Welcome to Fall 2022: Celebrating our Accomplishments
We wanted to thank you for your continued or new support for the MSJCFA! Here is a quick overview of your MSJCFA's accomplishments since the pandemic started.
Tech Stipend: After repeated negotiations with administrators, your negotiation team was able to get your working-at-home tech stipend from $250 (admin’s offer) up to $2500!
MOUs: The pandemic engendered various MOUs the negotiation team was tasked with working on. They’ve managed to keep non-teaching faculty’s 60/40, as well as allowing FT faculty working at home 100% if needed or okay with the department.
Monthly Meetings: The union began holding monthly listening hours (which will start back up again!) to gather members’ thoughts, questions, and concerns.
Chair Advocacy: The union has heard your concerns about chair workload, as well as feeling forced to work over summers. The union had deployed multiple surveys to all department chairs in order to work on negotiating chair compensation. Negotiations are on-going, so look out for updates this fall.
Winery Social: We had a large turnout at this fall’s back-to-school winery social co-hosted with the Academic Senate. We signed up new members, raffled off prizes, and enjoyed each other’s company. We have more events in the works this year, so watch for emails!
Personal Communication: At convocation, we began collecting non-MSJC emails and phone numbers. This will be important to keep y’all updated, so if you didn’t provide these, be sure to email them to anyone elected to the MSJCFA to ensure you stay up to date.
Website Creation: We launched our website to keep folks up to date with important information, as well as provide access to information such as our contract and more. Check it out!
Membership: We have new members joining every day, and recently, we won an award for the largest membership increase!
It's not too late to join: https://join.cta.org/
If you have any questions or need anything, do not hesitate to reach out to any one of us!
Karen Cranney, President
Lorraine Slattery, Vice President and Grievance Officer
April Vrtis, Secretary
Roy Mason, Treasurer and Grievance Officer
Peter Zografos, MVC Rep
Lauren Springer, MVC Rep
Elias Escamilla, MVC Rep
Truc Hamai, SJC Rep
Tami Smith, SJC Rep
Nick Zappia, SJC Rep
Faculty Association Zoom Forums-Come Join Us!
The Faculty Association Campus Representatives are hosting some open forums over Zoom in the next few weeks. These forums are provided as opportunities to gather feedback and hear your concerns. Loose agenda items include:
Return to campus taskforce (Lauren and Nick are FA reps on the taskforce)
How the FA can support you
Negotiations
Membership Questions—Grievance processes
Lauren Springer, Taylor Baldwin, and Elias Escamallia are hosting a session on Monday, March 1st from 12p.m-1p.m. https://msjc-edu.zoom.us/j/99943943575
Tami Smith, Bertha Barraza and Nick Zappia are hosting two sessions:
Monday, March 1st from 1:30p.m.-3:00p.m.
(Zoom: Meeting ID: 935 6751 4225 Passcode: 185695)
Friday, March 5th from 1:00p.m.-2:30p.m.
(Zoom:Meeting ID: 938 1634 4286 Passcode: 660563)
Better Together
Welcome to the MSJC Faculty Association blog space. This space has been created for FA members to share their thoughts and ideas on all matters related to working conditions and contractual obligations.
We are entering contract negotiations with the District this month and need our members to provide input on the areas of the contract they would like changed. Salary increases and improvements to health and welfare benefits always top this list—and we know in a time of fiscal crisis these are harder to negotiate—and we know there are other, perhaps just as important areas of the contract that may need attention. We have heard much talk lately about faculty preparation to teach online and whether these requirements should be specific, mandated requirements or remain as recommended preparations. This would be a change to working condition and require negotiation. We have also heard a call for more training on equity implementation practices in classroom—should these be paid opportunities or part of our continued professional practice? Should we be limited to teaching a certain percentage online and a certain percentage in person (when we resume post-pandemic?)? What about the representative duties—are you all happy with the way those have been defined and distributed? And then there is Chair duties and responsibilities….the job that seems to grow in scope by the day and yet the compensation shrinks with every new interpretation of how the “load” is calculated. If anyone has solutions to that one….well, we really want to hear from you! Each of these issues are complex and we recognize the needs are as individual as our membership. We would love to have you as partners in this journey through the negotiation process and tell us your top needs and solutions….recognizing that we can’t always get what we want.
In solidarity!