Bargaining Update: Faculty Needs & Safety

LCC Faculty Colleagues –

Your LCCEA Bargaining Leads met with the Administration for bargaining again today. We exchanged proposals that are the third part of a four-part series of initial proposals. We will be presenting all our remaining initial proposals next Thursday, May 29, including economic proposals.

We presented Part C of our initial package proposal (attached), which includes proposals on: no subcontracting, expanded protections against discrimination, stronger privacy protections, essentials for faculty working conditions, and campus lockdown safety.

Our LCCEA faculty proposal includes:

Protections against subcontracting of faculty work (Art. 4);
Expanded protections against discrimination and recourse when discrimination occurs (Art. 7);
Stronger privacy protection for faculty files, messages, and media (Art. 16);
Essentials for faculty working conditions, including private offices, up-to-date hardware and software, adequate IT support, funding and release time for a transition to a new LMS such as Canvas, sufficient funding for the instructional and student services mission of the college, and provisions to enhance ethics, integrity, and inclusiveness of hiring processes (new Art. 43);
Provisions on AI that protect faculty academic freedom rights to choose to use or not use AI in faculty work, protection against supplanting faculty work with AI, privacy protections when accommodations require faculty be recorded for an accommodation, and reasonable consideration of climate impacts of AI (new Art. 43); and
Lockdown safety language, including a safety plan, classroom upgrades, training, and benefits to affected faculty and their family members in the event of injury or death in a tragedy (new Art. 45).

We shared a presentation with data from our All faculty surveys to underscore the needs and interests our proposals seek to address. In addition, we shared a memo that LCC’s general counsel sent to the LCC President and campus community back in 2023, which identifies many critical needs and steps that the College should take in order to be better prepared for a lock down, which align with our proposal on lockdown safety.

The College’s proposal presented today:

Would eliminate several MOAs, including eliminating the Distance Learning MOA (College cover page);
Change the contracted faculty work year by reducing the total number of paid non-instructional and class prep days from five to four (College Art. 9);
Require manager approval for part-time faculty to use inservice hours to attend meetings or workshops on campus (College Art. 9);
Make the Association’s Fall All Faculty Meeting unpaid time (College Art. 9); and
Revise their initial salary schedule placement for all faculty (College Art. 27).

After we raised concerns yesterday about how the College’s proposal, which would have lowered initial salary placement for new faculty, would not be consistent with Oregon’s Equal Pay Act, the Administration presented a revised proposal today to remedy those concerns, which is a good step in the right direction.

The remaining proposals, however, appear to be more take backs in that the paid class prep/ non-instructional time for contracted faculty would be reduced. Similarly, part-time faculty would be subject to more close management with approval required for part-time faculty to use their in-service hours for meetings or workshops.

Thank you to the many faculty who attended today’s session to observe in person and on Zoom. All faculty are welcome to attend.

All bargaining sessions are scheduled in building 2, room 214. Upcoming dates are as follows. Please note the new dates added for June and September.