Issues

Content Note: Some of the figures and text on this page may be similar to those that have appeared in Federation communications. I created and own the original figures from which all of this content was derived.

Real Pay Parity Among All ECC Faculty

Having had success with bargaining teams that have been able to address many of the significant issues in our contract as they relate to outdated practices and less competitive compensation and benefits, we now have the unique opportunity to really start to work on some basic issues of consistency, fairness, and comparability to other contracts. Specifically, faculty pay parity. For many technical and historical reasons, our contract contains significant pay disparities between PT faculty and other PT faculty, FT faculty and other FT faculty, and PT faculty and their FT faculty analog. Essentially, pay parity has broken down to a point where we frequently have two faculty members with the identical education and experience (step and column) and identical workloads in terms of %, LHE, and total work hours get paid two different amounts of money. Currently, we have three different FT pay rates (below, left) and a number of different PT pay rates (representative example below, right).

Effectively, we're not paying identically qualified and burdened faculty with mathematically identical assignments equally. We're not achieving equal pay for equal work. This has negative effects on cohesion, perceptions of fairness, and difficulty in bargaining equitable agreements. Further, it's extremely atypical to have so much pay disparity as compared to any of our peers. I am confident this is an issue that can be collectively addressed in a way that continues not to lower pay rates while increasing basic faculty equity and fairness, but the first step is to have an intellectually honest talk about it.

Data Driven Bargaining to Maintain Competitive Compensation and Labor Conditions

There is no question in my mind that a significant proportion of the success we've had at the bargaining table has been a direct result of how our teams have approached the bargaining process. We've invested significantly in presenting both to the District and our members in concrete terms that cite either math or directly comparable language in other agreements at peer institutions. We've been dedicated in making serious, quantitative arguments and that approach has been rewarded with competitive agreements that have transformed the faculty labor landscape at ECC.

In addition to achieving better agreement terms, this approach has improved the bargaining relationship between the Federation and the District. This has allowed us to have much more productive (occasionally open!) bargaining, often accomplishing substantial contract maintenance or technical items in much shorter amounts of time. Bargaining faster and more productively directly benefits all faculty, so I'm looking forward to continuing to work with brand new and long-experienced members of our bargaining teams in the future to continue to foster this approach.

Proactive, Collaborative Defense of Our Contract, Our Pay, and Our Rights

I have worked extensively within every aspect of the grievance process to defend faculty as individuals and as a group from violations of our rights. In doing this work, it's become clear to me that one of the best expenditures of my time in service of the Federation is proactive identification of areas of our contract that are susceptible to violation followed by working collaboratively with faculty and the District to design processes, trainings, and remedies to prevent the violation happening in the first place. In the past several years, I've worked with individuals and designed faculty trainings to better equip our faculty with the knowledge to identify errors and be better advocates. Additionally, more recently, I've been involved with working with the District to help train classified and management employees to lead to better outcomes for faculty (e.g. correct pay, correct leave deductions, clear contractual evaluations, etc.). I'm hoping to continue this preventative work for the benefit of faculty in another term in office.

For a brief summary of my grievance work, please see my Accomplishments page.

Thoughtful, Productive, and Strategic Bargaining Unit Communications

How we speak to each other matters. How we speak to each other in front of our employer matters. If reelected, I intend to continue remaining fully disengaged from the workplace harassment, name calling, misinformation, and unsolicited communications. I don't think those types of communications and communication styles are compatible with a successful and serious Federation. Instead, I will continue to communicate as clearly as possible with supporting facts and arguments that do not engage in personal attacks or misinformation.

Furthermore, I believe authenticity is critically important in how we communicate with each other as colleagues in a labor union and especially in how elected officers in our Federation communicate with all of us in the bargaining unit. You may have noticed that there is a content note in the footer of this website stating that AI tools are not used to create content on this website. This content note extends to all of my communications within our bargaining unit (and in general). Personally, I find it disrespectful to receive AI-generated text posing as a human being's voice and thoughts, so I don't engage in the use of AI when communicating with other people.

Below is a comparison of GPTZero results for the text of the candidate statements for all of the candidates in this election. No "AI detector" is perfectly accurate, false positives/negatives occur, but generally they are reasonably accurate at indicating if text is generated by a human, "polished" by AI tools, or entirely generated by AI tools. I encourage you to analyze other text on this website to confirm that I'm serious about authentic communication if this principle is also important to you.