The Faculty Association: A History

Some faculty believe they got good jobs and pay and working conditions on their own. They are unaware of the effort of others to prepare the way and keep things running smoothly. Here is a brief history of that effort.

Once upon a time in the Foothill-De Anza District, back in the sixties and early seventies, teachers taught and managers managed and students studied. This is how it worked:

The day could start with an 8 a.m. class and end with one at 4 p.m. with others sprinkled in between. You were expected to be on duty throughout the academic day, preferably in your office. The dean of instruction sat in the back during faculty assemblies and graduation exercises and took note of your absence. Senates created “negotiation councils” under the provisions of California’s “meet-and-confer” law, which required the two parties to talk to each other about things like salary and benefits. But a simple “no” fulfilled a board’s “meet-and-confer” obligations.

If meeting and conferring didn’t work, too bad. Trustees could unilaterally adopt or rescind any action, including salary increases if prospects worsened. When you reached 65, you were booted into retirement, despite robust health and faculty and student protests.

Bargaining Begins
No wonder that in 1976, when the state Legislature authorized collective bargaining in schools and community colleges, Foothill-De Anza passed the hat and overnight formed FA, which quickly became a non-profit corporation and the exclusive bargaining agent for District faculty. And the faculty chose independence rather than the mammoth CTA/NEA.

Unlike the flabby “meet-and-confer” law of old, the new Public Employment Relations Act was pumped with muscle. It consigned representation to a single group, bound the parties to negotiate employment agreements “in good faith” and provided remedies when either side disregarded the contract.

Our first contract, or Agreement, took nine months to negotiate and was remarkable for its brevity (eight pages) as well as its content. Signed on November 23, 1977, it included a 5 percent COLA, agency shop (everyone must pay representation fees) and one full reassigned time for union leadership. Then chancellor John Dunn, a man who believed in professional organizations, said that if we thought we needed a union, he wanted to negotiate with one that had the support of the faculty and one whose leaders had the time to take care of their duties.

A Model for the State
With the second contract, 1978-80, faculty won binding arbitration of grievances, re-employment preference for part-time faculty, summer sick leave, extra days for personal leave, $50,000 for professional retraining, 2.5 reassigned time for faculty leadership and a 15 percent COLA, the largest ever (7 percent for 1978; 8 percent for 79). Swollen to over 30 articles, the new Agreement became a much acclaimed new model for the state.

Emboldened by this success, FA went for the gold with its third contract (1980-83). But the state financial situation was in flux. Proposition 13 had passed, effectively shifting power from Districts to the state, Prop 9 threatened to limit state expenditures and inflation was out of control, totaling 42 percent just for the years 1974-79, plus an additional 23 percent for 1980-81. Employing positional (industrial/adversarial) bargaining techniques and worried about wage-price controls, FA put together an omnibus proposal so bulging with “bargaining chips” that it costed out to an 80 percent increase in faculty compensation and benefits.

Equally outrageous, the District proposals for 1980-83 included a serious reduction in sabbatical leaves, a reduction in step and column placement as punishment for certain infractions, transfer of up to 10 percent of faculty as necessary to meet program needs, and language requiring faculty to meet office and committee assignments on time and be in the classroom a “reasonable” time before classes begin.

Low Point in Talks
Faculty management relations spanning 1980-81 plummeted to the lowest point in history, a “Death Valley” record of its own in terms of elevation and heat. Management stoked the fires.

In June, management impounded 160 faculty paychecks for failure to turn in mid-term attendance reports. De Anza’s president threatened to deny funding for the Academic Senate’s Research and Innovation project. The Trustees yanked their 6 percent COLA off the table and substituted 3 percent at a time when the inflation rate had soared to 16 percent. If faculty wanted more salary, the Board negotiator suggested tying pay to “productivity.”

FA lobbed an “unfair” with the Public Employee Relations Board over the reduction in sabbaticals. And the chief faculty negotiator dug up “black boxes” where he believed the District was allegedly stashing thousands of dollars. At a Board meeting that fall, several hundred faculty shouted insults at the chancellor and pleaded with the Board to end the strife. Frustrated and disgusted, a state-assigned mediator called for fact-finding and rode out of town.

To prepare for fact-finding, FA staff worked all through the 1980 winter recess to compile and print a 147-page book which described every article in dispute, gave both FA and the Board’s positions and argued the merits of FA’s proposal. It was a monumental task, but fact-finding did not go well for FA. On most issues, the state fact-finder, a notoriously anti-faculty bureaucrat, found for the District.

Delighting in most of the fact-finder’s recommendations but ignoring his recommendation for an 8 percent increase in salary (instead of FA’s 18 percent), the Board unilaterally imposed its “last best offer” of a humiliating 3.5 percent and put the package to faculty vote. Insulted, faculty predictably rejected the package. The shoot-out had reached dead end; there was no alternative except to return to the negotiation table and start all over.

Must Be A Better Way
But with FA, serious changes were underway. Positional bargaining—the Board’s 3.5 percent vs. FA’s 18 percent—was increasingly recognized as a bankrupt strategy. As faculty support for confrontational bargaining eroded, FA’s chief negotiator resigned and was replaced by faculty keenly interested in “mutual gains,” or “interest-based,” bargaining strategies.

After a series of low-profile meetings with the District chancellor and a conciliatory dropping of its “unfair,” FA won a negotiated contract that included a 5 percent COLA, a re-opener if the budget did better than predicted, and preservation of the sabbatical program that the Board had wanted to weaken. Perhaps even more important, the Agreement guaranteed FA a slot on a new District budget planning and development group (BPDG) that had yet to be formed. After a fumbling start, it grew, during the 1980s, into a collaborative decision-making body that helped make the District one of the most progressive and successful in the nation. The Faculty Association, playing a major role on the panel, participated with enthusiasm and in good faith.

In a post mortem of the clash between the Board and faculty, the FA News (9/18/81) concluded: “Regardless of personal feelings, collective bargaining is here to stay. The greatest danger for the future is inflexibility and extremism whether it comes from arch conservatives nostalgic for old-time authority, or arch radicals crusading for anarchy.”

Mutual Gains Bargaining
Since the early 1980s, the Faculty Association and District negotiators have officially engaged in mutual gains bargaining; however, the level of success in adherence to the ideal has varied. Following a financial crisis in 1990-91 centered on cost overruns in the construction of De Anza’s first parking structure, some top administrative heads rolled, a new Board of Trustees was elected, and the vaunted BPDG was no more. FA found itself confronting a legal hired gun at the negotiation table who seemed to know only one word, an emphatic NO. The early 1990s were financially difficult for the state, and the new Board flexed its fiscal responsibility muscle, engineering a frontal attack on retiree benefits.

Engaged in a battle that took several years, the Faculty Association, fought against a declaration of impasse, offering a wide variety of alternatives to a complete elimination of retiree benefits for newly hired faculty. The Board stood firm, bolstered by the support of a union-busting legal firm, and forced the issue to fact-finding. In the process, FA supplied a copious amount of data in an attempt to show that fear of a massive future liability was unfounded, but the fact-finder took the side of the Board, recommending a “bridge to Medicare” program for faculty hired after July 1, 1997. This was short of the Board’s desire for full elimination of its responsibility to retiring faculty, but this two-tiered state of affairs remains particularly offensive to FA.

Unfortunately, this episode set the tone for faculty/District relations up to the present time. While a massive faculty march on a Board meeting in Spring 1997 forced the replacement of the anti-union negotiator/lawyer with a district administrator, the District has continued to rely heavily on legal maneuvers. These are not the days of 1977 when an enlightened district administration supported a professional faculty union; rather than seek a mutual gains resolution, the administration is more inclined to thwart faculty influence and assert its own rights at any opportunity. In recent years, faculty have been forced to meet district positional bargaining with two “work to contract” job actions.

As the new century begins, it is more important than ever to maintain vigilance through the Faculty Association. Uncertain state funding, increasing medical benefit costs, and a campaign to reactivate fear of liability for employee retiree benefits threaten the quality of working conditions for Foothill-De Anza faculty. With several new trustees recently elected to the Board and a new Chancellor, FA is hopeful that the confrontational tone of faculty/management relations can be replaced with a style reminiscent of those days when Foothill-De Anza first emerged as a model for shared District governance.

Service Outside the District
While it was helping to repair governance bridges at home, FA created a Political Action Committee (FA-PAC), participated in the formation of the Bay Faculty Association (BFA), and persuaded hundreds of District faculty to join the state-wide Faculty Association of California Community Colleges (FACCC) as another way to help protect the tradition of open access for the state’s CC students. In addition, FAco-founded the California Community College Independents (CCCI), a mutual support network for independent unions. Involvement at state and regional levels helped FA to grow in stature and to achieve influence in the political process.

Even so, the Faculty Association is most proud of the work it has done right here “ at home.” We often hear from FA members at both colleges that they are grateful that faculty in 1976 had the foresight to opt for collective bargaining and to encourage the development of a strong, independent union whose resources have brought to District decision-making a strong, effective faculty voice.