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Guest column:
To MHCC board from Faculty Association
An open letter to the MHCC Board:
We are dismayed by your decision to declare impasse in our negotiations — a decision that will impact this college, our students, faculty and community. The faculty wants to be clear in our communications with you. Consistent with our concession of $1.2 million dollars last year, and our initial mediation offer of $900,000 this year, the faculty is willing to be part of the solution to reach a fair settlement. However, we represent only 160 people, and cannot shoulder the entire burden of the college's current economic woes. We ask that you reconsider your directives to your consultant and empower your team to negotiate a reasonable settlement. We invite you personally to peruse our website www.be-informed.net to ensure that you are getting our information and analysis directly, rather than filtered through your consultant.
In addition, we want to express our frustration that you continue to use the college website to market your point of view. Your information is inaccurate or incomplete, therefore producing inaccurate analysis and misleading projections. Specifically, you recently provided a "calculator" to individual faculty members to "help" us understand the personal realities of your proposal. This calculator is a good example of how you are marketing rather than analyzing. You have chosen to provide a calculator for only 2010-11 — a year that is more than half over. As a result, the impacts of your proposed cuts are disguised by the shortened period. If you want faculty to have valuable information in order to make a decision, you need provide opportunity to calculate the years 2011-12 and 2012-13, where the cuts will become even more dramatic and will "count" for the whole year.
The faculty is committed to work toward an acceptable resolution of this bargaining process. As faculty, we remain steadfast in what we know is right: first, a reasonable contract without significant economic loss, and second, deserved recognition of the valuable and necessary contribution faculty provide to MHCC.
Sincerely,
Sara Williams, MHCC instructor
for the Faculty Association
The Advocate reserves the right to not publish comments based on their appropriateness.