Thank you to all of the members who came to support the AFT2121 bargaining team on Friday, April 9. Your continued presence at our bargaining sessions is crucial! The next session is Friday, 4/16 from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM. Please register.

Before the session, AFT 2121 attended supervisor Hillary Ronen’s City Hall hearing on CCSF’s budget. AFT presented on the current state of CCSF’s budget and the impacts of massive layoffs on both students and the college’s continued fiscal solvency. Many City College supporters spoke, including faculty, students, and student trustee Vick Van Chung who gave powerful and moving testimony. You can watch a recording (our hearing begins at 1:32:50).

The CCSF administration did not attend the forum at City Hall, prioritizing working on laying off faculty, rather than working with the city and AFT2121 to explore budget solutions to save programs and avoid layoffs.

Going into our sixth session, we still do not have clear and transparent budget projections for the coming year. When Alayna questioned what the district is doing to seek additional revenues, the administration’s response was vague and frustrating. Dianna Gonzales responded that they are “busy updating budget numbers” while John Al-Amin claimed that they cannot forecast budget numbers until May or June! The district continues to update expenses but not revenue, and continues to refuse to consider HEERF funding for it’s most obvious and intended uses.

Tom Boegel presented a spreadsheet​ showing the departmental impact of the full time layoffs assumed in the FTEF budgets currently being used to develop the schedule (52 full time layoffs). However, this information, which is new to the bargaining team, doesn’t actually match the district’s current instructional budgets. The administration estimated 100 PT layoffs but gave no clear information by department. Tom’s explanation for the rationale behind the cuts was equally unclear, focusing on completions and the numbers of PT faculty in any given department.

AFT remains committed to a solutions-oriented process that will protect our members and the students that we serve. However, the District’s behavior at the bargaining table, namely VC Al-Amin’s obfuscation around the budget are cause for great concern and quickly eroding AFT’s confidence in his ability to protect our institution’s fiscal health.

In Solidarity!

Your AFT2121 bargaining team

P.S. We hope to see even more of you at our next session this Friday from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM. Register here. Please arrive by 10:45AM. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. We will start admitting people from the zoom waiting room at 10:45 AM, and will continue admitting up to the start of the meeting. Note that if you arrive after 11:00 AM, you may need to wait until a break/caucus to be admitted. Thanks for your patience.

P.P.S. We are also hosting an ESL Press Conference on Thursday, April 15, from 10:00 to 11:30AM. RSVP here.  

This is the first time I’ve attended Open Bargaining sessions and it has been a really interesting and eye opening experience. I have been so impressed by the breadth and depth of our bargaining teams preparedness. I’ve also been shocked, but not surprised, by administration’s gross lack of understanding and disregard for how departmental programs work and the needs of our students. The AFT2121 team consistently refutes the Administration’s claims with clear, well documented arguments. Bravo!  I urge faculty to attend these sessions and stay for the post session debrief. Hearing the questions and concerns from faculty from across the college has helped me gain a deeper understanding of the challenges we are all currently facing.

–Jeanne Kearsley, AFT 2121 Member

More than sixty AFT 2121 members attended our fourth bargaining session with the district on Tuesday, 4/6.  Your continued presence is essential and powerful!

On Tuesday, our chief negotiator, Alayna Fredricks, pushed the district for more detailed information regarding their proposed budget for 2021-2022 and beyond. VC Al Amin was resistant throughout the budget discussions, making it very difficult to get clarity and/or establish baselines between the parties. In order to negotiate specific proposals, AFT expects the District to engage in earnest around budget shortfalls and potential revenue.

AFT2121 bargaining team member Diane Wallis questioned the administration on how the college can recover and increase enrollment (thus state funding) to their stated goal of 22,000 if they implement such drastic cuts and layoffs now. Team member Lijia Lumsden pointed out that deep cuts will scare off existing students and asked what the district’s plan is for maintaining our current enrollment. From the District’s responses to these important questions it was clear that there is no plan for protecting enrollment or recovering the 5,000 FTES that we stand to lose with the schedule that is currently being developed. 

VC  Tom Boegel agreed to give the team more information regarding the full time layoffs assumed in the FTEF budgets that are currently proposed after being questioned about which departments are reflected in these potential layoffs (he estimated the FTEF budgets reflect 52FT layoffs and >100PT layoffs). We expect to have more details by Friday and will continue to fight against all layoffs. 

AFT2121 maintains that the administration is taking too drastic an approach now and is failing to explore ways to mitigate the damage to our college and our community. Continuously reducing the schedule and cutting faculty is not an option if we are to continue carrying out our mission and keep the community in our community college. 

Our team emphasized that we must maximize every opportunity to use Federal funding to protect our institution. Additionally, AFT2121 is working at the local and state level to secure more long term funding, including this week’s hearing at City Hall. We must continue to exert pressure on local and state elected officials and our CCSF Board of Trustees to do the right thing.

Please join us at the: 

Virtual City Hall Hearing on City College, sponsored by Supervisor Hilary Ronen, on Friday April 9, 2021 at 10 a.m.​

And we’ll see you at our next bargaining session:

Friday, April 9, from 1:00 PM to 4:00PM. Please register here​ if you haven’t already.

In unity,

Your Bargaining Team​

​This was my very first experience in a bargaining session. I was intimidated at first. I’m still working through my budget bootcamp video. In fact I ended up learning a lot, enriching my bootcamp lessons with real life examples. I’m also a newbie at the whole negotiation process so it was fascinating to see how that works. I understood a lot more about the people and personalities behind those titles and names in administration we read infuriating emails from. I’m telling you, it’s eye-opening. I’m going to attend the next ones going forward for sure. 

-Armen Hovhannes, AFT 2121 member​