By Martin Goldstein
October, 2007

The Community College Initiative, Proposition 92, will appear on the February 2008 ballot – along with the Presidential primary candidates. It is a good thing, and I hope it will pass, and I'm actually working actively for it. But, as Editor of the Hourly Advocate , I have to ask the titular question. What's in it for us part-timers?

    I ask the question knowing the answer already, which is, simply, nothing necessarily. That's not the same as necessarily nothing – we could get something out of it. In fact, we should get something out of it. But there's nothing in it that actually addresses the part-time
question. It's not about fixing our problem.

    It's about fixing a lot of other problems that need to be fixed, like getting our fair share of Prop 98 money and cutting and capping student fees and generally giving the community colleges a little much needed and deserved respect. None of us would argue with any of it.

    But none of it says they're going spend a portion of the increased revenues to the community colleges that will result from the Prop 92 (approximately $62 million to SMC alone over the next 5 years) to fund part-time pay equity, the only thing that will insure both 75/25 and the full regularization of part-timers on this campus. There are, however, other pieces of legislation already in motion designed to do just that -- but none of them will come to anything if there's no money to implement them.

    Which is what the Prop 92 could provide. So my theory at this point, since I don't really know that the Prop 92 is going to help me (and you, and all other part-timers), is that I will work for it with the stated intention that why I'm working for it is to achieve full part-time regularization. There are a lot of good things in it already. But what I want out of it is equal pay for equal work, and all that that implies. I want regularization to come out of it, the full professionalization of the part-time community college workforce. Just like the CSU's and UC's.

    If you care what happens about your job, if you want your situation to get better, then I suggest you do the same. There are no guarantees, no promises here. But if we all work to pass the Prop 92, then we all should share in the benefits.     It's not a great deal, but it's the best deal on the table right now, the only deal, really, that could possibly improve our situation in the next five to ten years. If enough of us work to pass it, then we have every right and reason to demand that they do the right thing after. The alternative is to do nothing, and get nothing. That is guaranteed.