Contract Offer Insults Teachers

* As a teacher in the Ventura County Community College District, I am writing to express my concern over the way the board is supporting (and thus encouraging) the chancellor’s treatment of our union’s offer of contract renewal.

The chancellor has presented the union with a contract that not only has no bearing on our previous contracts, it destroys our rights as laborers--never mind the professionals we are and have faithfully been for many years.

After years of faithful service, suddenly we are being attacked. Not merely insulted, but attacked--for how else could I, a part-time employee of several years, interpret an “at-will” employment offer with no benefits and no seniority?

Why is my competency, my work, being treated with such disdain? What has the faculty done that is so wrong, that good-faith bargaining is being ignored and our efforts to be treated fairly, vilified?

What has been said, to whom, and when, that this situation has been allowed to reach the outrageous level it has?

LYNN M. MURRAY

Oxnard