By Lantz Simpson

     AB 907 (Goldberg) stalled in April in the Assembly Higher Education Committee.  The bill would put tight restrictions on community colleges ability to hire "permatemp" faculty after September 1, 2006, and in the meantime would require pro rata pay for temporary faculty.  Bargaining for reemployment rights for temporary faculty was also made explicit in the bill.  Another feature of the bill would be to repeal Education Code Sec. 87482.5 (the 60% law) after January 1, 2007.

     The sponsor of the bill, freshman Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg (D-Los Angeles) appeared at the CPFA southern regional meeting in Pasadena in February and acknowledged that AB 907 was still in process and would be a two year bill.  CFT (a sponsor), CTA (a co-sponsor), and FACCC all supported the bill while CCLC (the lobbyist for the districts and the CEO's) opposed it.  The energy crisis and the faltering state budget have been cited as reasons for the bill being shelved for now.  There are a variety of estimates as to how much more funding it would take to achieve 100% compensation parity, but the best estimates, coming on the heels of the $57 million equity appropriation this year, is that it would take about an additional $200 million.

     Goldberg's bill is very similar to the legislative proposal I made in 1998 in that her bill attacks what I believe to be the root of the problem-- the employment conditions statutes in the Education Code that enable community college districts to maintain the current system of 17,000 regular faculty with due process rights and 30,000 permatemp faculty without due process rights and with much lower compensation.  Specifically, the bill would require districts after September 1, 2006, to grant probationary (tenure-track) status to temporary faculty whose assignment exceeds 20% of a full-time load.  This would effectively end the permatemp system.

     The legislative analysis of AB 907 was done by Paul Mitchell and reads essentially like a CCLC position paper.  Mitchell's analysis confuses the terms temporary and part-time and distorts the CPEC study while putting forth the old canards that districts need flexibility and that most part-time faculty come from full-time jobs in business and government or are retired.  It also contains unsubstantiated statements such as "at some point, the costs of eliminating part-time faculty outweigh the benefit," and questions whether that many part-time faculty are really abused.  Most disappointingly, Mitchell's analysis fails to even acknowledge many of the arguments in favor of reforming the system.

     The full text of the bill, along with the status, history, and legislative analysis are available at www.leginfo.ca.gov.