Summer is here, and bargaining is in full swing.

As of June 4th, we’ve had 7 bargaining sessions with the college (and #8 is scheduled for June 10th).  At the majority of our first few sessions, we presented a dozen or so proposals for Section 4 (Selection of Adjunct Teachers). Section 4 is really the heart of the contract as it outlines all the stuff about availability, course assignment offers, course cancellation, and reassignment procedures.

Our Section 4 proposals include the following goals:

1. To improve communication between adjuncts and their ADs
2. To put measures into place to ensure that seniority is followed in making course assignments
3. To push back the availability deadlines
4. To deter ADs from making last minute course cancellations (and increasing the time frame for mandatory reassignments if courses are cancelled).
5. To make all these processes more consistent across departments
6. To increase transparency

So far, the college has been empathetic and recognizes that there are many problems that they need to address, but they haven’t offered any solutions (or been very receptive to the ones that we’ve offered in our proposals).

We have also presented several proposals for Section 13 (Service Committee). We suggested that the college commits to monthly meetings with AAFMCC so that we can regularly communicate and address our members’ issues and concerns. As of now, it looks as though the College will accept these proposals. This is good news.

At our last session, we began presenting our Section 3 (Board of Trustees Relationship) proposals. We'll share more info about this soon.