Accord Announced on Salaries at Saddleback

After two years of bitter negotiations, teacher representatives and administrators of Saddleback College have agreed on a proposed new contract that would keep the faculty the highest paid among California’s 70 community colleges.

But officials of the teachers union have not endorsed the proposal, which administrators predicted would put district finances in red ink by the next fiscal year. Union officials said Friday that a separate union-led petition drive to recall three college trustees will continue regardless of whether teachers approve the contract.

“We (in the union leadership) are making no recommendation to the faculty (about how they should vote),” said Sharon MacMillan, president of the Saddleback Faculty Assn. A vote of the faculty is set for Feb. 25.

The three-year contract proposal provides for a pay raise of 8.5% for the 18-month period from July 1, 1984, through Dec. 31, 1985. Although salaries vary according to teaching experience, administration officials said the average salary, with the pay raise, would be in excess of $38,000.

Beginning Jan. 1, 1986, the contract can be reopened for further negotiations on wages and fringe benefits.

Larry Stevens, chancellor of the college, which has campuses in Mission Viejo and Irvine, said Friday that he is pleased that trustees could offer the pay raise, even though it will create a deficit in district finances within the fiscal year that begins July 1.

“We have the highest paid faculty of all 70 community college districts in California, and this (proposed new contract) would continue them as the best paid,” Stevens said.

MacMillan said the association, which had been asking for a 9% pay raise, had to yield on several items. She said one item involved giving up a one-time-only pay raise of three years ago.

“This is not a good contract for us,” she said. “We settled because we want to get this over with and keep moving on the recall.”

Petitions Circulated

The recall movement is aimed at three of the college district’s seven trustees. The three targeted are Robert L. Price of Laguna Hills, Robert L. Moore of Irvine and William L. Watts of Santa Ana. Teachers and other supporters are circulating petitions, seeking 25,251 voter signatures by May 28. If the drive is successful, said MacMillan, the recall election would be held sometime this summer.

MacMillan charged that Chancellor Stevens has tried to mislead Saddleback-area residents into thinking that the recall dispute centered around unhappiness with contract negotiations. She said that the teachers’ real unhappiness has been with Stevens himself--not with the impasse over a new contract.

And Robert Kopfstein, political action chairman for the faculty association, said, “ . . . The political party line of the district administration as well as the trustees has consistently been that the only reason why the faculty are disgruntled is because they want a raise.”

‘Hiding Behind the Contract’

“If the contract is settled, what excuse will the district bureaucracy and the trustees then be able to use as a defense? Clearly they have none. They’ve been hiding behind the contract for nearly two years.”

Some Saddleback administrative officials privately claim that the teachers union at the college is embarked on a political move such as one that occurred in 1983 at nearby Coast Community College District, in the Costa Mesa-Newport Beach area. At Coast, angry teachers used the momentum of a recall attempt in 1983 to win upset victories in the regular election that year. The district is now governed by a board whose majority was endorsed for election by the union.

Saddleback teachers, while saying that they have learned from Coast’s experience, say that their recall is along different lines. But the Saddleback union acknowledges that its goal--like the goal of Coast teachers--was to oust an unpopular chancellor.

The proposed new contract at Saddleback replaces the one that expired on July 1, 1983. There would be no retroactive pay raise for the 1983-84 school year.

Fringe Benefit Issue

The administration negotiators sought to put a lid on fringe benefit costs, mainly health insurance, but the faculty association claimed success in eliminating the ceiling.

The administration claimed success in putting a limit in the proposed new contract on how many “overload” (or extra-duty-time-for-pay) classes a faculty member can teach. To this point, there has been no limit, and administration officials claimed that some teachers have made as much as $70,000 a year by teaching “double loads.” Stevens has said the academic quality for students suffers when teachers try to carry too many classes.

MacMillan said the college administration has long depended on “overload” teaching as a “cheap way of getting extra classes because teachers are only paid about half their regular pay for overload.”