College Board Okays New Hires, Maintains Layoffs

By Joshua Wachtel

Oct. 2 -- Amidst protest rallies and withering critiques, the Santa Monica College Board of Trustees Wednesday night let stand its previous decision to lay off 18 non-teaching employees, while unanimously approving the hiring of 38 limited-term employees.

Wednesday's meeting came one day after the California School Employees Association rejected the board’s "last, best and final" offer to thwart the layoffs by reducing work hours and pay.

The union -- which opposed the deal because it would allow the board to set employee schedules -- has until October 6 to accept the offer and can continue negotiations in collective bargaining, said Robert Sammis, SMC's vice president of human resources.

The union, however, accepted the board's requirement that it retain the right to lay off more workers, which the union wants the board to use it as a last resort.

CSEA President Philip Hendricks saw the combination of continued layoffs of union employees and the hiring of temporary non-union ones as “classic union busting.”

“It was layoffs, layoffs, layoffs all the way down the line,” Hendricks said.

The board, he noted, would be able to subsequently lay off more people even without going “through the trouble of taking the appropriate actions to cut costs.” In addition, the board could adjust the scheduled times people would work at will.

The ability to change schedules “at will” was a deal breaker because it imposed hardships on employees with other jobs, and childcare, union representatives said.

“That’s the amazing thing," Hendricks said. "Even people who were waffling (saying), ‘Oh, maybe we should give them a chance,’ as soon as we said they would be able to change their schedule they said, ‘Forget it.’ They wouldn’t go anywhere near it.”

Gloria Bando, reading a prepared statement with a halting and strained voice, said she was bumped from her full-time job to a part-time one with fewer health benefits because of the layoffs.

“I am a breast cancer survivor,” Bando told the board, adding that the loss of income and benefits would prevent her from continuing with her follow-up care.

Students also said they were feeling the fallout from the layoffs. Michal Burk’s teacher has taken leave, and Michal worries that her class will be cancelled if there is no replacement. If that happens, she would lose her financial aid by falling below 12 units.

Transparency was also an issue, and several board members wanted to have line item amounts for payments made listed in order to increase accountability and show responsibility.

Union advocates argued that while employees were being laid off in an effort to save $850,000, the college has paid $4 million to PeolpeSoft, which provides consulting and programming that would increase efficiency and service. (A report detailing the approval and payment is being drafted by the president’s office.)

It was “money that has been wasted on software that has never been implemented here at Santa Monica College,” said union vice president Barbara Siegel.

It was a perfect example, Siegel said, of the need for shared governance. If the people using it were involved, she said, they “could separate sales hype from substance.”

The board Wednesday night also defined criteria for appointing a new trustee to fill Patrick Nichelson’s seat left vacant by his resignation.