(Last updated: March 23, 2025, please scroll down for the latest updates)

This page contains a record of the communications the Federation’s bargaining team sent to faculty during the bargaining process. Messages are order from most to least recent.

February 17, 2025

Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to the spring 2025 semester! We hope that you’ve had a positive start to 2025 and that your classes will get off to a great start this week.

As we enter the spring 2025 semester, the Federation is already underway in the bargaining process for our new contract, as our current contract expires on June 30, 2025. Additionally, the Federation is negotiating the FY 2024-2025 reopener. For the reopener, we were able to achieve substantial improvements to the PT healthcare program, which our members voted to ratify as an MOU. However, for the second item of the reopener, compensation for FY 2024–2025, we are entering mediation because after nearly a year of interest-based bargaining, the District ultimately would not offer a single dollar in salary increase to our faculty. The state-funded COLA for 2024-2025 was 1.07%.

We had our first bargaining session dedicated to our new contract on February 14, 2025, where we discussed the following articles (order requested by District):

Article 3 – Rights of the Federation

Article 18 – Pre-retirement Program

Article 21 – General Provisions

Article 24 – Instructional Technology

In discussions with the District about our preferred article progression, the Federation team asked to begin with Article 17 – Insurance Benefits (healthcare) with the goal of implementing new District healthcare contributions through an MOU before our contract expires. This goal would ensure that new, augmented District contributions to our healthcare costs are in place when our current contract expires so that we are not stuck, again, covering a larger difference between the old District contributions and total healthcare premium costs should we not have a contract approved by the Board of Trustees (BOT) by July 1, 2025. To that end, the Federation has a healthcare proposal ready, but the District responded that they are not prepared to bargain on financial items and could not provide a specific time frame when they would be prepared. The District’s position is curious because we have been engaged in compensation/healthcare bargaining with the District for our FY 2024-2025 reopener since the beginning of last year, and because our administrators have been meeting with each other frequently for budget planning.

We have also reiterated the broad faculty interest in open bargaining, which would allow all faculty to observe the conversations that happen at the bargaining table firsthand. Open bargaining for this contract was first formally communicated in our request-to-bargain (sunshine) memo submitted to the District in writing on November 1, 2024. However, the District’s team members took the position that they were unaware that we wanted to bargain openly and needed to discuss the open format first with the Board of Trustees on Wednesday, February 19, 2025. The District’s team members emphasized that they would be opposed to any form of recordings. 

Our next scheduled bargaining session is March 21, 2025. We are hopeful that the District’s bargaining team will, with your encouragement, agree to get started on Article 17 (healthcare) and invite our faculty to open bargaining. Please consider commenting at the BOT meeting on February 19, 2025, regarding the importance of timely healthcare bargaining (5 PM, open session comment) and/or open bargaining (4 PM, closed session comment). For additional information and assistance, please contact Kelsey Iino (kiino@elcamino.edu) or the Federation (eccfederation@gmail.com).

Federation Team:

Laura Saldarriaga, FT Chemistry

John Baranski, FT History

Laila Dellapasqua, PT ESL

Kelsey Iino, FT Counseling

Ahrien Johnson, CFT Representative

Nic McGrue, FT Law

Darcie McClelland, FT Biology

Troy Moore, FT Chemistry

Joe Weichman, PT Robotics

District Team:

Jane Miyashiro, VPHR

Randy Erickson, District Legal Counsel

Carlos Lopez, VPAA

Kristina Martinez, Acting Dean, Enrollment Services

Katie Sundara, Associate Dean, ITEC

In solidarity,

The Federation Bargaining Team