I am pissed and so are many others. We sit for hours in the Board room waiting for Joe to return from his office. What takes so long? Fantasy football picks? We moved up negotiations yesterday to 12:00 to have more time to negotiate. Joe and his supporters came in a 12:30. At that time, Support Staff responded to management. That took maybe fifteen minutes. Then two hours later Joe returns to counter. His counter did not include some items we though we agreed on last time. Joe said we did not agree on them and there was a brand new proposal, something that we had never seen as an issue before. That is no way to reach a settlement. Yesterday it was one step back. The same thing happened with Culinary the time before. Then after his presentation Joe left and we waited two and a half hours, before he came back in. Nick presented two pages of proposals for ACCCOSAPP and again it was hours before Joe returned. No other college negotiates with huge breaks like that. I had to leave at five to teach, but negotiations continued until 9 p.m. We had hoped we would make significant progress and at least begin the end game so that there would be no job actions Thursday. No progress was made. It is very frustrating.

I have heard from two administrators that we have not met often enough. I have not added the hours together recently but it is over 80 hours. The time is not the problem. There have been three colleges this year that settled with only one or two negotiations sessions by “rolling over” the present contract and agreeing on money. We presented that as an option last May when negotiations began, but the administration was not interested. As long as unreasonable items are still on the table there will be no settlement no matter how often we meet. The administrators who think that we need to meet more often do not realize that this is often not a reasonable process. Sometimes people have agendas that are not reasonable.

The problem is Pete likes to delegate. I have no problem with that management style but you have to have good people to delegate to. Pete has delegated labor relations to Joe and that is a problem. In July after the contract expired, Joe remarked,” We are still early in the negotiations”. His plan is to drag out this process. The College is collecting interest on our money. No management proposal so far has included a retroactive increase. Joe’s plan may be to delay settlement until the end of December or perhaps May and to have the increase take place at that time with no retroactive pay. That will show his stalling tactics are successful. I am angry about this disgusting mess. We are not making progress so job actions must continue. Will Parsons