By Nekeita Taylor-Hunley
Published on December 5, 2007
The Pensacola Junior College Faculty Association is set to renegotiate its collective bargaining agreement in the spring of 2008. At the top of the list of priorities is better pay for faculty instructors.
The collective bargaining agreement is a contract between the district Board of Trustees and the faculty. It governs all salaries and working conditions. According to Paige Anderson, chief negotiator for the association and assistant professor of secondary education, the agreement spells out what faculty members are expected to do, what they can be told to do, and how much they are to be paid.
“The CBA gives us something to fall back on if we are expected to do things that we shouldn’t do. For example, if the administration tried to arbitrarily increase the class sizes, there is a limit, the CBA limits that,” Anderson said.
Every year the faculty is allowed to re-negotiate parts of the contract. Every three years all provisions of the contract are opened for negotiation.
The faculty can bargain for, and submit changes they want for improving salaries and the working conditions of the faculty. Suggested changes might include sabbaticals, and sick leave pay-out.
“This year my role is that I am the spokesperson for the faculty, to go in and present to the administration’s representative what we want and to negotiate as best we can, the best deal we can get for the faculty to improve our working conditions,” Anderson said.
Dr. Keith Samuels, director of clinical support services, has been chosen as the negotiator for the college. PJC President Thomas Delaino, at one time, was also a negotiator. “Obviously, as president I can’t be the negotiator,” he said. “Dr. Samuels, who has worked here in various capacities over the years, I asked him if he would take on that responsibility.”
The association will ask for a substantial salary increase during the bargaining sessions. PJC ranks No. 20 of 28 community colleges in average faculty pay. The average fulltime instructor at PJC earns $44,860 in two semesters. The statewide average is $51,057.
“We feel that the administration should be working to pay our faculty and get the best possible faculty members in there, which is only possible if you pay well,” Anderson said.
The association points to a collective bargaining agreement made 15 years ago in which a goal was set to increase pay to put PJC in the top 20 percent of the Florida community colleges for salaries. That would position PJC at No. 5 or 6.
“That was 15 years ago that they made that promise to us and they have done nothing to get us there,” Anderson said. “It’s very frustrating to us and quite frankly we are tired of dealing with that attitude.”
But Delaino says, “It’s a very difficult situation. If you read the way it is written into the contract it says it would be the plan to do that; it wasn’t a promise with a time frame.
“Certainly the fact that it is in [the plan] should be an impetus for us to give our faculty more money. But, again this is a business, and you can only spend the dollars you have, and you have to spend it in a way that is best for the operation for the overall college, and I think we do that, obviously. The board of trustees thinks that we do that.”
Delaino says the recent state legislative cuts have taken a toll on this year’s budget and may impact next year’s budget.
“With this year’s budget they took $1 million away from this institute,” he said. “They gave us back part of it by academic fees going up by five percent and they gave us a little non-recurring funds because we didn’t raise fees in the fall.
“We have been told in January there will be another special session of the legislation and they will cut another $1 million out of the budget. We don’t know that for sure but we have to anticipate it. We have also been told that the cuts next year will be nearly the same as this year.”
The negotiation process is also a source of contention for the association.
The college uses a single negotiator while the association sends a team. At times in the past, negotiations have stalled when the college negotiator must go back to administrators for additional input, said Dr. Cynthia App, association board member and assistant professor of art, department of visual arts coordinator, multimedia technology program. “What’s happened in the past is they’re really not sending anybody to the table who has the power to bargain. We send in an entire team that can range from anywhere between six and eight members on the bargaining team,” App said.
But Delaino is comfortable with the negotiation process.
“We elect not to have a negotiating team,” he said. “We will bring other parties to the table when and if it is appropriate – if we need somebody there to represent some particular aspect of the college – but most of the time the chief negotiator talks with me, talks with the rest of the administration, works with the academic administration primarily to talk about issues that may need to be discussed and negotiated, so that he has the position of the college when he goes to the table.”
All faculty members are covered by the agreement whether they are a member of the faculty association or not. Currently, about half of the 220 fulltime faculty belongs to the association. The more people who are members of the association, the more powerful the faculty can be when it is time to bargain, Anderson said.
Full-time faculty members are able to join the union for one percent of their annual salary. That is the cost for operating the union, basically union dues.
“A lot of people, I think get scared away from joining the union, because they look at the one percent and think, ‘Oh geez, that’s a lot of money.’ You make $40,000 and that’s going to cost $400,” App said.