What's been happening lately? UPM November 19, 2009
Fran White has announced her plans to quit her job as president of the College of Marin at the end of the term, June 30, 2010. This date is a year early and will cost her a salary increase to the $232,000 promised for the final year of her contract. Still, after spending just five years at Marin and retiring after 38 years of participation in the State Teachers Retirement System (STRS), she can expect to enter retirement with a pension of approximately $180,000 a year.
UPM has been in negotiations with this president for more than two and a half years trying to agree on a contract for the 2007-2010 period. The district's insistence on numerous take-backs from the 18 Articles of the contract they opened at the beginning of negotiations in 2006, has led us through impasse, mediation, fact finding (part 1), more mediation - "don't call it negotiations" -, with the possibility of returning to fact finding (call it part 2). What is after that? Following the Fact Finder's report, if there still is no agreement the district can impose a contract forcing the faculty to accept it or strike.
Is this the legacy Fran White wants to leave at the College of Marin - an imposed contract or a strike? How does that situation help to entice a replacement for White?
On a more positive note, Marin County voters elected Diana Conti to the board of trustees, ousting incumbent Annan Paterson, who blamed the Union and its Political Action Committee (UPMPAC) for her defeat. She was quoted in the November 19, 2009 edition of the Marin IJ as saying:
"The antics of a small group of leaders who are chronically angry, mean and small-time bullies come across as just that to the community at large," Paterson said in the closing moments of Tuesday's board meeting. "This type of union leadership is caustic and does not serve the faculty well."
Does Paterson really believe that the Union Executive Council, made up of nine faculty elected under secret balloting by the entire faculty, who have communicated continuously with union membership through newsletter, flyers, this Web site and numerous general and special membership meetings regarding the negotiations of the Collective Bargaining Agreement is a "small group of leaders who are chronically angry, mean and small-time bullies"? Amazing.
In the same Marin IJ story, UPM President, Ira Lansing was quoted as saying:
"The leadership of the union, which consists of a nine-member executive council, is no more a renegade group than the seven members of the Board of Trustees - or, one might say, the current four-member majority," Lansing said. "That majority is sorely out of touch with the needs of the faculty and staff in this district."
But don't judge Patterson harshly for her lack of information. Has anyone on the board ever talked directly to the Union leadership about why the negotiations have been so fruitless? The only communication the board receives is from their lawyer. How balanced can that be? Certainly someone must take note that the lawyer who bills the district on an hourly basis to litigate for the district the many grievances that have gone to arbitration in the past five years is the same person who bills the district on an hourly basis to negotiate the new contract. (Incidentally, he hasn't been winning any of these arbitrations.) This seems to us like a definite conflict of interest, with the lawyer taking a good deal of the taxpayer's money in the bargain
Trustee Joe Namnath apparently has noticed, and raised questions about the spending priorities. Maybe the newly elected Trustee Conti, endorsed by the UPM Executive Council, can bring about some honesty in negotiations and reasonability to spending priorities. Maybe the board will grow better ears and hear what is really happening.....one can hope.