May 3, 2010
LCCEA Members,
Several quick things:
1. We are scheduling an All Faculty and LCCEA General Membership meeting for Monday, May 10, 3:00 - 4:00 p.m., room TBA, to discuss bargaining, Association business including LCCEA officer nominations, and other items.
2. As previously reported, this Friday, May 7th, is a work day, given the 'furlough day buy back' we agreed to in March, and is being scheduled for in-service activities.
3. The retroactive compensation adjustments for the furlough day buy back are scheduled to be provided with the May 25th payroll, pending final confirmation of the compensation calculations. Once confirmed, I'll provide information on the adjustments so that faculty members wishing to temporarily raise their W-4 deductions to reduce excessive tax withholdings may do so.
4. The adjustments for excessive medical insurance payroll deductions are tentatively scheduled to be provided June 10th.
5. We reached an agreement with the College regarding faculty vacancies this year; the agreement includes:
A. All new faculty vacancies announced this winter and spring will require the College to fill an equal number of contracted positions in the fall, either with permanent or temporary contracted faculty (such vacancies do not include faculty that retire and return as contracted faculty members under the new contract language since such positions are not 'vacant'). Determination of which vacancies would be filled under this agreement will be made using the same criteria used last fall. Thus the position filled could be the position to be vacated, or another one.
B. Should any contracted faculty searches result in 'failed searches' this spring, the vacant "positions will be filled with temporary contracted faculty members and new searches will commence in Fall 2010." Obviously we hope that all searches are successful, but in the event that one or more aren't, the positions must be filled with temporary contracted faculty and the searches will be able to start again in the fall.
C. The Teaching-only positions that we agreed to allow the College to assign this year and possibly next year, now WILL be filled next year (this year twelve such positions were established; next year there will be thirteen). We also agreed that departments "may roll over current assignments, post, or use part-time seniority" to appoint the teaching-only positions for next year.
Together A and B above ensure that the ten searches that the College approved last fall do make a significant start on filling existing faculty vacancies, and that new vacancies and/or failed searches don't undermine this progress.
6. We are very close to resolving the language differences between the Association and the College regarding the 2009-2010 Reopener Agreement. See the current Association proposal, with highlighted areas of difference, at:
https://lccea.lanecc.edu/bargaining/TA-LCCEA041410b.htm
7. The College Budget Committee (comprised of the Board of Education and seven additional members chosen by them) began meeting last Wednesday, and will meet most Wednesday evenings until the 2010-2011 budget is passed. You can find College documents on the proposed budget at http://www.lanecc.edu/budget/1011/index.htm, and the meeting schedule at http://www.lanecc.edu/budget/1011/BudgetCommitteeSchedule.htm. You can get a good sense of how the College is framing budget development this year by closely reading the official 'budget message' at http://www.lanecc.edu/budget/1011/documents/BudgetMessageFY11-042810.pdf We, along with other employee groups and the ASLCC, are being provided 15 minutes each at this Wednesday's meeting (LCC Boardroom, 5:30 p.m. starting time) to respond to the College's proposed budget; additional time will be provided for any committee questions or discussion on our presentation. We thank the Budget Committee for providing such time; this is an improvement on previous years when we were relegated to the three minutes provided any member of the public and no committee members could ask follow up questions, and to last year when we were given 15 minutes but no time for the committee to respond. We encourage faculty members to attend the meetings, especially this Wednesday's meeting. We'll provide a summary of our presentation to faculty by email on Thursday.
8. Finally, OEBB renewal rates were released last Friday and the news isn't good; we'll forward the rates and the OEBB announcement separately. While OEBB plans are still less expensive than the comparable PacificSource plan we used to be on (and classified staff and managers are still on), the savings will be significantly cut next year: the OEBB rate hike for ODS Plan #3, our 'college base medical plan', is 26.7%; the PacificSource rate hike is currently set at 15%. We have good contract language that protects faculty paychecks from the bulk of the rate hikes; the College picks up the first 10 percentage points, and then we split the rest of the rate increases, so the College would pick up 18.35% and we'd pick up 8.35%. Such language is, our OEA attorney assures us, part of the 'status quo' agreement governing how employers legally must treat employees if we are without an agreement when a contract expires. We mention this because the College's 'non-proposal' in bargaining last month proposed to eliminate any employer responsibility for picking up part of the insurance rate hike next year. Given the high rate hikes and the College's 'proposal', this language and its legal foundation is crucial. Your Bargaining Team will communicate more about this later this week, as well as in the All Faculty and Membership meeting next Monday.
Please try to attend the LCCEA meeting. We will have refreshments.
Jim Salt
LCCEA President
P.S. If you are NOT an LCCEA member, please complete the attached form and give it to your department representative (see list at https://lccea.lanecc.edu/DeptReps.htm) or send it to me or any LCCEA officer.