LCC Faculty Colleagues,

I hope this email finds you well as we celebrate Labor Day and approach the beginning of the Fall term!

I’m writing with updates from LCCEA, our faculty union, to address topics including faculty salaries, insurance, bargaining, role of the LCC Board of Education, the Learning Management System, inservice schedule, non-teaching work for contracted faculty, and more. 

Faculty Salaries & Labor Relations

All faculty who are eligible for steps (i.e., not at the top of the salary schedule) will have steps paid beginning on the first paycheck of the 25-26 year because our contract requires steps to be paid each year, including while we are in contract negotiations. Steps are set at 3.75%. The first paycheck of the 25-26 year is in September for contracted faculty not working in the summer, October for part-time faculty not working in the summer, and July for any faculty member working in the summer.

The College Administration has declined to pay the COLA (i.e. cost of living adjustment) even though the contract states that it must be paid on July 1 each year. This year’s COLA is 3.00% according to the federal inflation index cited in our contract. Because the Administration is not paying the COLA, our LCCEA Grievance Chair Joseph Colton has filed a grievance. We look forward to pursuing a resolution for all faculty. Please see Appendix B at the End of this message for background information on labor relations and confirmation of LCC’s unfair labor practice activity.

Insurance — Open Enrollment Ends September 15

A huge thank you to our LCCEA Insurance committee Co-Chairs Nursing faculty member Tawnya Gillespie and HIM program coordinator Rick Riordan. They arranged Information and Q & A sessions about changes to OEBB health plans (including Moda and Kaiser) in August. You can find the Kaiser presentation here and the Moda presentation here. Enrollment is mandatory this year, so please be sure to complete your insurance selections on the myoebb website before open enrollment ends on September 15.  Employee contributions will increase slightly with monthly out-of-paycheck deductions increasing by $0 to $22 per month, depending on the tier, over last year’s payroll deduction amounts. Faculty with full family insurance who prefer higher deductibles over payroll contributions may wish to consider Moda Plan 2 as an option instead of Moda Plan 1. You can find the rate charts for full-time faculty here on the HR website and part-time faculty here.

Inservice Schedule and Dates for your Calendar

Thursday, 9/18: all day scheduled by the College, followed by the LCCEA Fall Welcome Gathering @ the Bier Stein after work

Friday, 9/19: all day class prep, no required activities for faculty may be scheduled

Monday, 9/22: Assessment Day, scheduled by the College

Tuesday, 9/23: Faculty Professional Development & sabbatical reports

Wednesday, 9/24: Morning division meetings, afternoon class prep when no required activities for faculty may be scheduled

Thursday, 9/25: Morning all campus convening, afternoon annual All Faculty Meeting, including break out sessions and appetizer reception

Friday 9/26: all day class prep, no required activities for faculty may be scheduled

Monday, 9/29: First day of Fall term classes

Bargaining and Organizing

Over the summer, hundreds more campus and community members signed our Action Team’s petition in support of a fair faculty contract with well over 800 signatures to date and counting! 

Signatures from our community supporters include numerous locally elected officials, including Board member at Willamalane Parks and Recreation, CJ Mann; Springfield Board of Education Chair, Jonathan Light; Chair of Lane County Labor Chapter of the AFL-CIO and former LCC Board member, Pat Riggs-Henson; Lane County Commissioner, Heather Buch; and former Eugene Mayor, Kitty Piercy. 

In addition, countless supporters from the labor community have signed our petition, including Oregon Education Association President, Enrique Farrera; National Education Association Director, Chris Early; Former President of American Association of University Professors (AAUP), Michael Dreiling; and dozens more labor union officers and supporters from locals throughout Oregon in sectors ranging from educators at all types of institutions to carpenters and postal workers. 

Together with our communities, we are stronger. If you have not yet done so, you may sign the petition here, and please consider attending the Action Team’s rally this Wednesday at 5 (RSVP here).

The Administration’s non-economic proposals would: allow layoffs of contracted faculty at any time of year with only 60 days’ notice, convert existing full-time faculty to part-time, and remove contract language that protects part-time faculty from being removed for exercising their rights to non-discrimination or First Amendment rights to express divergent views, express criticism of LCC, or speak as a member of the community free from institutional censorship. Taken together, these Administration proposals seek to carve away faculty job security and strike at the heart of academic freedom, which is foundational to our democracy, and contravene the public interest.

In addition, the Administration’s economic proposals in bargaining thus far represent a net reduction in total LCC expenditures for compensation and benefits paid to faculty through substantial decreases in healthcare benefits coupled with workload increases, including mandatory (yet only partially compensated) overloads and removal of contractual class size maximums, both of which would result in significant job loss for part-time faculty.  

At the same time, our faculty LCCEA proposals seek to support the mission and allow faculty to do our best work in service of students, in alignment with the following themes that emerged from a two-year process of quantitative and qualitative data gathering and analysis, for the common good. Here is a brief summary of where the proposals stand.

Your LCCEA Bargaining Team leads are: Gerry Meenaghan, April Myler, Peggy Oberstaller, Russell Shitabata, and myself. Negotiations will resume again on September 11 in 2/214, 1-4 p.m., and all faculty are welcome to attend. Bargaining dates for Fall term will be on Tuesdays, 1- 4 p.m.

LPN Program Hiatus and Role of Board of Education

At the end of May, the Administration suddenly suspended the highly successful Licensed Practical Nursing program without notice to the public nor a presentation to the Board of Education for a vote, leaving students who had applied after significant time and financial investment in prerequisites without a path forward. As yet, the program “hiatus” remains formally unexplained to the campus, the Board of Education, and community, including local long-term care facilities that rely on LCC’s program for their LPN workforce needs. Please note that this was not a budget cut, and all faculty positions will be retained.

In addition, at Board of Education meetings and a retreat over the summer, the LCC Administration argued that the Board of Education should not vote on program or service cuts, and that all such decisions should be left to the Administration, despite Board policy and a longstanding precedent that includes dozens of similar Board of Education votes. See a sample of numerous decisions of the Board over the past several years, all of which are publicly documented in BoardDocs and Board archives. Other community college Boards of Education also make similar decisions. This kind of push toward unilateral administrative action chips away at democracy when the Administration seeks to remove authority from the publicly-elected Board of Education members who represent the people of our community. In response, the agenda for the Board meeting this evening includes a discussion of their role in such decisions. While many programs have been eliminated or suspended over LCC’s history, the role of the Board in fulfilling its duty to the people of Lane County and allowing for public comment and decision making at open meetings in accordance with Oregon’s Sunshine Law is paramount to our democracy.

Please see the “Appendix A: Background Information on the LCC Budget,” at the end of this message for details on why program or service cuts should not be necessary.

 Legislative Updates – Community College Funding & Unemployment for Striking Workers

Despite a negative economic forecast in May, the Oregon legislature did ultimately finalize a 6.9% increase in state funding for community colleges for this biennium (i.e., July 1, 2025 – June 30, 2027). In addition, the legislature passed, and the Governor signed into law, a new requirement to provide unemployment benefits for striking workers, including educators.

Non-teaching work

As previously reported, LCC and LCCEA reached an agreement that reporting of non-teaching work will begin this Fall. Contracted faculty will need to complete a form to provide their plans for committee and service work for the year at the beginning of Fall term, but no reporting or tracking of hours or FTE associated with non-teaching work will be required. In addition, the College recognizes that the form is intended as a plan and does not limit a faculty member’s ability to make changes to their committee service as new opportunities or time demands for existing committees evolve over the academic year.

Learning Management System – Future Move to Canvas

The LCC Administration contacted LCCEA at the end of July to confirm that the College is in agreement with the LMS Taskforce, the ATC, and LCCEA to move to Canvas in the future (instead of Moodle). Because a move to Canvas will require significant investment of time and funding, our faculty proposals in bargaining that LCCEA made proactively last May seek to address this workload in a reasonable manner. Thus far, the Administration has not responded to any of these faculty proposals. Now that the Administration has confirmed that they do agree to move to Canvas, we look forward to next steps.

Welcome Our New Union Officers

Please welcome our newly elected officers, Don Easton (VP for Transfer faculty), Gerry Meenaghan (VP for Career Technical Faculty), and April Myler (VP At-Large)! And Congratulations to Rosa Lopez (VP for Learning Advancement), Peggy Oberstaller (VP for Part-time faculty), and Wendy Rawlinson (Treasurer) on their re-election! And thank you to Wendy Rose Aaron who will serve as Interim Secretary this year!

In Closing

As we reflect on the Labor Day holiday and celebrate approval for labor unions in the US near all-time highs with unions stronger in Oregon than across the nation, let us remember that all the gains that working people have achieved – that we may take as givens, such as sick leave, child labor laws, overtime pay, the forty hour work week, family leave, and so many more – were hard fought by those who came before us. 

As a union, as faculty – we must stand in solidarity with our students and our community. Our higher education institutions are a public good – our public colleges are by the people and for the people. As part of a dynamic labor movement, we must stand steadfast, working together, shoulder to shoulder for the future of our democracy. 

Together, we will continue to build a stronger, member-led, vibrant future for our students, our campus, and our communities as we work alongside our colleagues within Lane County Education Workers, Eugene-Springfield Solidarity Network, Oregon Education Association, Higher Education Labor United and many other locals, coalitions, and community partners of which we are members and partners for the common good.

In solidarity and with appreciation for all you do,

Adrienne

Appendix A: Background Information on the LCC Budget

For background information on LCC’s plans for this fiscal year’s budget, please see my statements to the Board’s Budget Committee from May 7, May 14, and May 20, and June 4 Fortunately, a new (second) proposed budget was presented by the Administration on May 21 to the Budget Committee, and the Committee approved moving it forward to the Board of Education at their meeting that evening. You can find the changes on p. 1 posted on BoardDocs here.

Instead of using $3.1M in general fund reserves, the new budget is balanced and factors in:

·   $1.77M in vacancy savings (AKA “swirl,” which is savings resulting from positions that are occupied for part of only a year after a retirement and/or while a search process takes place);

·   Holding $689K of the $3.1M in vacant positions open (which is roughly $417K in salary plus OPE);

·   $675K in unspecified program and service cuts (See p. 3 posted on BoardDocs here.), and other minor adjustments.

While this is an improved budget, program and service cuts should not be necessary. The budget is stable after more than 26% enrollment growth over the past three years and a growing Ending Fund Balance, which has increased by $1M over the past two years. Please note: there is no structural deficit – an increasing ending fund balance means that revenue exceeds expenses year-over-year, not the other way around.

Given the current pattern of budgeting and expenditures as detailed in the bar and pie charts below, more public oversight is direly needed. For example, the $829K cumulative total for legal fees on the chart below far exceeds the $675K amount that is built into the FY25 budget for unspecified program and service cuts. We are dismayed to see this level of spending on legal fees when cuts should be unnecessary. At the same time, management staffing levels are being increased in the budget by 10% from the current all-time historic high of 72 managers to 79 for the 25-26 fiscal year.

In addition, upon further review of the data provided by the Administration, we have found that in FY25 alone, LCC spent $271,965.89 alone on legal fees to Ogletree Deakins. This firm represented LCC in the unfair labor practice hearing as well as an arbitration hearing on ABSE and ESL. After the hearing, it became clear that LCCEA would prevail, and the LCC Administration finally agreed to settlement discussions in earnest with a state-provided mediator. The mediation proved fruitful with a fair settlement reached. However, hundreds of thousands of dollars could have been saved if the LCC Administration had engaged in good faith settlement discussions from the outset. This is very concerning given the general lack of Oregon public sector labor law knowledge and experience on the part of the attorneys who represented LCC. In particular, Kristi Foy represented LCC and is not admitted to the Oregon Bar.  

Please also see the pie chart from the most recent official fiscal audit statement that was published May 30 as well as the new management salary schedule created by management for management without any Board of Education public meeting discussion or approval, it’s clear the Administration is taking LCC in a direction further away from our core instructional and student services mission, and more public oversight is direly needed. 

It will be up to all of us to advocate to ensure adequate investment in the instructional and student services mission – this is central to our collective bargaining and organizing efforts.

Appendix B: Unfair Labor Practice Decision

As reported in July, the State of Oregon’s Employment Relations Board, which is a panel of three judges, issued a ruling and order finding that the LCC Administration engaged in several unlawful unfair labor practices. (See full decision here.)

Specifically, the judges determined that the College Administration violated ORS 243.672(1)(a) by engaging in surveillance of union emails on the faculty email list. This is especially concerning in light of the Administration’s recent proposal in bargaining to eliminate language in our contract that protects faculty privacy rights. 

The judges’ order also confirms that the LCC Administration violated ORS 243.672(1)(a) by threatening Faculty Council with legal action and seeking to prohibit legally-protected discussion at their Council meeting.

In addition, the ERB panel of judges found that the LCC Administration engaged in unlawful direct dealing and violated ORS 243.672(1)(b) and (1)(e) by dealing directly both with a group of faculty members and also through a survey of bargaining unit members over potential changes which would require bargaining.

Finally, because of this unlawful activity, the Employment Relations Board issued an order requiring the LCC Administration to post a notice about their legal violations and to send the notice to all LCC faculty members by email. You should have received the notice signed by President Bulger in an email from Shane Turner on July 30. If you did not receive it, please contact lccea@lanecc.edu.

While it is troubling that the LCC Administration has engaged in unfair labor practices, I am hopeful that this decision will be a catalyst for change and remain unwavering in my commitment to working together with you all to create the conditions on campus where faculty can do our best work in service of students — a campus where the Administration engages in transparent, inclusive decision making characterized by ethics and integrity; seeks settlement over disputes; takes a reasonable, fair approach to contract negotiations that honors faculty as professionals; and, importantly in an ever more fragile democracy, welcomes and encourages the free exchange of ideas.