Chief Negotiator’s Report

My name is Belinda Lum, and I’m a Professor of Sociology at Sacramento City College. I also serve as the LRCFT’s Chief Negotiator. The Chief Negotiator is appointed by the LRCFT President and approved by the Executive Board. I was originally appointed by the late Dean Murakami in June 2020, and was subsequently reappointed by President Jason Newman in January 2021. I previously served as an elected member of the LRCFT Executive Board, including 3 years as the LRCFT College President at SCC.

As the title suggests, the primary task of the Chief Negotiator is to lead the LRCFT’s bargaining team during our contract negotiations with the District, which occur every three years. Our current contract, or collective bargaining agreement, expires in June 2026, so the upcoming year will be a busy one for me and for the Union. We will spend the summer and fall conducting research and talking to our faculty about what they would like to see in a new contract, and much of the Spring 2026 semester will be spent in negotiation meetings with management in an effort to agree on a new contract and build on previous successes.

Outside of contract negotiations, my role also involves working on behalf of faculty on many of the day-to-day issues affecting their working conditions. As the summer approaches and faculty prepare to go off contract, there are a number of important issues that the Union negotiates or has discussions about.  Some upcoming topics that the Union will address include:

COLA and Retro

Each summer, even in non-contract years, we negotiate improvements to the faculty salary schedule (the Cost of Living Adjustment, or COLA) as well as the distribution of funds from the remaining revenue allocated to the faculty bargaining unit from the prior fiscal year (the retroactive payment, or Retro). We generally negotiate with the District on these issues in late July.

The COLA is informed, in considerable measure, by the state-level COLA that forms part of the California state budget.  The most recent reports from the State list the COLA at 2.2% for the 2025-2026 fiscal year, although these numbers are not yet final. There is also the possibility that we will have access to some additional revenue as a result of shifting district finances, and some of this might be applied to the faculty COLA.

Our faculty contract contains an unusual system for distributing revenue, called the “proportionate share” system, and commonly referred to as the “bucket.” Under this provision (Appendix A in the faculty contract), our bargaining unit receives a proportionate share of district revenue, and each year some of this revenue remains in our “bucket” at the end of the fiscal year. Some of this money, referred to as one-time money because it is not guaranteed in future years, is distributed to faculty in the form of a single Retro payment, usually in August. In mid-July, we expect to see what remaining one-time dollars are available for distribution for our retro. In consultation with the LRCFT Executive Board, we then negotiate the percentage distribution of those dollars.
Faculty can expect to receive a communication from the Union during the first week of August with the final COLA and Retro amounts.

Non-Credit

As many of you know, Los Rios is the only District in the State that has not implemented non-credit courses. Historically, the Union was concerned about the pay disparity involved with non-credit, with faculty generally paid considerably less for teaching non-credit classes. However, in 2015, the State Legislature created a category of non-credit classes called Enhanced Non-Credit, which is apportioned at the same rate as for-credit classes. Following the recommendation of the District Academic Senate, we will be working to build out the infrastructure for non-credit courses. The Senate has recommended that the Union begin work on compensation and workload. The Union will work with the Senate to identify workload issues and will consult with statewide union partners to build a fair compensation system for non-credit work.

Class Action Lawsuits regarding PT Pay

Part-time community college faculty in California have, in recent years, filed lawsuits alleging that their compensation violates California wage laws. Central to some of these suits has been the pay structure for part-time teaching, in which the hourly rates for adjunct faculty compensation are, in many districts, only paid for the hours spent in the classroom, and are not paid for the hours spent in preparation, grading, and other out-of-class work.

One such lawsuit was filed against the Long Beach Community College District (LBCCD) in 2022 by two part-time faculty, Karen Roberts and Seija Rokhea. In February of this year, the California Superior Court in Los Angeles County granted these plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment on the issue of minimum wage violations, arguing that the salary structure, the faculty work, and the overall compensation earned by part-time faculty in the LBCCD combined to violate California labor law, including the minimum wage provisions of the Labor Code and the professional exemption provisions of Wage Order 4. You can read the court’s detailed reasoning in the ruling (see, in particular, pages 11-21), but the upshot of this decision is that Long Beach and presumably many other community college districts across the state have been operating in violation of California minimum wage laws, and may be on the hook for significant back-pay claims as a result.

The judge’s ruling in this case was not final, and did not mandate a specific remedy. It was only a ruling on the legal question. We have heard that Long Beach is in discussions with its part-time faculty over a possible settlement. If the Long Beach case is settled this summer, it is possible that community college districts across the state will need to negotiate with faculty unions to come into compliance with the decision. There is at least one other part-time faculty wage case in progress, and Los Rios is one of the defendant community college districts in that case. We are tracking the status of the cases, studying the decisions, and working with statewide union partners to look at options for compliance that also benefit our part-time faculty. There is no current timeline for if or when a settlement may occur, but we will work on the issue over the summer.