Today at noon in Room 5204. The California School Employees Association (CSEA) union will vote to ratify a memorandum of understanding between the union and the Ohlone College board of trustees. If approved, this would remove the district’s threat to lay off six union members in an attempt to offset a $700,000 budget deficit forced on Ohlone when the strate reduced funding in mid-school year. Administrators and the other two unions, United Faculty of Ohlone (UFO), representing teachers, and Service Employees International Union (SEIU), representing non-teaching workers, had all agreed to memos of understanding
The CSEA memorandum has provisions for the following:
• CSEA employees will take five unpaid furlough days off. They may request when these days off will be, and their supervisor, will “act in good faith” to grant them, with senior staffers getting precedence.
• Furlough days will not result in changes to CSEA employees’ medical,
dental and/or vision plans
• The district shall not use temporary employees to perform the work of a CSEA member on a furlough day.
• The district agrees that all “other hourly” (usually student) employees “in violation of applicable law” will be released by Dec. 31, 2009.
• Further negotiations regarding
use of hourly employees, if applicable, will be negotiated in good faith
The later two reference California Educational Code Section 88017 (c) which, according to CSEA sources, this means that where a CSEA union member can do a hourly worker’s job, they will do so if possible, and the hourly will be let go. Linda Evers, Ohlone lab technician and president of the Ohlone Chapter of CSEA, said she was “highly optimistic” about the memorandum. Ohlone President Dr. Gari Browning said Wednesday that much was riding on the state budget. Browning said about half the state budget went to education, 10 percent of that went to community colleges, and Ohlone represents 0.7 percent of that. Browning said some of Ohlone’s cutbacks are in response to an absence of state funds, prior to the recent cuts. The state has reduced the total number of Full Time Equivalent Students (FTSEs) who can enter Ohlone. And FTSE represents a student and the money necessary to support them. In absence of the ability to support students in the first place, classes are thus cut. Browning said no program is impacted so much that a student could not graduate, but did say that students taking general education courses may take longer – many duplicate sections of classes are being dropped.
By Kyle Stephens
Staff writer
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