Garfield Gleanings

by Caroline DePiro

Garfield Campus Steward

Letter from the Garfield Guild Steward:

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Glendale College Guild

Well here we are back in the swing of the things for another Fall semester. As many have noticed, there have been some changes around Garfield! We are offering a bunch of new classes in new time slots running from Monday through Friday and many of us have had the chance to meet and see some new faces and new teachers. It's very exciting! Welcome everyone!

On that note, you may have seen the emails going back and forth regarding how the additional classes have affected parking. It goes without saying that adding more classes adds to the already difficult parking situation we have at Garfield. However, on a positive note, it seems that our concerns have been heard. The Administration has offered to allow us to use Lyft or Uber within a five-mile radius to get to work and they have promised to foot the bill. However, this is yet to be seen. Sooner or later...hopefully sooner, we will get more information and be able to actually begin using the service. In the meantime, we will all continue to struggle to park and just try to make it work somehow.

As far as your Faculty Union goes, we were in mediation sessions with the district throughout the summer to ensure that the 5.5% raise for part-timers and the 4.5% raise for full-timers that we ratified in the Fall of 2015 would stick rather than expire on July 1st 2106. Some may have noticed that the pay cut came and went but we were able to restore all. Our raise is now ongoing and we will be receiving retro checks in the Spring for an additional one-time bonus of 2% for part-timers and 1% for full-timers. It was a difficult road we were forced to head down as a union but all of our collective efforts to mobilize really paid off. Not the least of which, the unprecedented turn out of Garfield faculty at the Board of Trustees meeting last Spring! Go Garfield!

So, what's next? Office hours. The Guild is now working on negotiations to reform the way office hours are handled at GCC. As some may already know, credit adjuncts do not receive a fair proportion of office hours in comparison to their full-time counterparts. However, here in noncredit, we receive no office hours at all. Now that noncredit and credit are equally funded, this has to change! We've made some headway towards a fair system which would include noncredit but of course no one can make any promises yet. More news to come. One place to find out more would be:

The Garfield Guild Meeting
Tuesday, September 27
12-1 p.m. in the Community Room MP 103
FLEX credit and LUNCH will be served

For those who will not be able to attend the meeting, I will be at the morning and evening division meetings in October to update everyone as best I can. Until then, I hope everyone has a wonderful semester.

Caroline DePiro
Noncredit ESL Instructor
Garfield Guild Steward

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