Contract Currents

Faculty Voices

COPE-ing

Once upon a time, or so the elders say, CCFT and the District agreed on faculty salary increases in advance, for the full three years of a contract cycle. As for benefits, it was understood that the District would continue to pay in full for the lowest cost health plan. That time is long gone.

What happened? First, health care costs went haywire, with a string of unpredictable double-digit increases. Then the state budget imploded, and instead of dealing with the deficits directly, politicians responded with stunts and magic thinking. They delayed payments to Cabrillo and many other institutions, and used unrealistic budget numbers that resulted in surprise mid year corrections. At this point, not only is it impossible to plan three years in advance, we still don’t even know what our real budget was for last year. And the $12 million or so in unrestricted funds that supposedly make up our Net Ending Balance includes $10 million in state IOU’s, causing Cabrillo to borrow money at a cost of $100,000 a year just to insure we have the cash to cover basic expenses.

Negotiations over salary and benefits slipped into a not-very-useful routine: every year, our health insurance provider (SISC) would announce cost increases and possible plan changes at the end of spring semester. We would have to quickly negotiate to be able to get everyone enrolled in plans at the beginning of fall. The Union would tell the District they wouldn’t pick up any of the increases because our salaries were slipping. The District would concede, and everyone would agree to talk about benefit solutions sometime in the future when we had more time. Then when salaries were on the table, the District would say, “Sorry, we put all the money into benefits,” and the Union would come away with little or nothing. The District was unhappy about the ballooning benefit costs, and faculty members were unhappy with the lack of salary increases.

It’s clear that, right now, there is no money to add to our salaries. In fact, if Proposition 30 doesn’t pass, we will take a salary cut and some programs may be in danger of elimination. It’s a good time to rethink how we negotiate our compensation package so we can be prepared to get our fair share when revenues return. What we have chosen to do is negotiate the total package each year, with all our benefits and salaries on the table at the same time.

Negotiating total compensation has two main elements--creating a formula, or at least a set of standards, that will guarantee faculty a rising share of whatever money flows to the College; and asking faculty to be more involved in deciding where to put the money that does come our way. The District has agreed to this approach because it helps build more predictability into the budget process, and because it will help faculty become more aware of how their health care dollars are being spent. CCFT wants to set goals for getting our salary ranking back up into the top quarter of the state, and to get faculty members to think about the pros and cons of continuing to put money into health care instead of salaries, particularly the impact that decision has on pensions.

A total compensation formula will take a lot of work to create, because it will have to take into consideration such factors as meeting our enrollment cap, hiring enough new tenured track faculty to satisfy our state mandated Faculty Obligation Number (FON), and bringing in enough adjuncts to cover added classes as we rebuild programs that have suffered major cuts. That will be one of the major tasks as we head into negotiations for a new three year contract. And as revenues return to the College, CCFT will have to be vigilant about making sure the District keeps it promise to raise our salaries.