April 30

1927: An explosion at the Everettville mine in Everettville, W. Va., kills 109 miners, many of whom lie in unmarked graves to this day.

2012: The Obama administration’s National Labor Relations Board implements new rules to speed up unionization elections. The new rules are largely seen as a counter to employer manipulation of the law to prevent workers from unionizing.

By Renee Fraser

One of the anomalies of the California Community College system is the arbitrary cap in California Ed Code that limits part-time faculty members to a .67 teaching load (10 units) in any one district. No other higher educational system in the country has such a limit. A 60% limit was first established in the 1960s as an effort to prevent the over-use of adjunct labor and to protect tenured faculty positions. Obviously, this was an utter failure, as the number of contingent faculty workers expanded each decade, until now, when approximately half of all courses are taught by a part-time faculty majority. As a result of this limit, part-timers in the California Community College District must commute long distances to cobble together a full load of classes.

Among the many challenges that part-time, or contingent faculty face, health care benefits, or rather, the lack thereof, has been one of the most significant.

​According to Bloomberg, healthcare is the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States, and in spite of the passage of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, in March 2010, the number of bankruptcies attributed to healthcare costs tripled in 2017, while the general rate of bankruptcies fell overall.

​Health coverage for adjuncts was at the center of the Adjunct Issues Roundtable, held Friday, March 23, at this year’s CFT Convention. Members spoke about adjunct healthcare benefits with respect to their own locals. What was revealed in the roundtable was a mix of successes, and, in some cases, a lot of work still to be done.

There was an emergency Board of Trustees Meeting last night at the District Administrative Center. This meeting had a closed sessions from 6-7 pm and an open session from 7-9 pm.

In the abbreviated agenda the closed session item was listed as "Public Employment" President, Ventura College.

At the start of the open session, several students spoke in support for the approval to increase the Student Health Fees for Fall 2019.  These fees are scheduled to increase by one dollar for the Fall.

Dear Colleagues,

The included picture is Pam and her daughter Vanessa. Pam Kennedy-Luna is an instructor at MC and a union member. I sent out an email in January about the Raoul Teihet Scholarship. Years ago, I had applied for my daughter and received the $3,000 scholarship. Pam was the only instructor that applied based on the January email. I know this because the application requires that I sign at the bottom. So we are 1 for 1. I would like to see additional union faculty take advantage of this CFT sponsored scholarship. The next deadline for submission is July 1, 2019. Below is the link. The application has several pages, but I am sure as Pam would attest, the result was worth the effort!

Doug Thiel
President, AFT 1828

https://www.cft.org/scholarships

Negotiations Update #4
April 2, 2019

The district negotiations team was joined by Laura Barroso (Director of District Human Resources). She replaced Mike Shanahan who left the district at the end of March. After introductions, we presented our proposals on Article 4 (Health Benefits), Article 5 (Workload & Assignments), Article 6 (Class Size), and Article 7 (Safety).

Although we were expecting proposals from management, they presented nothing. We hope this is a one-time occurrence since it is not possible to make progress in negotiations without both sides offering proposals.