Last spring 389 Southwestern College professors and adjunct instructors told the state Public Employment Relations Board they wanted to vote on who represented them.
They got their wish. Ballots were sent by PERB to about 1,300 faculty members and are due Nov. 5.
With Pasadena City College recently breaking from the California Teachers Association and Rio Hondo Community College marshaling to follow in its footsteps, the CTA, which ultimately oversees the college's faculty union, has a stake in keeping SWC under its organization.
SWC professors and instructors have three choices on their ballots, to stay with the Southwestern College Education Association, have no union at all, or switch to an independent union called the Independent Faculty Association (IFA). All balloting will be conducted by mail. Votes will be tallied Nov. 6.
A second vote in the future will ask SWC instructional staff if union payments should be mandatory.
SWC instructional staff pay the Burlingame-based association about $400,000 in fees annually. That is the problem, for a group of professors who call themselves the Freedom Fighters. The dissidents started organizing more than a year ago when the SCEA made union payments mandatory. More than 80 percent of that money is sent to the SCEA's larger associations, most of which goes to the CTA.
Freedom Fighters Frank Paiano and Joan Stroh said the CTA is loyal to K-12 educators at the expense of community colleges. They said that college faculty could get more for less if it was keeping its money local. They are not anti-union, they said, they are anti-CTA.
That the CTA is primarily focused on K-12 is not contested by SCEA President Janet Mazzarella. Almost 90 percent of the association is made up of K-12 members, she said. But, Mazzarella, along with other SCEA members, said that being second priority with the CTA still gives the college faculty better representation than being first priority with an independent union.
Under current representation, full-time faculty pay $97.30 a month and the part-time faculty pay $20.76 a month. The IFA proposes to charge full-time professors $45 and the part-time instructors $5.
Paiano contends that an independent union will create a larger war chest for the college because its dues will not leave the district.
When the money goes to Burlingame it does not disappear, Mazzarella said, and CTA gives the union support that an independent union could not. CTA provides information that is "top notch," trained professionals who know the ins and outs of the community college system, and a team of lawyers that can protect faculty. She said she recently had to call on the CTA for help and has used its assistance many times in the past.
CTA provides training for negotiating, wrote SCEA member and SWC English Professor Andrew Rempt, in a global e-mail. Rempt questioned the representation of the proposed independent union.
"What have any of the members of the IFA done to prepare themselves for stepping into the enormous shoes of the SCEA?" Rempt wrote.
Several SCEA negotiators have attended interest-based bargaining seminars, Rempt said. He questioned how IFA negotiators would compete.
Paiano said that the IFA has an excellent legal firm that has done well against the CTA and has represented other faculty in dealing with districts. The legal firm is well versed in Independent Faculty Unions, which it has been working with for 16 years, he said.
Paiano and Stroh have both worked on at least one SCEA negotiating team and both said they believe they can do a better job negotiating than SCEA, Paiano said.
Rempt said an independent union will not be a strong lobbyist for education legislation in Sacramento and that it was irresponsible for SWC faculty to have other people lobbying for SWC at a state level without SWC's support, said Rempt.
Joan Stroh, SWC chair for computer information systems, said the IFA would not be on its own, but part of a larger organization called the California Community College Independents (CCCI) which has 13 community college districts under it, including the neighboring Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District.
IFA supporters point out the state's split of Proposition 98 to show CTA's loyalty to K-12. Eleven percent of the millions provided by proposition are supposed to go to community colleges, Paiano said. He said that in the last twenty years community colleges have received the proper 11 percent allocation only once. He contends that the CTA never agitated in the college's favor.
"They're working against us," he said.
The California Community College Initiative, which is on the February 2008 ballot proposing to lower community college tuition from $20 to $15 is another example of CTA's overarching loyalty to K-12, said Stroh.
But SCEA officials said the initiative is not as clear-cut an issue as IFA proponents believe. They said that IFA's dragging it into this vote is a "red herring."
Part-time adjuncts at SWC outnumber full-time faculty 3 to 1 and they have the power to swing the vote. A flier found in faculty mailboxes on Oct. 3 read, "We, the part-time faculty of Southwestern College, know that you need our votes in the upcoming PERB election."
Adjunct instructors will vote for that organization which creates bylaws benefiting part-timers, the flier read. It asked for adjuncts to be included on the executive board and negotiating team and be placed on representative councils "in numbers proportionate to the number of part-time faculty on campus." The letter went on to ask for adjuncts to have a piece of shared governance on campus committees.
SCEA currently has a place for one part-time faculty member on the union's executive board, negotiation team and health and welfare committee. SCEA also allows one part-time representative from each of SWC's eight schools to sit on its representative council.
Stroh said that the proposed IFA constitution includes bylaws that would give part-timers 49 percent of the seats on IFA's representative assembly and would allow at least one representative to sit on the negotiation team.
Stroh said the bylaws would also include laws that would push to allow for adjuncts to recieve office space and paid office hours.
Adjuncts have always expressed concerns about health benefits and not having paid office-hours, Mazzarella said. There are adjuncts that want improvements in these areas but the larger part of adjuncts have expressed that they will not use part-time office hours or benefits, Mazzarella said. Rather than focusing on gains in those areas, the SCEA has focused all its attention into getting adjuncts the highest wage per hour, Mazzarella said.
Phil Lopez, SCEA grievance chairman and SWC English professor, said that the SCEA's numbers have shown that they have successfully done this.
Since 1992 SCEA adjuncts have enjoyed an 88 percent increase in starting pay. Long-time adjuncts have shown a 96 percent increase, compared to full-time faculty, which have seen only a 72 percent increase, according to Lopez.
One hurdle the IFA supporters have to overcome for the PERB vote is the SCEA's contract, which was ratified last spring. SCEA leaders said the contract garnered an unprecedented cost of living increase, 11.53 percent, from the district.
Stroh wrote in a global e-mail that the raise was not necessarily due to the SCEA negotiating team but instead due to the college's need to keep up with a state regulation. The law requires community colleges to dedicate 50 percent of its allocations to instructional costs. This year college allocations for instruction sit at 52.6 percent according to SWC CCFS-311 report filed with the state chancellors office on Oct. 10.
Lopez also pointed out the college's part-time standing compared to a Gossmont-Cuyamaca, a comparable college to SWC that is represented by an independent union. He said the SCEA created a step schedule that Grossmont-Cuyamaca does not have. It rewards adjuncts who stay with the college. The part-time starting hourly rate at SWC is $17.08 higher than at Grossmont-Cuyamaca, according to a flier written by Lopez. SCEA receive pro-rated paid benefits compared to Grosmont-Cuyamaca's, which has no part-time benefits, according to Lopez.
SCEA also made a separate salary schedule to benefit part-timers, so that full-time professors teaching overload could not benefit from state money that was allocated solely for part-time use. Most other schools do not have such a system, Lopez said.
"We have these two groups of people, part-time and full-time," said Lopez. "Our goal is to get their salaries closer together, not farther apart."
He said that from the numbers, they have clearly met that goal and that the numbers clearly demonstrate SCEA's commitment to part-time faculty.
Stroh said it is not accurate to use Grossmont-Cuyamaca as a benchmark for an independent union because it is one of the lowest paid independent unions in the CCCI.
Three adjuncts interviewed for this article said they had not yet decided how they would vote.
Carol Stuardo, SCEA adjunct faculty representative and SWC Spanish and English as a Second Language instructor, said she was voting for the SCEA.
Stuardo teaches at another campus, which she chose not to name, where part-time faculty are represented by an independent union. She said she is much more satisfied with the SCEA and that she likes knowing there is proven support, on a state and national level, backing the current SWC union.
"It would be disconcerting to lose their support," she said.
Stuardo said the independent union at her other college charges $5 a month, about one fourth SCEA's part-time monthly dues. SCEA has negotiated a contract that pays faculty $15 to 20 more per hour compared to her independent representatives, she said.
"In one hour of teaching (at SWC)," Stuardo said. "I've already made back my monthly dues."
Carole Ziegler, SWC geography and geology adjunct, said she planned to vote for the IFA to represent her.
"One of the reasons," she said. "Is that I work at another university and I have to pay two unions."
She said she is looking forward to the debate coming to an end so teachers can get back to what they are at SWC for-the student.
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