Budget irregularities provoke mistrust between district and employees. New SMC president says college faces “serious financial consequences-even bankruptcy.”
By Max Taves / Special to the Times
Dozens of faculty members picketed outside Santa Monica College District offices Monday evening and demanded a 2 percent cost of living adjustment for the 2004-2005 school year.
A person on a bullhorn led chants, and faculty members marched and whistled their grievances to passersby.
Faculty opposition to the district’s last wage proposal continued late into the evening. Several teachers defended faculty demands in speeches to the Board of Trustees, and an overcapacity crowd of students and teachers silently showed their support with blue T-shirts that read FAIR CONTRACT NOW.
The Faculty Association, an independent union representing full- and part-time teachers, has fought with the district since last year when administration and classified employees, a category of workers that ranges from janitors to secretaries, received a 2 percent retroactive COLA for 2004-2005. The district did not offer faculty the increase.
Negotiations between the Faculty Association and the district have produced no consensus, but the arrival of a new president, Chui Tsang, last February changed expectations. The Faculty Association thought Tsang would accommodate teachers’ demands and quickly end the conflict.
But Tsang’s presence has changed little in the way of a settlement.
In an e-mail to all campus employees last month, Tsang sent an alarming message about the school’s finances.
“What I have found is that SMC has been plagued with budget instability for the past several years … What this means is that the college has been spending about $6 million more than it takes in … If we continue down this road, we face serious financial consequences-even bankruptcy,” Tsang wrote.
Robert Sammis, vice president of planning and development, and the chief negotiator for the district, explained that SMC’s financial status does not permit a 2 percent raise for faculty.
“I don’t know how they [Faculty Association] could objectively look at the data they have been provided and not understand that we have a budget problem,” he said in a conversation with The Malibu Times.
But after a decade of tense labor disputes at SMC, employees are skeptical of budget alarmism.
Lee Peterson, a classified employee, said it has been common for previous administrations to “budget for positions that they have no intention of filling … For example, they budgeted for a painter and a sprinkler pipe-fitter even though they would never have hired them because there’s not enough work to do all year long.”
Mitra Moassessi, the chief negotiator for the Faculty Association and a math teacher, reviewed this year’s budget and saw a similar pattern. She said that this school year’s budget assumed that approximately 46 vacant positions would be filled, but the district has only hired a fraction of that number.
Not surprisingly, expected costs have consistently outweighed expected revenues, according to a study by the Faculty Association that compared proposed and actual budgets for 10 years. Expected costs outweighed revenues by 133 percent on average.
When proposed budgets show high costs and low revenues, employees have less bargaining power.
Tsang would not speak with The Malibu Times about the current labor dispute, but Sammis dismissed the notion that the district purposefully distorts the budget.
“In years past, there were positions that never got filled, but we have never built a budget of fictitious numbers. We only budget for positions that we intend to fill,” Sammis said.
The district is currently making a budget for the next academic year, but a finalized budget will not be available until the state’s budget is complete. An agreement between the faculty and the district will likely not be made until the district’s revenue for next year is known.
State law makes it difficult for community college teachers to strike, but unofficial resistance to the district might be imminent.
“There are other things we can do besides a strike,” Moassessi said.