Historian's Report: Negotiating the Past
When Nancy Fetterman retired, she brought to the tiny former CCFT office many boxes of papers from 20 years of CCFT contract negotiations. Mixed in with these were also Nancy’s papers from her years as math instructor and department chair, as well as her involvement in CCFT in other capacities. Maya had no space for these boxes. So, when I became the new CCFT historian, she delivered four of them to me. They wouldn’t fit in my office either, so I went through them to see what I could throw out. Doing this, I gained tremendous respect for Nancy and for all those who volunteer to help with negotiations.
The boxes were filled with copies of sample union contracts from other community colleges, former CCFT contracts; statistics on instructor and academic specialist workloads from all over the state; letters between Nancy and CFT members from other community colleges; pages of figures where Nancy and other teams tried to work out equitable bargaining points on salary increases, overload pay, health benefits for adjuncts, and evaluation procedures; and comparisons of coverage schedules for different health insurance providers.
The boxes contained not only papers from the years Nancy was a negotiator, but from all the years since the start of CCFT. Evidently, the negotiators wanted historical perspective, to see what had worked in the past and to gauge what would be reasonable in the future. Since many of these papers were from years before email, I often found typed memos with carbon copies that had gone to and from CCFT negotiators, Cabrillo administrators, and board members. Nancy was teaching, of course, while she was doing all this, so the boxes also contained grade sheets, rosters, lesson plans, and notes to and from her math students. It’s true that negotiators are released from some teaching units so they can negotiate. But even so, if these boxes were any indication, the workload must be crushing.
by Debra Spencer
| "It’s rare for people in power to listen to an individual person who feels she or he is being unfairly treated. Imagine if you had to research statewide compensation and go to the administration to ask for a raise. (Imagine the frustration of the administration faced with so many individual requests.) Imperfect as unions are, they are the collective voice that those in power find difficult to ignore." |
Anti-union sentiment is rampant these days. Many taxpayers feel that unions pick their pockets. Unions can be a thorn in the side of all kinds of governments. Some people resent teachers, nurses, police, firefighters, and other government employes having the security of benefits and pensions that many taxpayers lack. I’ve heard of unions whose management dictate what their workers will ask for and when they will strike. I’ve heard of some unions making ridiculous demands. But ours is a union where we manage ourselves. We do our own work. Judging by Nancy’s papers, our negotiators have tried to be fair, comparing Cabrillo compensations to those of other faculty statewide, doing a lot of homework before presenting union requests to the administration’s bargaining team.
It’s rare for people in power to listen to an individual person who feels she or he is being unfairly treated. Imagine if you had to research statewide compensation and go to the administration to ask for a raise. (Imagine the frustration of the administration faced with so many individual requests.) Imperfect as unions are, they are the collective voice that those in power find difficult to ignore. It’s true we don’t always get what we want, but would things be better if we didn’t all stand together? I’m grateful to Nancy Fetterman and to all the past negotiators for their hard work and long hours. If taxpayers feel that unionized workers have more security than they do, maybe they need to start a union.