Parity

By Martin Goldstein
October, 2007

    “Parity” or “parity pay” is about putting more money in your pocket. It's about making part-time and full time salaries more equal; if we were at 100% parity they would be exactly equal, and your salary per class would be the same as a full timers with similar credentials and experience. That's not just a good thing, it's a very good thing.

    Your duties and responsibilities would also be the same, proportionally. Parity is about equal pay for equal work, and right now part-timers are equal in neither. We get paid less per class, and theoretically at least, we work less per class. Most of us are not responsible for much of the outside-the-classroom work an full timer is contractually obligated to do – office hours, committee meetings – any and all non-teaching duties. (The few who do have office hours are paid additionally for them; about 3-5% additional pay on the current salary schedule.)

    A full timer with a 15-hour-a-week teaching load is obligated to work at least 15 additional hours on these duties. This difference in work obligations is the main difference used to justify paying part-timers less; at SMC about 70% as much as the equivalent full timers, per class. (We'll leave out for the moment the state law that prevents us from teaching more than a 60% load, thus further reducing our possible income at any District.)

    If we are to move to 100% pay parity, we must also move to 100% equal work obligations. Thus a 60% load (say three 3 unit classes) would require at least 9 hours a week of work outside the classroom to justify the equal pay. You would be 3/5 of an full timer in work and pay. You would be more involved in on-campus non-teaching activities, just like full timers, and most of us believe it  would   improve  the  overall  student  success 

numbers, including the all-important student retention rate. Teachers on the ground, not on the freeway, do a better job of helping students.

    Further, 100% parity would markedly reduce or even eliminate any economic advantage from hiring part-timers in the first place. If we're not cheaper per class, it may even be cheaper to hire one full timer (with one medical and retirement benefit) than two or more part-timers. Again, most of us believe that the only way we will ever get to the state mandated ratio of FT/PT of 75/25 – 75% of all WTH done by full timers – is to have parity pay. If there is anything the history of the last 20 years has taught us, it is that as long as schools can save money by hiring part-timers, they will, no matter what the law says. Here at SMC we are at an embarrassing 45/55 now – only 45% of  WTH are taught by the 313 full timers, with 55% taught by the 1000+ part-timers. Money talks, and administrators listen. It's literally a no-brainer locally and statewide, since we are the last and most crucial safety net our society has to keep kids from a life of minimum wage poverty – but don't get me started.

    In any case, parity is a statewide issue among community colleges, with a small amount of money earmarked in the state budget since 2000 to help schools reach parity – with, however, no generally agreed upon definition of what that is, and what duties it should involve. The discussion is ongoing here at SMC during the current contract negotiation, and we have agreement on what we believe to be a fair and progressive definition.  Parity pay is set at 100% of full time pay, with proportionally all the same outside class duties. Pay for instruction-only (what most of us now do) is set at 75%, and instruction-plus-office–hours at 85%. Negotiation now centers on the multi-year plan to get up to those numbers.

To put this issue in perspective, we looked around the state to see what others have done.  In Marin, they are already at 95% for instructional faculty, with the obligations including office hours, shared governance, and committee work. Their goal is 100%, and they are close to it. In San Francisco City College, they're at 85%, with office hours separate and additional, and shared governance and committee work not included. Their goal, too, is 100%.

    The Los Angeles Community College District is at 75%, with no agreed on final goal; Foothill-DeAnza is 74%, moving up to 77.5% by 2009, with 87.5% their goal – not including professional responsibilities or committee work. San Jose-Evergreen is 65%, with the salary schedules linked, and office hours included – but not shared governance and committee work. Their goal, too, is 100%.

    I think we look good in this comparison, based on our ideals -- and not so good based on our actual performance. But clearly steps are being taken to work to a greater parity pay percentage in the next few years, and it is a solid achievement of the District and our Negotiating Team to have agreed upon such a fair and appropriate set of definitions. It's the beginning of a model at Santa Monica College for reaching regularization of the part-time workforce, something that in the end we can all be proud of.

    And once we do reach 100% parity, many of the presumed distinction between full time and part-timers would be eliminated, as would the economic advantage in hiring part-timers in the first place. They would be hired when it doesn't make sense (or isn't possible) to hire a full timer – which is what the job category (of part-timers) was originally created for 40 years ago. And others currently working part-time would become properly paid professionals even if not working at a full load at any one college.

    Finally, Proposition 92, the Community College Initiative, if it passes, could provide new money into the system, enough to reach parity everywhere – and certainly here at SMC.  Our Faculty Association leadership will thus be asking our Board of Trustees in the near future to resolve to do just that—resolve that a significant percentage of any new Prop 92 money, if we win it, will be used to regularize the part-time workforce here in Santa Monica. It is a Santa Monica thing to do, and I think that a Santa Monica Model could become the model for the entire system.

    Whether that happens, however, depends on us. If we don't fight for that money now, and define what we want it for, we'll never see it later. So vote “Yes” on Prop 92—and tell your friends.