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November 2006, Volume 21, Issue 1 - Understanding Associate Faculty: The Professionalization of the Part Time Workforce |
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By Martin Goldstein
The purpose of Associate Faculty, according to our new contract, “…is to grant, on an annual basis, some degree of employment stability for eligible temporary hourly faculty…” In plain English, it gives part-timers some amount of job security. It is far from perfect, but it is a lot better than nothing, which is what most PTers in most community colleges have, and it is much improved because of the changes in the new contract.
Associate Faculty at SMC is a maturing seniority system for PTers, and a large amount of progress in this area has been made over the last two contract cycles, in fact; progress in Associate Faculty status actually exceeds the progress of anything else in any area of the contract. Nothing else has moved as fast as this. Of course, nothing else needs to move that fast, given the painful and absurd inequity suffered by PTers under the current system, but it is a true credit to Chief Negotiator Mitra Moassessi and the FA that they made this a priority. It didn’t happen by accident.
So, what’s new with AF status, and for those new to the area, what is AF status anyway? Basically, it’s a status you achieve by having five consecutive semesters (fall/spring only; winter and summer are not part of this – yet) in which you teach five or more LHE’s (Lecture Hour Equivalents) in the same discipline (but not necessarily the same courses) in each of those semesters.
For most of us that means 2 ½ years teaching at least two classes each semester. Further, if you have been evaluated during this time, it has to be a satisfactory evaluation. If it weren’t, then you probably wouldn’t be working here anymore anyway, but if you were never evaluated, that’s not your fault, and you get AF status regardless.
What AF status routinely gets you are re-employment rights, a form of job security for your base load of classes, which is the load of the fourth and fifth semesters of the five semesters in a row that got you AF status in the first place. From then on, you should get that same load as a minimum yearly guarantee, automatically renewable each fall/spring cycle unless you get an unsatisfactory evaluation, or the classes simply aren’t there. In that case, however, after FTers who contractually get first dibs, AF members get the next round, even if it means bumping another PTer who does not have AF status.
Furthermore, there is now an ordered list of Associate Faculty, determined by the date of your first assignment in the department (not discipline) and this order will determine, to a some degree, your job security in case of a massive cutback, the likes of which we truly hope we shall not see again, in which even AF people have to be laid off. This is a seniority list, if you will, for the lifeboats on the Titanic.
Once you have AF status, you can keep it so long as you’re working here and continue to get satisfactory evaluations. Further, there are now provisions for breaks in service and retaining your AF status and seniority. You can actually take some time off to renew and refresh, and still have your job – and your seniority -- when you come back.
Your base load guarantee for your AF status can change, however, over the course of your employment -- both up and down. Four semesters of a specific load makes it your new base
load, so it can go up from what got you AF status in the first place, assuming you keep getting extra classes for two years. Or it can go down, if your load drops for four semesters – but it never can go below the AF minimum of five units each semester, or the equivalent number of hours for counselors and librarians.
What It All Means
AF status is clearly a good thing to have, and there soon will be as many Associate Faculty PTers here as regular FTers, about 300 of each – which made me think—right now about 50% of our class hours are taught by FTers, despite the fact that the state goal is that 75% be the minimum taught by FTers. But I calculate that roughly 25% of the remainder of class hours are taught by those 300 or so AF PTers (i.e. teaching at roughly half-load, at or under the 60% Law cap, but at or above their base).
Pay that AF group the same as FTers, and give them equivalent job security and working conditions, (i.e., office hours and offices to have them in) and benefits (and we’re close on that already) and you’ve gone a long way to resolving the issues behind the “75/25 problem,” haven’t you? Canada already has a name for it: regularization. We call it professionalization of the PT workforce.
On a closely related note I must point out this gem buried in the language of the new contract, in the section discussing the standards the department chair should use in deciding whether a PT teacher is qualified to teach a course: “The department chair shall be the judge of whether or not a temporary hourly faculty member has adequate preparation for the specific course or assignment, but, in making the judgment, the department chair shall apply assignment standards that are substantially the same as those used in assigning full-time faculty within the department.”
If we are held to the same standards as full time teachers, and thus doing the same job they are, then what possible justification is there for categorically paying us less and preventing us from working more?
Associate Faculty, as I said, is a maturing system, but not a fully mature one. That will come with full professionalization of the part time work force, and the disappearance of most of the negatives distinctions between PT and FT, effectively giving all professional college teachers the same rights and rewards all grade school teachers have had for generations – equal pay for equal work, and professional job security, working conditions and benefits.
But for this contract cycle, we did well, very well indeed.
Thank you, Mitra.
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