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Hourly Advocate Table of Contents | Santa Monica College Faculty Association
| Volume 16, Issue 3 | March 2002 |
Gains We've Made
by Andrew Walzer
Some part-time faculty seem to have the attitude that activism on our issues simply doesn't pay. This belief may be rooted in a kind of fatalism that assumes that we fundamentally can't change the unequal working conditions. This is simply not true. We are making change, slowly, incrementally, but change is happening. And in order to build on this momentum we must build our movement by continuing to organize, including pushing legislation and protesting.
At a local level, the Santa Monica Faculty Association has won significant gains for part time instructors. In the contract we successfully negotiated this fall, we expanded eligibility for paid office hours, health benefits, and associate faculty status. We essentially doubled the amount of part timers eligible for office hours, so that now most part time faculty in the Mathematics department will be eligible. we lowered the requirement for associated faculty status (allowing us to receive a one year contract) from six to five semesters. most significantly we were able to negotiate an 11% pay increase for most part-time faculty. Almost four percent of that was a pay equity increase that came from the state equity money, which brings me to gains we have made on a statewide level.
The statewide organization working for part time equity is the California part time Faculty Association (CPFA). currently the chair of this organization is our own Lantz Simpson. at a state wide level we were successful in getting $57 million budgeted specifically for part time equity. this year our paychecks will reflect this success with a significant pay increase. But we still have more to do. we need to continue to work for part time parity both at a local level and a statewide level. We need to put pressure on the santa monica college Board of Trustees and the president to resolve the wage gap between part time and full time faculty. We need to work on a statewide level to push legislation.
to do this it is essential that we create a movement of activists who are willing to protest, work on election campaigns, and put pressure on our elected officials. one place to start is to become a member of the santa Monica Faculty Association and the California Part Time Faculty Association. But we need more than that. We need to take action!!
