Negotiations Update 6 May 2026

It has been 91 days, 13 weeks, 16 negotiations prep meetings, 8 negotiation sessions with the District, and 3 Governing Board meetings since we presented our compensation proposal (Article 15) to the District. To refresh y’all’s memory, PFF is mindful of the situation we are currently in and presented reasonable asks to support the college’s investment in our faculty as we navigate an increasingly shifting workload and institutional budget strains. 

Side note: Shout out to Sherehe Hollins for her video breaking down our Article 15 proposal in her Knowledge is Power series.

This morning, the District shared their official counterproposal with us as outlined below. We believe the response was dismissive and deeply disrespectful. We are prepared to share as much at the next governing board meeting and would love to see you there and in green. 

Given the importance of our compensation article, we requested this be the only agenda item. A couple of discussion items surfaced as well. 

📌Article 15 Counterproposal #1 (District)

• Our first concern: the District included the following at the beginning of their proposal: “Contingent on a 2-year agreement on compensation and benefits with no reopeners on those two articles for 2025-26 and 2026-27.” We share this with you not because we need feedback on how irrational this request is (but we’d welcome your feedback anyway!), but because we want you to see the nature of negotiations as of late. We will of course reject this language. It is egregious to suggest that faculty trade away our future negotiating rights in exchange for a proposal that fails to meaningfully address compensation. 

• Concurrent Degrees: In 2024, we brought an issue to the District disproportionately impacting faculty, specifically those who have international degrees, who completed their Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees concurrently. Because our current language uses “units completed subsequent to receiving a Bachelor’s degree,” HR has refused to count coursework beyond the standard Bachelor’s degree requirements if the Bachelor’s and Master’s were awarded simultaneously. Our clarification language simply accounts for coursework completed beyond the 120 units typical of a Bachelor’s degree. The MOU was rejected because the District did not want an MOU for individual fixes and preferred to have the language included in Article 15 to be applied to all faculty at large. Notably, the District did indicate support for this fix and suggested that other areas would benefit from this clarification as well. We presented this language in our 24-25 Article 15 reopener but the District was unwilling to include it given the timing of the final proposal, so we included it immediately in our current Article 15 proposal. Today, the District did an about-face and claimed the clarification would “inflate” salary placement for faculty with an international degree. This reversal is deeply disrespectful to the faculty who have been improperly placed for so long. 

• A Modest Raise replaced by a dubious  “One-Time Stipend”: Given that faculty have not received a raise since 2016 (note: COLA is not a raise but rather a state-determined cost of living adjustment that does not keep up with the inflation rates of our area) AND Palomar was not eligible to receive COLA this year due to enrollment meaning all employees were also not awarded basic COLA, PFF proposed a modest raise. The District responded with a situational proposal with no guarantee of any pay out. It also does nothing to address the years of wage erosion and bloated workload faculty have experienced this past decade. 

• 🚨Perhaps most alarming of all, Part-time Faculty Instruction: The District included a new section in their counter that attempts to redefine part-time faculty compensation and would require part-time faculty to certify that they are already paid prep and grading, which contradicts and undermines long-standing concerns about unpaid labor. This is undoubtedly in response to the settlement at Long Beach CCD for hours part-time faculty had worked uncompensated including grading, preparing lessons, and meeting with students. PFF pushed back strongly and made clear that we emphatically reject the premise that part-time faculty compensation already includes prep and grading work. Be assured that we will not agree to any language requiring part-time faculty to certify otherwise. 15.5.1.2 of our CBA states: “Hourly pay for part-time faculty and hourly overload pay for full-time faculty shall progress toward parity with the contract pay for full-time faculty.” The District’s proposal undermines both the spirit and the letter of this commitment. 

• Office Hours & Prep Pay: The District rejected our language to codify office hours parity, rejected our language to include paid office hours for students in summer, intersession, and in classes taught by full-time faculty as overload, and rejected our language to compensate part-time faculty and full-time overload for prep pay. The District stated that they do not have authority from the Governing Board to approve any ongoing costs. 

• Committee Work: PFF had proposed we compensate part-time faculty for serving on any established council, committee, subcommittee, or taskforce–emphasis on the word established as part-time seats would still need to be determined through shared governance. Our proposal would move beyond the current narrow list of compensated part-time committee seats and ensure that all committees with designated part-time faculty seats would include compensation for those positions. The District rejected this proposal and said they would be willing to entertain negotiations to add more specific committees to the list. 

Discussion

• Accessibility Remediation MOU: In December, PFF and the District signed an MOU for Accessibility Remediation recognizing “that significant additional work is required by faculty to ensure that all digital content, communications, and materials meet the updated accessibility standards.” To support these efforts, the District agreed to compensate part-time instructional faculty only at their noninstructional rate “for four (4) hours per unique course preparation (with assigned load) per modality during the Fall 2025 and Spring 2026 semesters.” (We’ve already discussed that we were disappointed that full-time faculty and noninstructional faculty were not included in this MOU, but we understood the District’s intent to support part-time faculty given that they aren’t paid for prep pay…ironic given the alarming section above). Since December, we have been asking the District to initiate payment per the MOU. The District has promised a form to be sent out to all eligible faculty to certify they have done this work in order to be compensated. On Friday, the District emailed with language for the form that would require part-time faculty to certify that their course meets current accessibility standards in order to receive payment. We explained again that the MOU was intended to compensate for 4 hours in support of these efforts to meet accessibility standards, but was not intended to ensure all part-time courses are fully accessible. We’ve been clear throughout the process that 4 hours is welcome, but it is not enough to compensate for all the work that needs to be done in order to fully meet these requirements. 

This morning, we continued this unfortunately contentious conversation. There was not enough time to finish this discussion. When the District asked to resume the conversation at our next meeting, we reminded them that our next meeting is just two days before the end of the semester and that they have had since December to work on this payment process. The District agreed to caucus on their end and connect with us by phone or email on the details in the form. PFF is firm in refusing to have part-time faculty sign anything certifying complete compliance when a mere four hours of compensated time was dedicated to this work.  

We understand this is a lot and we need feedback from you. Please feel free to share your thoughts here via email. We will also have the following opportunities for feedback: 

• Negotiations Office Hours: Wednesday, May 13th from 11:00-1:00pm in MD-330

• Contract Conversations: Wednesday, May 13th from 3:00-4:00pm on Zoom (check your PD portal)

Signing off—but still here for every comma, clause, and cause.

Your PFF Negotiations Team