SJDCTA responds to the Lodi News Sentinel...

The Lodi News Sentinel published an OpEd this weekend.
The SJDCTA Crisis Committee responds:

We won't claim to be a disinterested party since we've been part of the SJDC faculty for at least seven years, and some us for more than twenty years.

The anonymous editorialist makes some good points. There are people losing their jobs in a down economy. We are thankful for having job doing something we enjoy doing. But the editorialist's advice that we should feel "lucky" to have a job appears to be his polite way of telling Delta teachers that they should be abjectly grateful to have job. The implication is that the teacher's union should not presume to bargain with the college and simply accept what it offers. Unfortunately for the Delta’s leadership (and possibly, the editorialist), collective bargaining is a right of employees--a right protected by state and federal law. We do congratulate
him for exactly catching the tone of the district bargaining team. Perhaps the source of his facts, too?

We'd like to try to add some balance. First, the editorialist made no attempt to contact the teacher's union to see if there might be another side to his one-sided analysis of the current labor conflict. So let's look at the salary offer the editorialist thinks is “realistic”: A one percent raise for 2007-2008 with no retro-active pay while gasoline and food prices have gone up sharply and faculty members with dependent children have been have been paying $400-$500 a month for insurance beginning in October of last year. In 2008-2009 and in 2009-2010, COLA
plus .5% (a half of one percent). COLA is expected to be zero for 2008-2009 and may well be zero for the next year. The .5% raise is dependent on a 2% growth in enrollment and on the state funding payments for enrollment growth. The state may suspend payments for enrollment growth next year and possibly the year after. These last points are mentioned but muted by the editorialist.

So the district's offer, which the editorialist thinks is realistic, is essentially: no raise for 2007-2008; possibly 1% for 2008-2009 (since that's the earliest the district’s offer of 1% could possibly go into effect; probably no raise for 2009-2010. So in effect, the Delta teachers are being offered a 1-2% for three years while food, fuel, and medical insurance premiums are on the rise. Apparently, the editorialist believes that one of the most productive community college faculties in the state should accept a sizable pay cut over the next three years. A significant
pay cut--a sharp decrease in actual buying power--would be the result of taking the “realistic” advice editorialist has offered. Given the editorialist's view of “realism”, he must believe we will still be able to recruit high-quality new faculty by offering them large class loads and declining salaries and benefits. We'll clinch the deal by reminding them they're lucky to have a job at all.

The editorialist also misses other important points. All the other employee groups at the college were offered a 2.5% salary increase 2007-2008. We have been offered a “realistic” 1% non-retro-actively. The figures the editorialist cites for the union's bargaining position are out of date. They do not reflect the current position of the union, and he or she has made no attempt to talk to the union about more recent bargaining. The district's original offer was zero for 2007-2008, COLA for 2008-2009,
and COLA for 2009-2010 (essentially, three years of zero)--no mention of that by the editorialist.

The editorialist's comparison to CSU Professors ignores an important point. Delta instructors teach more classes and have larger student loads. In fact, over the last four years, Delta teachers have had some of the largest teacher-student ratios in the state community college system, consistently 20% or more above state averages. The teachers agreed to carry heavier loads in exchange for base salaries within the top 10 for the system.

Another point the editorialist misses is that the college received a 4.53% cost of living adjustment (COLA) from the state this year to go along with record or near record income and record reserves. Other community college districts have passed along their COLA to their staffs for 2007-2008 with retro-active pay. Recently, Yosemite CCD made the decision to pass along its COLA to its faculty. Delta College has chosen not to. The editorialist would call that “realism.”

In addition, the teacher's union believes the college has violated contract language requiring a salary increase based on a 16-member comparison group of colleges and has filed a complaint with the Public Employees Relations Board (PERB). PERB will sometime in late summer or early fall. Even the editorialist must believe that contracts freely entered into by both sides should be enforceable.

Finally, the editorialist is quite cavalier about the grand jury investigation of the board of trustees and upper management at the college. Neither he nor we know how the grand jury’s report will read. But even the accreditation team that visited the college this spring advised the Board of Trustees to develop an ethics policy for itself and then follow it. Of course, matters of this sort are of no interest to the
editorialist.

SJDCTA Rebuts the Lodi News-Sentinel here