December 1, 2003

vol. 45 no. 3

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From the President

I hope that, in the recent words of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, your semester has been and continues to be "joyful, productive, and creative." Here at the PFT, we have been involved in strenuous negotiations with the District regarding pay for part-time office hours and medical benefits, as well as scheduling for counselors. We have also had quite a workout handling a sizeable number of grievances against the administration, as well as defending several faculty in student grade grievances.

Today, however, I want to get at the truth behind a piece of urban lore. The tale of Peralta’s Proposition 13 woes, a myth that the District has been financially punished because it agreed to accept a lower than standard percentage of property tax in return for votes against Proposition 13 in 1978, is just that, a legend. However, it was a focal point at our District’s recent budget workshop, and is used against the Faculty at the bargaining table—the PCCD frequently uses Proposition 13 to "cry poor" to the Union.

A conference that I recently attended was moderated by Richard Dittbenner, an instructor of law at Southwestern College and a state expert on equalization, who said that this legend is a canard that needs to be put to rest. To prove his point, he distributed a sheet on credit revenue per credit of Full Time Equivalent Students (FTES) from the California Community College Chancellor’s Office. It showed that Peralta is the 11^th highest recipient of general fund revenue generated by FTES among the 72 community college districts in the state. Only small college districts received more general fund revenue from FTES than Peralta. Going further, the only other district of the Bay 10 to receive more FTES than Peralta is Marin, which has 1/3 of Peralta’s student base.

In other words, to compensate for lower local revenues, Peralta gets higher FTES revenue from the State. This is called "equalization." Our revenue per student is $390 over the state-wide average; the much larger L.A. district, as an example, only gets $191 over the average.

So why has the District perpetuated this myth of its poverty? Is this just another example of the District’s inability to understand its revenue sources, a constant problem that plagues the budget process? At present, Peralta’s budget is constructed by very few people and is then presented to the Board in a manner that is both confusing and deceptive. In sum, only a select group of people have a clue as to how to read it.

Recently, representatives from the DAS and the PFT started meeting with some District administrators in an effort to create a new budget process, a process that operates on two principles: 1) the budget should be educationally driven, not institutionally driven; and 2) it must be transparent, i.e., one can readily see where all the monies come from and how they are spent. We will keep you informed on the progress of those meetings.

And what does this all mean for the PFT at the bargaining table? The answer is that while Peralta receives the second highest FTES amongst the Bay 10 schools, the Peralta faculty’s total compensation package (including our so-called "Cadillac" health plan) is second from the bottom of the Bay 10.

As the semester ends, two things are crystal clear: the Peralta District needs to 1) change the way it budgets its money and 2) stop spending on administration and centralization and start spending on its Faculty.

Yours in Solidarity,

Michael Mills

EDD Benefits for Part-time Faculty

Don’t forget to apply for EDD benefits on December 22^nd, which is the first business day after the end of the Fall 2003 semester. Though there are some restrictions on benefits due to additional income sources and other factors, as a Peralta employee you are technically unemployed from the beginning of the winter break onward; even if you have a letter of assignment or are in the printed schedule for Spring, your assignment is contingent on enrollment and funding, so you have no real guarantee of continuing employment. If the EDD specialist you work with is not aware of this, direct him or her to the 1989 Cervisi Decision, which outlines the employment status of part-time temporary faculty between semesters. If you are initially denied benefits, contact the PFT office for assistance in filing your appeal, which is a free process and is usually successful.

Click here to visit the EDD Website

Benefits Committee Update Rick Greenspan

There isn’t a whole lot to report this month from the Benefits Committee, except a lack of progress. Just for the record, the Benefits Committee isn’t negotiating your benefits. Instead, it is our job to look at the issues and costs involved in benefit programs, particularly medical benefits, and present various plans and alternatives to the bargaining teams and to the PFT Executive Council and Membership for consideration.

Back in June, the Benefits Committee was charged with investigating plans and alternatives as part of the negotiation process. After nearly three months, the District finally hired a benefits consultant (or benefits broker) so that we could ask local medical benefit providers (such as Blue Cross, Blue Shield, HealthNet, etc.) for information on their various plans.

But before those requests could go out, it took Peralta another month to give the consultant a letter authorizing him to ask Blue Cross for statistics on our existing plan. One of the staff assistants at the consultant’s office spent nearly a week working with Karen Anderson (Peralta’s Benefits Specialist) just to get an accurate census of people currently on Blue Cross and Kaiser, so the companies would know exactly what they were bidding on. Finally, two weeks ago, the consultant was able to send requests to ten provider organizations in the Bay Area for plans and pricing.

Essentially, Peralta is asking each provider for two plans. The first would be an alternative to Kaiser (at approximately the same cost) for new hires whose benefits are limited to the cost of the Kaiser plan. The District promised us this alternative-to-Kaiser plan when the PFT agreed in June that new hires, beginning this Fall, would only be provided with Kaiser medical coverage (or an equivalent) at no cost. The second proposal that we are seeking from each carrier is for them to give us ideas and alternatives for a plan which costs less than our existing Blue Cross PPO, while still providing essentially the same level of service.

Unfortunately, the providers were unable to respond to the requests from our consultant. They said that the Peralta account was "blocked," because another broker had already requested information on behalf of Peralta. Who was that other broker? Well, it turns out that during the summer, Chancellor Harris and the Board decided that Barbara Lee’s nephew (who happens to be a benefits broker in Pomona) should have first crack at Peralta’s benefits business. Essentially, the benefit providers are refusing to provide any pricing to our committee for potential Peralta health plans, until Peralta can make up its mind and choose a single broker. How long will that take? Don’t hold your breath.

The contract extension agreement that we signed last summer committed the PFT and the District to work together through the Benefits Committee to flesh out cost-saving alternatives to our existing medical plans by mid-January. While representatives from the Faculty and Classified unions have dutifully attended weekly Benefits Committee meetings, the District has bumbled, stalled and delayed nearly every attempt by the committee to meet the deadline. Without pointing fingers, I can say that the PFT is not optimistic about quick progress from the Benefits Committee in the next few months.

There’s one important fact that our consultant did find out from Blue Cross. We have known for several years that Peralta could save several hundred thousand dollars per year on Blue Cross benefits if the plan were administered by an independent administrator, instead of by Blue Cross itself. Under that scenario, Peralta would "rent" the Blue Cross network of hospitals and doctors, but our bills would be paid by a different organization. Such a change wouldn’t effect the plan for our members, but it would save us a bundle. So it would be a "win-win" alternative. However, once our consultant began discussing this possibility with Blue Cross, he discovered that Blue Cross has an "all or nothing" policy for current clients. No client using the Blue Cross network of doctors and hospitals and also using Blue Cross to administer the plan (i.e., pay the bills) is allowed to switch to another administrator and keep the Blue Cross doctors and hospitals. If we want to save money by switching the plan administrator, we would need to switch to a different doctor/hospital network at the same time.

We are also looking at alternative Employee Assistance Plans. Those are the plans which attempt to help people in crisis by sending them to licensed counselors. In the long run, an EAP theoretically leads to a reduction in medical costs, because people can resolve their problems before they require medical attention.

Finally, the Benefits Committee has looked at several providers of "Part 125 Plan" service, and will be recommending a new administrator for Peralta’s Part 125 plan soon. A "Part 125 Plan" is a system whereby money which is spent out-of-pocket on health costs (also transportation, child care and elder care) can come out of your paycheck, tax-free. While a number of PFT members utilize the plan at present, a Part 125 plan might become more important in the future if our out-of-pocket medical costs were to go up.

The Benefits Committee will continue to meet weekly into the foreseeable future. But rather than receiving new and important information each week on various medical plan options—as we expected last June—it seems that we are meeting each week mainly to discover what new and unexpected roadblocks have been thrown into our path.

Need Help Paying for College? Joanna Beck, PFT Professional Staff

The California Federation of Teachers is currently accepting applications for the Raoul Teilhet Scholarship for the 2004-2005 school year. The CFT established the Raoul Teilhet Scholarship, honoring an outstanding Federation leader, in 1997. The scholarship program was designed to offer support to high school students whose parents or guardians are members of the American Federation of Teachers (the AFT) and the CFT.

This year the scholarship program has been greatly expanded: wider eligibility, more awards, and more money. In addition to graduating high schools seniors, the CFT program will be open to continuing college students as well. All students must be dependents of CFT members in good standing. Moreover, at the 2003 CFT convention, delegates voted to extend scholarship eligibility to children of deceased CFT members.

Scholarships are awarded on the following bases: academic achievement, financial need, special talents and skills, participation in campus and community activities, and a required 500-word essay. For students entering or continuing in two-year institutions of higher education the awards are $1000; for four-year institutions the awards are $3000. Awards are for one year only. The money to fund these scholarships (and to create the annuity to fund future awards) comes from our local CFT dues. A couple of years ago a Teilhet Scholarship went to the daughter of one of our very own Peralta colleagues! It can happen here again.

Please note that there are now two separate deadlines for applications. The application deadline for high school seniors is January 31, 2004; the deadline for continuing college students is July 1, 2004. Interested? You can obtain an application several ways: contact Joanna Beck at the PFT Office; write or call the CFT, 2550 North Hollywood Way, Suite 400, Burbank, CA 91505, (818) 843-8226; or download an application from the CFT website, www.cft.org.

Remember the Membership Meeting! Wednesday, December 3, from 3 to 5 p.m. at Laney College, Room G-189. Membership meetings are where you exercise your democratic rights in the Union and give direction to your leaders. DON’T GIVE UP YOUR RIGHTS!

 

Don’t Be A Martyr The PFT Staff

We hear stories here at the PFT Office: stories about dedicated teachers, counselors, librarians, and nurses whose dedication works against them. We’ve heard of faculty who did not feel sufficiently assured that a substitute would be provided for their students if they took sick leave, and so continued to work while suffering serious illnesses. We’ve heard of faculty who, rather than see their departments suffer, have performed endless hours of hard work on program development, program review, grant-writing, and accreditation, without being recompensed for their time and labor. We’ve heard of faculty who have felt such concern for their equipment and labs that they’ve performed hazardous clean-up jobs, exposed themselves to dangerous toxins and courted serious injuries, rather than see their college’s labs and equipment damaged by construction and other detritus.

While we applaud the spirit behind these sacrifices, and the nobility and dedication of these faculty, we deplore the lack of institutional stability and security that engenders these situations. Faculty are only called upon to make these sacrifices when the administration drops the ball—and why should the administration make the effort to do its part when it knows it can rely on the noble sacrifice of dedicated faculty to take up the slack?

It is not our intent to vilify our administrators, many of whom are just as dedicated as their faculty colleagues; but it is in the purview of the administration to organize the institution, to correctly allocate resources and assign duties so that everything runs smoothly. It is the responsibility of the administration to make sure that necessary work gets done, that facilities are clean and safe, that the students get taught and counseled, that the libraries and health centers are staffed and functioning. Furthermore, the administration is responsible for the well-being of the employees, for making sure that the faculty and the staff and the custodians and security people are scheduled correctly, paid correctly for their work, and correctly accorded their contractual rights. If faculty take on the responsibility for institutional stability, the administration can not and will not perform its proper function.

We do not, of course, advocate a "that’s not my job" mentality in which faculty do only the barest minimum of what is required of them. In a well-run institution, the employees contribute a good deal; and when confronted with a problem, it is best to be flexible in response. Though we must not do someone else’s work for them, it is certainly commendable to give that person a helping hand. We should certainly volunteer our time and expertise to the institution, but we must not suffer in silence or let ourselves be taken advantage of in the matter of proper payment for work performed.

If you see a problem in your department, don’t charge in and try to fix it alone: involve your dean and your colleagues in that problem and work with them on its solution; if there is work that needs to be done, make sure your supervisor is aware of that need and is engaged in assigning resources and personnel to that work; if an administrator asks you to perform work that is not within the limits of your job description, don’t just assume you will be correctly compensated, discuss your compensation with that administrator before you undertake the work, and if necessary get it in writing.

If there is a situation where your safety or health is in danger, if there are unstable people or unsafe materials in your workplace, you must remove yourself from that workplace until your security and the security of your students and colleagues is assured by the administration. Nobody is served if you or your health are damaged in the service of the institution.

And if you cannot get a response from the administration, turn to your advocates in the PFT. Call us with your workplace problems, especially concerning wages, hours, and working conditions: it’s what we’re here for.

You Never Call, You Never Write… Robert Lew, Jr., PFT Staff Secretary

Have you moved lately? Changed your email address or telephone number? Did you tell anyone about it?

Each time the PFT mails out important documents—usually election ballots or important midsummer newsletters—we get at least fifteen envelopes returned from dud addresses. Each time we send out an important announcement via email, ten to twenty emails are returned as undeliverable. While this is not an unusually large number, considering the size of our membership (currently over 700), it worries us if any of our members are out of the loop.

If you haven’t received anything from the PFT in the mail lately, like the General Election ballots last Spring or the special Summer edition of The Peralta Teacher, we must not have your current address; if you haven’t received any emails from the PFT, announcing updates to the PFT website or important meetings, we don’t have your email address, either. We don’t send junk mail, we don’t send spam, and we certainly won’t sell you out to anyone who will—so why not fill out the Membership Application form below and send it in? Even if you’re a member already, it will be good to know that your information is up-to-date and you won’t miss out on anything that’s going on in your union.

Click here to download a printable online version of the Membership Application Form

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