Statement to Board of Education from Kenny Ascheri, LCCEF Vice President, May 16, 2019

Good evening,

I’m Kenny Ascheri, Vice President of LCCEF and Lead Programmer Analyst in Information Technology and my pronouns are he/him/his.

First, I want to thank everybody who was involved in Lane’s Fund our Future: Community College Rally on May 8. I really appreciate the leadership, dedication, and hard work by Student Government President Nick Keough, Faculty President Adrienne Mitchell, and our Federation President Robin Geyer. I appreciate all the volunteers that showed support by spreading the message, and showing up to help facilitate a seamless event. Thank you to President Hamilton, Board Chair Eyster, VP Paul Jarrell, and all of our speakers for sharing their strong messages of support for more Community College funding.

Classified staff are in the midst of a Classification and Compensation study that was contractually agreed to be completed almost a year ago. Can you believe we are hiring employees without accurate job classifications in place? Well, we have hundreds and most are 20 years old. Why hasn’t this study been completed and implemented historically? The last one was in 2005 and implementation didn’t happen. Why are we so far behind? Where is the leadership for equitable improvements here?

Professional Development for classified staff. We all want employees to be more efficient, more engaged, happier, healthier, and have bandwidth to take on more tasks. This is where professional development comes in – employees need leaders; managers or others who are going to clear the space and build the infrastructure for them to grow. Also money, there has been a meager budget of just $25,000 a year for Classified while Faculty have upwards of $300,000 a year. Why such a discrepancy? Does this speak to value because it sure does to Classified Employees.

The Administration has provided the Federation their ORS 279B analysis. According to AFT Or. Legal Counsel it did not encompass the statutory requirements for a financial analysis related to contracting out, which include:

• Average or actual salary or wage and benefit costs for contractors and employees who
  • Work in the industry or business most closely involved in performing the services that the contracting agency intends to procure; and
  • Would be necessary and directly involved in performing the services or who would inspect, supervise or monitor the performance
• Material costs, including costs for space, energy, transportation, storage, raw and finished materials, equipment and supplies; and
• Miscellaneous costs related to performing the services, including but not limited to reasonably foreseeable fluctuations in the costs for the items identified in this subsection over the expected duration of the procurement

Is the College’s legal unaware of these requirements or did they and the college decide to purposefully leave this information out?

LCCEF is meeting with administrators on Labor Management issues and Bargaining. We spend a lot of time together with very little gain especially when considering the amount of time we meet.

Nearly every year Classified staff have continued to take on more medical costs because of reduction to benefits in lieu of cutting other budgeted expenses; for example: manager positions and salaries, capital investments like Titan Court or the old Downtown Campus, just to name a few. It hasn’t solved the problem yet, why is Administration banking on this solution again? If you want different results than what you’re getting, you have to try different approaches.

Administration boasts that they will fill 11 manager positions and 20 classified positions. To put that in perspective assuming full time employment, 11 manager positions is about 18.5% of that group’s total FTE while 20 classified positions is only about 6% of the total classified FTE. Why is it that manager FTE is increasing at 3 times the rate of classified staff? Why is it that every way you cut it, total FTE of classified positions is decreasing while the same is not true for management positions? This is not sustainable and classified staff are not going to stand quietly.

Administration has dispersed a Bargaining Cost Calculator worksheet which identifies all positions in all funds, including vacant ones that they intend to fill. They have identified over 90% of the vacant management FTE to be filled while only identifying 63% of classified FTE to fill. Based on the latest Personel Trends Summary [attached] from the college budget website, Management FTE has increased to be greater now than it was during our peak enrollment. The manager position list for FY19 totals 67.85 FTE, an increase of 7% over surge enrollment manager FTE. Additionally, manager FTE is continuing to increase to 71.7 in FY20. This continues to push the ceiling higher as administration budgets 13% more manager FTE than in FY12, FY13, and FY16. In this time of critically low enrollment, the lowest in 10 years, why is it that there is more manager FTE budgeted now than there was with twice the enrolled student FTE? Why has manager FTE increased 13% more than surge enrollment years while classified FTE has decreased 25%? Repeatedly, we’re seeing managers take more and give less to their classified staff.

Lastly, I need to touch on the tender topic of harassment, bullying, slander, and libel at LCC. Lot’s of that is happening and has been for years. Why? Why has the college ignored these types of behaviour? We have a new Administration and we are just now starting to see changes and action that’s long overdue. We want to emphasize the importance of this work when selecting a new Chief Human Resources Officer and the importance of the Administration’s support for the CHRO in this work.  Let’s not keep repeating the mistakes of the past.

Thank you,

Kenny Ascheri

https://www.lanecc.edu/sites/default/files/budget/personnel_trends_summary.pdf