College Grants Raises for Administrators, Confidential Staff

A.C. Ward

The College approved a 5% raise that allows their non-union employees like College Administrators, Grant Administrators, and Confidential staff, retroactive to September 1, 2024. The approved raise for non-union employees is an attempt to pressure the union into accepting a less ambitious contract, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Amid festering negotiations between the administration and the union at CCP, which represents Full-Time Faculty, Part-Time Faculty, and Classified Staff, preemptively granting raises to non-union employees embodies the unwillingness of the administration to meet the union’s demands. Traditionally, non-union administrators and staff receive the same raises as union workers after contracts are finalized.

The union is demanding an 11% raise in the first year of a four-year contract to account for inflation and the rising cost of living. Then in the second year a 9% raise, a 7% in the third, and 5% in the final year.

The counter proposal from the administration has more conservative raises: 5% in the first year of a three-year contract, followed by 4% in both subsequent years.

Many faculty and staff of CCP claim the union bargaining team conceded too much during the last contract negotiations in 2019. Facing mounting pressure to reach a settlement, the union settled for increased semesterly classloads for teachers with underwhelming increases in salaries.

This year, according to the union bargaining updates, the College’s table team suggests sweeping changes to job security and academic freedom, such as firing faculty in their first two years without cause, giving Deans power to terminate “at whim,” adding vague duties on top of teachers’ classloads, and making evaluations increasingly bureaucratic. These proposals come with no evidence of improving outcomes for students. Whether the administration’s strategy of giving raises to non-union employees will succeed in curbing the union’s demands or provoke further pushback remains to be seen.