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September, 2003 Volume 18, Issue 1 - CPFA Looks Ahead |
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By Martin M. Goldstein
CPFA, the California Part-Time Faculty Association, held a quarterly meeting at West LA College on Saturday, Sept. 20, and, as usual, a vibrant mix of ideas percolated through the proceedings. It began with some organizational items, including the creation of the Greater LA Region of CPFA, to be headed by our own Andrew Walzer. A comparison of the quagmire in Sacramento and in Iraq opened the actual Conference, as Mary Ellen Goodwin, Chair of CPFA, introduced Carolyn Widener of WLA, a STRS Boardmember, who said so far as PTers are concerned, the STRS system “has hit the wall.” Basically, a system devoted 93% to K-12 simply does not come close to fairly and adequately covering Community College PTers.
It’s Prop. 98 in microcosm -- whenever CCers are tied to K-12 money, we lose. They have the numbers, thus the money, thus the political clout. We don’t. We have truth and justice on our side, which is great so long as you don’t have to pay bills or get sick or have to retire.
SMC FA President Lantz Simpson spoke next, giving a brief history of the founding and development of CPFA from it’s inception in 1998 to it’s first real victory, the PT Equity fund, which has, miraculously, survived the recent budget debacle. PTers have credibility if not clout in Sacramento, and the source of that most recently is, undeniably, CPFA.
Given that Chris Storer, CPFA’s man in Sacramento was recently honored by membership in AAUP’s prestigious Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure -- the only PTer ever on that committee -- it was fitting that Lantz was followed by AAUP’s western rep, Marcus Garvey. Marcus emphasized the AAUP’s growing concern with PT issues, and distributed copies of its recent policy statement on “Contingent Appointments in the Academic Profession,” which we will discuss in full in the next issue of the FAB. The report was a product of a joint sub-committee of AAUP’s Committee on Part-Time and Non-Tenure-Track Appointments and Committee A, in which Chris very quickly has become a player. PT pride.
Olga Shewfelt, President of the WLA AFT, then moderated a wide-ranging discussion of PT issues with a panel made up of Mary-Ellen from CPFA, Robert Yoshioka, late of FACCC, Mary Millet of CFT, Judith Mandel of CCA, and Judith Graves of CWA. Despite the alphabet soup of acronyms, it was clear that now more than ever that PT issues are crossing all jurisdictional and regional lines.
At this point, we learned, 5200 PTers lost their jobs in the CC system last spring, with more, particularly on this campus, lost in the fall. Solutions, including enforcing the existing 75/25 provision of AB1725, which mandates that 75% of classes in the CC’s must be taught by Full Timers, and no more than 25% by PTers, were discussed by the panel. If there is a concerted effort to “regularize” PT faculty, giving them right of first refusal to move into FT if they wish to, and equal pay and work for whatever load they have, with due-process re-hire rights, then this can work. But any solution is also impacted by the 60% law -- which prohibits PTers from full employment on one campus. One of the participants noted that in a recent issue of Mother Jones magazine the ten “most activist” campuses world-wide were listed, and the California Community Colleges were listed as second, just ahead of NYU and Berkeley, and right behind #1, the University of Teheran. Gives one pause.
All in all it was an extremely informative meeting, which also resulted in a few new CPFA memberships, each one of which helps supply the resources to keep the pressure on both in Sacramento and locally. If you haven’t joined CPFA already, you should think about it. They’ve already put money in your pocket with the PT Equity Fund -- but it can quite easily be taken away, too. If not you, who? And if not now, when?
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