The Santa Monica College faculty union begins voting on a proposed contract this week. The SMC Board of Trustees will vote on the document next month.
By Jonathan Friedman / Assistant Editor
The more than two-year dispute between Santa Monica College faculty and SMC District authorities may be coming to an end after a lengthy negotiation session earlier this month led to a tentative agreement. Faculty union members will begin voting this week on the proposed contract, with the vote lasting 10 days. The SMC Board of Trustees will vote on the contract at its meeting next month. Both groups are expected to approve the contract.
According to the proposed contract, the faculty will receive a 3.5 percent retroactive salary increase from the Spring 2006 semester, a 1 percent increase beginning with this semester’s salary and a one-time, 3 percent bonus based on the 2005-06 academic year.
“I am pleased with the agreement,” said Lantz Simpson, president of the SMC Faculty Association, which represents full-time and part-time teachers. “We agreed on salary, which was a major sticking point. I’m relieved that it’s over.”
The proposed contract was finalized Sept. 6 after a seven-and-a-half hour meeting attended by faculty and district representatives, according to statements from both entities.
Dr. Chui Tsang inherited the labor dispute when he became president of SMC earlier this year. He said in a statement released by the college, “This marks the beginning of a new era of cordial relations. We are very happy to have reached a tentative agreement and we are hopeful that it will be ratified by the full membership of the Faculty Association. The past dispute over this contract, which started long before I came to this college this February, is now behind us. We want to focus our attention on our core mission: providing the best education for our students.”
The current labor dispute stems from the state budget crisis created during the Gray Davis administration. As a result of the crisis, when classified and administration employees’ contract expired in 2002, the district did not renew their contract. The faculty’s contract ended in 2003.
The district reached a new contract with administrative and classified employees in August 2005, but it was unable to satisfy the faculty union’s demands. And last November, the contract proposed to the faculty by the district was rejected by 94 percent of the faculty union members who voted on it.