College Faculty Turns Up the Heat on Pay Dispute

By Ann K. Williams
Staff Writer

April 20 -- After giving their new president a brief lull to get his bearings, Santa Monica College teachers went public this week to try to break a deadlock on their long-standing pay dispute with college management.

After taking out a full-page advertisement in a local paper spelling out their demands for higher pay, the teachers will meet Thursday to decide how to bring negotiations to a head before they go their separate ways during summer vacation.

“We’ve been patient enough,” said Mitra Moassessi, chief negotiator for the Santa Monica College Faculty Association. “There’s no movement.

“We are asking for the same raise that all the rest of the employees are getting.,” Moassessi said, referring to a two percent raise retroactive to January 2005 and a three and a half percent raise retroactive to January 2006 the faculty is asking for.

“Twenty months is a long time to be without a contract,” added Faculty Senate President Richard Tahvildaran-Jesswein. “There’s a human toll. People want to get on with their lives.”

And if a deal isn’t reached by next fall, the teachers will have worked without a contract for two years, Moassessi said.

But management interprets the salary numbers differently. College officials maintain that faculty already got their two percent raise in 2002. College staff and management had to wait until 2005 before they got a similar raise, they say.

“We feel we have a really fair offer on the table,” said Robert Sammis, vice-president of planning and development, who is overseeing the negotiations.

Sammis said college management has negotiated a “whole new contract” and that the only sticking point now is the two percent raise.

“We don’t have the money” in the budget to pay for it, Sammis said, pointing out that Santa Monica College teachers are “among the highest paid in the state.”

But Moassessi questions management’s chronology.

“I can go back and find a date when the staff got paid more,” she said, referring to the 2002 raise. “It all depends on where you define the starting point.

“We are not renegotiating the previous contract,’ Moassessi said.

However the numbers are figured, Thursday’s general staff meeting promises to result in some kind of action.

The union plans to gauge support of possible “job actions” and determine “what they would look like,” according to Tahvildaran-Jesswein. He speculated that the faculty might be in favor of picketing or walkouts.

“I’m not sure what that means,” responded Sammis, when asked about possible “job actions.” While he said picketing has a precedent and is lawful, he warned that any “concerted activity” that leads to “withholding services” would be unlawful and “evidence of bad faith bargaining.”

The one wild card in the impending conflict is the new college president, Chui L. Tsang.

“He’s had to make some tough decisions under the budget deficits, but I think he’s tried to be fair and balance those,” said Michael Hill, vice chancellor for the San Jose/Evergreen Community College District, when asked last December to describe Tsang’s tenure heading San Jose City College.

“He’s always worked with the unions and faculty to make sure as few positions were lost as necessary,” Hill said, noting that Tsang had to cut four or five faculty positions at San Jose.

Faculty leaders are guardedly optimistic about dealing with Tsang.

“We have a new president whom everybody is very pleased with,” Tahvildaran-Jesswein said.

And Moassessi she has found Tsang “more approachable” and “easier to talk to” than past college leaders.

Tsang and the College Board will have to wait until after Thursday’s meeting before they know what they have to deal with.