Mediator Quits College District Talks

Ten months after he started, a state-appointed mediator gave up trying to settle the contentious contract dispute between the Ventura County Community College District and its 1,200 teachers.

“He told me he’d decided there was nothing more he could do to further the process,” said Elton Hall, chief negotiator for the Ventura County Federation of College Teachers. Hall was notified of the decision Tuesday morning.

The mediator, Curtis Lyon of the state’s Mediation and Reconciliation Board, could not be reached for comment.

His departure from the bitter yearlong negotiations means that issues from faculty pay to treatment of part-time instructors will go to fact-finding, a process mandated by state labor laws.

It’s the latest bombshell in a dispute that has triggered teacher sickouts, cancellation of campus events, and a 99% faculty vote of “no confidence” in Chancellor Philip Westin.

The two sides must make their case to a fact-finder, who will be chosen from a list offered by the state. If either side rejects the fact-finder’s report, the district could legally impose its own work rules and the teachers could legally strike.

The report could come as soon as this summer.

Administrators welcomed Lyon’s announcement, contending the faculty has been unwilling to scale down its demands.

“I think it’s the right thing,” said Richard J. Currier, the El Cajon attorney representing the college district in the negotiations. “The union isn’t giving the district anything. We’re far apart on compensation, far apart on workload and assignment, far apart on evaluations, far apart on part-time faculty. . . . They’ve repeatedly failed to address these issues in a meaningful way.”

The teachers maintain the district is out to kill the union and take back concessions won by the faculty in previous contracts. They say the district has thwarted mediation efforts so it can impose a contract that squeezes salaries and weakens job protection.

The district board “made a pact at the beginning of the process that they’d take back big hunks of the contract one way or another,” Hall said. “To further that aim, they hired a chief negotiator famous throughout the state for being a union-buster.”

Currier countered that the district would not propose items such as partial health benefits for part timers if it were out to cripple the union.

“That’s nonsense,” Currier said. “There’s not a single proposal we have that would indicate we want to bust the union. ‘Union-busting’ rhetoric is something they use when they don’t want to talk about the issues.”

The district and the union formally started talking on March 20, 1997, three months before the faculty’s three-year contract expired. Only two months passed before both sides were frustrated enough to request a mediator.

In the 10 months since, no significant progress has been made, according to representatives from both sides.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks is proposed salary increases.

In the most recent contract, a complex formula was used to calculate raises, which were awarded only if the district received additional money from the state. Teachers want a similar arrangement in the next contract.

Hall said that would translate to a raise of 4% to 5% for the current school year--as opposed to a raise of less than 1% he said the district is offering. Currier, the district’s sole spokesman on the contract talks, agreed the sides are far apart, though he declined to offer specific figures.

Full-time teachers at the district’s three campuses--in Ventura, Oxnard and Moorpark--make an average of about $58,000 a year, Hall said. The district has said in newspaper and radio ads that 70% of the faculty actually makes between $60,000 and $90,000. Faculty members, however, say that includes compensation for teaching extra classes and summer sessions--effectively, they say, for holding a second job.

They also contend only two teachers made as much as $90,000--both highly paid administrators who also taught classes.

The two sides have also grappled over teacher evaluations. The faculty wants to continue a system in which teachers are evaluated primarily by other teachers. The district, however, wants managers to have final authority over the process, as they did until a contract transferred the authority to the teachers about 10 years ago.

“What kind of accountability is there if a supervisor can’t evaluate an employee?” Currier asked.

With about two-thirds of the district’s teachers working part time, negotiations also have snagged over their job security. Under the district’s proposal, part timers with seniority would no longer be guaranteed classes from semester to semester.

Without seniority rights, experienced teachers would very likely sign on elsewhere--to be replaced by cheaper and less-experienced instructors, Hall warned.

“It will destabilize our work force,” he said.

Nearly 90% of the district’s full-time teachers and 56% of the part timers are union members.