Minutes of AFT 1521 LACC chapter meeting on November 8, 2004
Adjunct Faculty Membership (Salvador Sanchez and Mattie Moon): A detailed report was submitted by Mr. Sanchez. During our recent drive, we were able to sign approximately 40 new hourly faculty members. Delegates are working with individual departments to get the list of hourly members to identify those who have not been contacted to join the Guild yet. Plans are being finalized to have Coffee Days in Spring semester as well.
AFT Goals 2004-05 (Jane Melton): A full report will be available in December meeting.
Work Environment (Lillian Yamaoka): A detailed written report dealing with current affairs on this subject was made available to the membership.
Department
Chairs Caucus (Dana Cohen):
Staff Development (Rosalind Goddard): LACC Book Program Forum to be moderated by Professor Richard Lewis will be held on November 9, 2004 during 1 and 3 PM. Film Fahrenheit 451 is scheduled to be shown in Faculty and Staff Center on November 10, 2004 between 1 and 3 PM. Ray Bradbury, Author will be coming to Camino Theatre on December 1, 2004 between 11:15 AM and 1:15 PM.
Prop A/AA (Gary Colombo): Prof. Colombo informed the members about the updates on the construction projects. At this time, it is estimated that the Student Center will be over the budget by 60%; there are several options to deal with it. Similarly, the Van De Kemp project seems to be over the budget by 8 to 9 million dollars.
Negotiations (Tammy Robinson): We are in the process of tallying the ballots which were sent out to the faculty earlier. Once the process is finalized, the information will be sent out to the faculty members by email.
President’s Report:
A. Calendar change: There is a proposal in the AFT Executive Board agenda to adopt the proposal which will allow colleges to start the Fall term from September 6 instead of August 21 and end on December 22. The proposal is made on the basis of the assumption that the calendar change will enhance our enrollment by allowing us to capture the students who may have otherwise missed some deadlines. Our chapter president believes that such changes should be made on the basis of some kind of student and faculty survey. We will conduct such a survey and submit the results to the AFT Guild leadership.
B. County Federation of Labor: This body is starting a initiative called “Californians for Community Colleges”.
C. FLSA issue: Carl Friedlander and Velma Butler will meet with the chancellor to come up with some creative solution to the issue of classified employees teaching in the classrooms.
D. Defined Benefits Retirement plans: A constitutional amendment may be coming up to realign all defined benefit plans (except for fire fighters and peace officers) to the defined contribution plans. DC plans are at the risk of gains and losses with the stock market movement.
E. New GASB standard: The pronouncement from the Government Accounting Standards Board will force us to include retiree health care costs in the current period. This will result in the District Office losing some flexibility in its financial reporting and may, in future, threaten the retiree health coverage.
G. December 2004 meeting: Nancy Pearlman and Michael Waxman have been invited to the December chapter meeting.
H. Social Security offset: In response to a question from Prof. Barbara Azar, the chair informed that the bill addressing the issue has been held up in a committee and its prospects are not very optimistic. Due to budget concerns, many legislatures are not willing to support the bill.
6. Announcements:
December chapter meeting: The meeting will be held on December 13 and will be a holiday a party meeting.
7 Adjournment: The meeting adjourned at 3:05 PM.
Braj Tiwari