Raises for Community College Staff?

The San Mateo County Community College District Board of Trustees approved a measure that would review salaries and maybe boost them for classified, professional and supervisory staff despite the prevailing atmosphere of budget tightening.

The measure, approved on Aug. 24, is the result of a salary comparison of positions such as bookstore manager, director of library services and manager of compensation & benefits, with those of nearby districts. The intent is to provide a basis for comparable salaries and increases.

“This group has never had a classification study,” said Kathy Blackwood, interim executive vice chancellor for the district. “Out of fairness, we really need to address this group.”

The district faculty, meanwhile, have their salaries reviewed when negotiating their contracts -- generally, every two or three years. The current faculty contract expired June 30, 2009.

A tentative new faculty contract recommended by Local No. 1493 of the American Federation of Teachers, includes no salary increases or even cost of living adjustments, said Elizabeth Terzakis, Cañada chapter co-chair of the AFT.

“We were told repeatedly that there is no money,” said Terzakis. “It means faculty is taking a de facto pay cut. I don’t begrudge them a raise. They deserve it.”

Many, including the bookstore director, work hard to serve students, she said.

“What I do resent is being lied to," she said.

But Blackwood said the salary increases for some staff amount to only $54,000 in a budget of several million dollars -- a perspective that did not appear to mollify faculty members.

“Faculty salaries are reviewed every time there’s a new contract,” said Margaret Hanzimanolis, former part-time faculty organizer for the AFT. “Are they raised? No.”

Part-time faculty in the district are paid notably less than in neighboring districts, Hanzimanolis said. About 134 part-time faculty had been jettisoned, and only 30 positions hired back recently.

“If you are in a collective bargaining unit, then they seem to want to punish that,” said Terzakis of the trustees. “It’s like, if you’re not in a union then you can have a raise, but if you are then you can’t.”

Not so, said Barbara Christiansen, director of community and government relations for the district.

"Classified supervisors have never had a review,” she said. "It was an issue of equity."

Blackwood would not comment on the ongoing faculty contract negotiations, but she did say no Measure G parcel tax funds would be used to fund raises resulting from the new reviews.

Voters approved Measure G in June 2010, a $34 annual per parcel tax that raised about $6 million per year.

The money would be found somewhere in the budget one way or another, Blackwood said.

In the name of full disclosure, this writer’s fiancé is a part-time College of San Mateo faculty instructor.