FAQ

While this new MOU results in a decrease in HD pay for some faculty, it offers pay stabilization, clarity, and assurance that base pay does not depend on an earmarked allocation that could be changed or eliminated. It expands who is eligible for HD funds, and allows the earmark to be distributed to more widely across FT and PT faculty. Please see the “Negotiations Team Recommendation” page for a full explanation on why we think this is the best deal we could get. 

Arbitration is a procedure in which an impartial arbitrator makes a final and binding decision concerning a labor-management dispute. This creates a scenario where a third party interprets whether the 2021 MOU is still in effect—and if so, what it means--and we will be bound by that decision. 

The District has made very clear that it believes the 2021 MOU to be expired and financially impossible to maintain. Without ratification, and a replacement MOU in place, the District is likely to proceed as though there is no MOU. HD pay would most likely not resume; the $2 million HD earmark would be returned to the state , and faculty who have in past received HD pay would see further pay cuts, as the 4.5% wage reopener from 2023 that the new MOU extends to HD programs (and which has already been applied to pay starting in Fall ‘26) would be reversed. 

At that point, AFT could pursue a legal fight to reinstate the 2021 MOU by seeking arbitration. The outcome of a legal fight cannot be predicted. Here are some possible scenarios:

●      AFT could win, temporarily preserving the 2021 MOU until our next negotiations for a full CBA.

●      The District could win, resulting in faculty in HD programs losing all HD pay without the opportunity to receive the 4.5% wage reopener.

●      An arbitrator could find some “middle ground” (for example, by finding that the 2021 MOU is not expired, but HD pay must be capped at the earmark amount). There are a wide range of “middle ground” outcomes that would likely produce a net reduction to faculty pay. 

In any of these scenarios, faculty would not have an opportunity to vote on the outcome, and the arbitrator’s decision would be binding, with no opportunity to appeal. The Union would demand to bargain a replacement MOU, but we’d be back where we started at the beginning of this process

No. If no agreement had been reached, the District would have cut pay at the beginning of Fall quarter, and it would have been a bigger cut; the District intended to return HD faculty pay to 2021 rates until a new solution was reached. Over the course of negotiations, the union managed to bargain for the 4.5% wage reopener for HD faculty, which reduced the pay cut that would have occurred had SCD disclaimed the 2021 MOU without any replacement in effect. 

Yes, some faculty previously receiving HD funds saw an increase in their base pay for Fall 2026 as a result of the Union’s agreement to allow the MOU to go into effect pre-ratification – particularly those who were hired after the original MOU was implemented in 2022 and before 2024. For these faculty, they may see an increase in their pay of 4.5% because the new MOU secured this increase for all faculty (except nursing) that were part of the district in 2023. If the MOU is not ratified, then the agreement between AFT and SCD that the 2023 4.5% pay increase be extended to HD faculty who did not originally receive it will no longer be in effect—and AFT fully expects that the District will reverse this pay increase. 

Eligibility will be determined each Spring quarter in the agreement management meeting with SCD. As stated in the MOU TA, it is our intention to distribute the funds to as many faculty as legally possible. The two lists mentioned in the TA could cover almost all of our programs in the colleges. Here is the language from the tentative MOU:

These funds will be distributed to HD-fund-eligible faculty based on the most recent Occupations in Demand (OID) list provided by Washington State and the Skills Gap List provided by SBCTC. During the Spring agreement management meeting of each year, AFT and SCD will review which program faculty are eligible for HD funds. It is the intent of the parties to distribute funds to the greatest number of faculty possible consistent with State law.

The roughly $2m earmark will be divided by the number of eligible faculty based on the number of quarters taught. Based on current numbers of faculty, a rough estimate could look like 2-3,000 per eligible faculty member at the end of the academic year, although this estimate will depend on the number of quarters taught and will change year-to-year based on how many faculty have taught over the previous academic year.

Under this MOU, eligibility will be based on the Occupations in Demand List as well as the Skills Gap list, with the goal of expanding eligibility to as many faculty as possible. 

The Skills Gap List- Preferred by SCD and based on skills that are in demand based on the location of colleges. You will find the data extracted from a very large data set from SBCTC, showing the lists for the three Colleges and District. The list has some major exclusions including programs like Maritime Technology, Welding, Math, and the life sciences.  

Occupations in Demand List- Preferred by AFT and based on state employment data. The data reflects State and County data and expands in who is in high demand based on county level data. If the intent is retention of HD faculty, this data takes into account that faculty have the freedom to move across the state and are in demand elsewhere. The data is accessible and can be fully searched in the linked database.

In Fall 2025, SCD approached AFT with the desire to discuss renegotiating the current MOU because it was spending far more than the earmarked allocation for HD salary increases. It became clear through these conversations that SCD intended to unilaterally do away with the 2021 MOU. After discussions with membership and within our eBoard over the last year, we collectively decided that entering negotiations for a new MOU was worth a shot rather than just going straight to arbitration over the 2021 MOU. The section of the website regarding the previous MOU answers this question in depth!

By now, HD faculty have received multiple communications and documents on this from HR, and we understand there is a lot of confusion out there. While it is impossible for us to include all the permutations in percentage decreases because each HD faculty received different increases in 2022, here is a general guideline of what that could look like:

If you are full-time faculty and were already employed as FTF in the district before HD was implemented

Payroll returned to your 2020 base pay and then proceeded to calculate all COLAs and GWI (General Wage Increases negotiated by the union) for every year in the same manner as done with non-HD base salaries. The calculation for this year would then reflect all those calculations, including the 4.5% wage reopener that was originally not given to HD faculty but is included now following the terms of the TA MOU. 

Parity pay contracts are not included in this calculation.

If you are FTF hired after HD was implemented’ or became FTF after HD was implemented

Payroll should have returned to your initial hire year base salary and decreased it by the percentage of HD pay submitted to them by your department. Then that amount will have all applicable COLAs and GWIs applied to them. Anyone hired after 2024 would not see the 4.5% wage reopener increase because that was applied to faculty already working in the district before 2024.

 Parity Pay contracts are not included in these calculations.

If you are part-time faculty 

The TA MOU eliminates the HD Part Time Pay Schedule (P2) which included a 20% increase from the regular P1 Part Time Pay Schedule. Payroll took your placement in the P2 schedule and moved it to the P1 Part Time Pay Schedule. Since the P1 schedule already includes the 4.5% wage increase in it, the reduction in pay for PTF who teach HD would amount to about 15.5%

That is because faculty received different percentage increases under the previous MOU, depending on the amount of contact hours in their program.

Nursing faculty are covered by a separate MOU and a separate state earmark. The outcome of this vote will not affect nursing faculty. 

No. AFT insisted on including language that this MOU and its implementation would NOT be precedent setting, to which SCD agreed.

The 2021 MOU stated that it would be incorporated into the CBA for the 2020-2023 contract term. While SCD and AFT agreed to continue including the MOU as an attachment to the latest 2025-2028 CBA, it was not negotiated or incorporated directly into the CBA itself. 

Yes. It is untouched by the changes to the MOU. In the last CBA negotiations, AFT bargained workload parity pay into the CBA in Article 11. Parity pay is now fully paid by local funds rather than from the HD earmark, in order to keep pay stable and predictable. Under the previous MOU, which was spending an earmark that the State could eliminate, parity pay was at risk if that allocation went away. The new MOU further establishes that parity pay is distinct from the HD earmark. 

“High demand” pay came from an earmark created by the legislature that first began in 2021. It  was supposed to help colleges provide pay enhancements for faculty teaching in fields determined to be in high demand in an effort to boost faculty retention in those fields. The legislation did not provide a list of these fields, though.

“Workload parity pay” is an additional amount for folks teaching in programs that require over 15 program hours. It is called “workload parity” because it accounts for salaries that are based on an assumption of 15 program units and accounts for the extra hours these programs require (for example, some faculty commonly teach 20 program hours in a single quarter, but had previously been paid for teaching just 15). Workload parity pay ensures that faculty in those situations are paid for the extra  credits they teach. This pay comes from local funds. Workload parity pay is described in Article 11.3 of our Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Workload parity pay is part of our contract, described in Article 11.3, and it is not going anywhere. The previous MOU conflated and connected these when they were separate issues and needed to be paid from different sources. 

This MOU divorces workload parity pay from high demand pay, and ensures that parity pay comes from local funds rather than from the earmark. In the 2021 MOU, HD faculty would get a 17.7% increase based on a combination of parity pay and a base pay increase. The higher the average parity pay, the lower the base pay increases: the increases just needed to equal 17.7%. This created an overly complex system that conflated workload parity pay and high demand pay. This current CBA maintains workload parity pay, and guarantees that it is drawn from local funds and is not dependent on the earmark.

There was no circumstance in which the district was not going to cut pay at the beginning of Fall quarter. With the District having declared the 2021 MOU expired, we faced two choices:

1. Do nothing and SCD would pull back all the funds by treating the 2021 MOU as expired, leading us to a lengthy and unknown legal fight with the District; OR

2. Put forward the best possible MOU for ratification that reduces the pay cut with a cushion, which is the 4.5%, and to stabilize pay, by ensuring parity pay would be guaranteed through local funds and that base salary was all from local funds, rather than the earmark that at some point may go away.

This one-time agreement was made so that implementation could happen before the MOU was ratified. SCD disclaimed the 2021 MOU and would have reduced pay for HD faculty as though it had never happened. Agreeing to implementation of this TA allowed us to mitigate the pay reductions and gives faculty an opportunity to see the full impact.

During the final open negotiations session, once the current TA MOU language was reached, the negotiations team attempted to negotiate for a start of Winter 2027 rather than Fall 2026 before agreeing to TA the MOU. SCD’s team reached out to District leadership on this matter and considered this topic for at least an hour. However, when they returned, they said that due to the BOT budget goals and restrictions, they were instructed that implementation must begin in  Fall 2026. 

Given that the alternative presented before us was to end negotiations and allow a larger reduction in pay for HD faculty while pursuing arbitration – a process that could take many months to complete, with a highly uncertain outcome  –  the negotiations team felt that this start date was not enough to refuse moving forward.

As a mandatory subject of bargaining, wages need to be negotiated–and they were, resulting in this Tentative Agreement. Wages must also be reflected in faculty contracts—and this change has been incorporated into faculty contracts for Fall 2026. Had the TA MOU not been agreed to, the alternative was to proceed to arbitration, which involves a lot of uncertainty. AFT represents all faculty as a collective bargaining unit, and agreed to allow SCD to move forward with implementation, with the understanding that this agreement would not be precedent-setting for the future.

The 4.5% wage reopener was negotiated for faculty working in the district as of the date the agreement was reached in 2023. Any faculty who began employment in 2024 or beyond was not included in that wage reopener increase. For faculty who began employment after that time, in our last contract negotiations we incorporated the 4.5% in the initial salary placement schedule, so that increase was already accounted for in their base pay. 

According to our union’s constitution and by-laws, in order to vote on ratification, folks must be a member “in good standing” for 30 days prior to the start of a voting period. All AFT 1789 members in good standing will be eligible to vote on ratification during the November 9-13 voting period.

To be “in good standing,” members need to have been members for 30 days prior to the voting period, which means anyone who joined the union on or before October 9, 2026. We will be updating the “Ratification” section of the website with further details on ratification mechanics and timeline, as well as emailing information to members.

We created the ratification timeline so that it would give non-members an opportunity to become “members in good standing” prior to the ratification vote. Folks who joined AFT 1789 by midnight on October 9th, 2026 will be eligible to participate in the vote, which will run from November 9-13.

In November, union members will vote to either approve the new HD MOU or to reject it. Rejection will likely mean pursuing a legal fight (arbitration) over the 2021 MOU. SCD has already declared that the 2021 MOU expired, so their position is clear. There is a slim chance negotiations could continue, but this MOU is the best possible deal we believe we can get, so without ratification this will most likely go to arbitration.

No, this is the tentative agreement that was reached, and “edits” are no longer possible. These issues were discussed and addressed in open negotiations sessions, and the tentative agreement represents where we were able to land with SCD through the course of negotiations.

For clarity, we’d like to define some terms here that are easy to conflate or confuse

Earmark 

An earmark is a set of funds allocated with a specific intention. In this case, we’re referring to the earmark created in 2019 by the legislature with a set amount for each community college in Washington to increase compensation for faculty teaching in high demand (HD) fields. This earmark must be renewed each state budget cycle and its future is uncertain.    

Overspend

When we refer to “overspending” or an “overspend,” we’re referring to the amount of cost over the earmark amount.The Seattle Colleges’ portion of the earmark was set at $2,036,359 in 2021, and has not changed since then. 

Overpayment/Overpay

When we refer to “overpayments’ or “overpays,” we’re referring to overpayments that the District claims resulted from a calculation error in CTClink, which caused some HD faculty to be paid more than what was agreed to in the Original MOU. 

Base pay vs total compensation

For FTF, “base pay” is just that – the base salary amount which COLAs and General Wage Increases are added to. For some faculty, some portion of HD Pay was included in their base pay. 

Total compensation is base pay (which included HD for some faculty) plus separate parity pay or moonlight contracts.

General Wage Increase (GWI)

These are salary increases negotiated by the union, often from local funds (as opposed to state COLAs, which are allocated by the legislature)