By Martin  Goldstein

      When opinions on some large social issue go from minority to majority status, we call it a tipping point, and we seem to be reaching one in the area of contingent faculty, those we know here at SMC as part-timers. Part-time rights, pay equity, job security et al have been issues for as long as any of us can remember – the enabling legislation, if you will, was passed in 1968 – and change here has been a long time coming.

      But suddenly, it is here and now. Last legislative session part-time activists tried and failed to get a tiny piece of remedial legislation passed regarding the infamous 60% Law, the linchpin of that ’68 legislation. We couldn’t get it out of committee. Yet right now, in April of 2007, there are four major legislative initiatives already introduced as bills in the assembly, backed by all the major academic unions, all designed to deal expressly with the issue of contingent labor. Suddenly, we’re on the table.

      CFT/AFT, CPFA, FACCC, CTA, NEA, AAUP, and others are all supporting major legislative initiatives designed to address this 40 year-old problem, and out of all of these bills – and the Community College Initiative – it is possible that a workable solution to this problem could be found in the next few years. I think that’s progress.

      Only a major cultural mind-set change, i.e. a tipping point, could bring this about. It is no longer appropriate to dismiss contingent faculty and their concerns. I’d like to think this is because there is a new appreciation for the value of education, and I think the public at large does feel this way, especially about the community college’s. But this current flurry of activity I suspect has more pragmatic roots.

 

It is, I think, the result of internal union pressure, part-timers in all those unions pushing their own leaders to address this issue, and leaders themselves realizing that they were in grave danger of losing their relevance, indeed existence, if the spread of contingency is not beaten back. What matters now is that they're doing it, and what will matter in the future are the resources they will put into really making it happen. Talk, like part-time labor, is cheap.

 

FACEing facts

      AB1343 (Mendoza), also known as the Faculty and College Excellence Act (FACE), is sponsored by the CCC of CFT, as part of a national AFT agenda. It is further supported by CFA, which is primarily a CSU union, and it is written to cover both systems.

      Its main intention is to make all districts live up to the 75/25 ratio of full-time to part-time instruction, something that was supposed to have happened under 1988's AB 1725, but clearly hasn't. This is inarguably a good idea.  It even further defines that ratio as “per department” as well as “per campus” which is even better.

      Further, in hiring these new full-time teachers, the bill also suggests “preferential consideration” for part-timers in getting some of those full-time jobs, which is also good. It further mandates that all part-timers have pro rata pay, and due process protections that sound a lot like tenure, or at least, reasonable job security. Further all part-timers would get the same medical benefits as full-timers at a 40% load.

 

      All of these changes are mandated to happen over six years, starting in 2008-09 and ending in 2014-15, with some increases mandated at a 20% per year rate. This would represents the effective “regularization” of  part-timers, making them truly equivalent to full-timers in all significant  ways, other than load. Here, this bill is silent on changing the 60% Law, so you still could not teach more than that on one campus, but with pay equity, you could more easily achieve a full-time load (and salary) among two or more colleges, as is true in the British Columbia system.

 

AB 591 – the part-timers bill

      This bill, sponsored by long-time legislator Mervyn Dymally, was the first off the blocks, and to some degree forced the issue for all the other bills. It came directly from part-time faculty activists rather than through a union, committees, etc., and looks at the problem from the perspective of currently employed long term part-timers who are the heart of the part-time movement in California and nationwide.

      The bill would do away with the 60% limitation entirely, and requires pro rata pay and medical benefits for any part-time faculty member working more than a 40% load. But in being silent on due process job protection, it would suggest the non-tenured, but fairly paid, fully employed and benefited CSU teacher as a model; this is better than the current exploited CCC part-timer, but not as good as a tenured or tenure track full-timer.

      Similar to but stronger than the CFT bill, this one requires that at least 50% of new full-time positions on a campus be filled with veteran part-timers already teaching at the college. And while it differs by not discussing the 75/25 ratio, if there is no longer an economic benefit to hiring part-timers, districts would naturally hire full-timers since they do much more of the extra work of governance, senate, and other non-classroom tasks. In any case 75/25 already is the law, and has been for almost 20 years; the problem is enforcing it. Thus this and the FACE legislation are largely working towards the same end: 75/25 and the regularization of remaining part-time faculty, consonant and compatible goals.

 

CTA, NEA, AAUP, etc.

      AB 1305 (Calderon), sponsored by the California Teachers Association (CTA) requires that all

CC's reach the 75/25 ratio of FT/PT teaching hours by December 31, 2010, and AB 906 (Eng), also sponsored by CTA, requires compliance with the 50% law, which mandates that 50% of all district expenses spent on education be allocated to teachers salaries.

      The NEA recently stepped in with a position statement opposed to the increasing contingency of academic employment, and while late to the party, is starting to take the problem seriously. And the AAUP  has  been  in  solid  support  of  contingent faculty rights for the last few years, and has recently hired a major CSU faculty activist, Craig Flanery, for its California office.       In sum, there is a sudden amount of attention being focused right now on both professionalizing the part-timers and creating more full-time teaching positions in the community colleges and CSU's. The problem of course is how to pay for it. And realistically, there is no solution now, which is why none of these bills will become law this session, or ever, unless a funding mechanism, perhaps tied to new money in the CCI, is included.

      But that's for next year. Right now we're compiling our wish list for an omnibus community college contingent faculty reform act, and when we figure out what all that would cost, and figure out what if anything we have to spend, then we'll negotiate.

      It could be worse. We could be ignored for another forty years – but somehow, I don't think that's going to happen.

A Tipping Point