghost students and the impact they are having on faculty and enrollment at the college. Agenda available here.

You can use the same link as for other DA meetings – follow this link from your computer or smartphone. Meeting ID: 810 1671 8065, Password: 783119.