"Infrequent Flyer"
May 3, 2001

Dear Part-time Faculty Colleague,

Voicemail now available

Contact! Thanks to the MC student government (ASMC), we have a MPFA voicemail box. If you want or need to get in touch with MPFA officers, senate or college committee representatives, leave a message at 468-3401, box 1050. ASMC got a grant to provide a health information system, and part of the package is 600 voicemail boxes. Michelle Campbell of ASMC came up with the idea of providing voicemail for any faculty member who needs/wants one, and we certainly qualify in the need department. If you would like one for yourself, come by and talk to Michelle in room 110 (on the quad), Ukiah campus or call her at 468-3094 to make arrangements. It's FREE, and it works. This system gives part-time instructors a chance to have a number where announcements can be left for students-or they can leave us messages-that can be reached from any phone.

Dinner party at the Ukiah Brewery to celebrate our scholarship recipients.

MPFA Scholarship Social in Ukiah - Friday, May 11, 4-6:00 p.m. @ Ukiah Brewing Company, SW corner of Perkins and State Street in downtown Ukiah. We will be providing pre-academic awards ceremony dinners for our three scholarship winners and their guests. The social will be no-host for part-time faculty who would like to get together before the end of the semester, meet our three recipients,

While you are at the party, get an your MPFA mug.

About dues and FAIR SHARE: Should everyone pay?

SB 1960 legislation took effect at the beginning of 2001. It allows collective bargaining associations like MPFA )and its parent CCA/CTA/NEA organizations) to collect an "agency fee" from all part-time faculty.

Your responses to the survey raised a some interesting points:

Here are the results:

9 of you said "Yes, everyone should pay dues or agency fee." (8 of those currently pay; one doesn't)

12 of you said "No." (9 currently do not pay dues, 3 currently do pay dues)

4 were undecided, said they need more information.

In addition, there were some creative suggestions.

Two people suggested that dues should be a percentage of pay (one suggested 1%), and another asked what percentage of part-time instructors currently pay $15/pay period dues (the answer is about 50% of us, with about 8 of our 100 members paying only $6 to MPFA, since they belong to California Teachers Association [CTA] already).

Your MPFA executive committee postponed taking any action to collect agency fees for the remainder of this year. As one response said, "better not to put the squeeze on every member-we don't want an affiliation fight." If you are interested in finding out more about the agency fee issue, please visit the website!

Talk to us: Expect a phone call from Janet Chaniot (She's a long-time MPFA advocate and member of the negotiating team). Janet is going to try to call every member of the part-time faculty at Mendocino College to get your opinions on several different questions. There are over 250 of us so Janet is going to be busy!

Another good way to communicate with each other and exchange views on issues is through e-mail and by voicemail (which we never had before!). We are hoping that many of you will use the voicemail system.

Email: Mendocino College Part-time Faculty
Voice Mail: 468-3401, box 1050