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April 2008, Volume 22, Issue 2 - What The New Faculty Contract Means To Us |
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By Martin Goldstein
The new faculty contract just approved in January by a vote of 508-3 makes major, wa-tershed advances for part-timers in the area of parity pay, and for the first time paints a clear picture of the future regularization of our part-time workforce. It involves major immediate advances for part-timers, equally major pro-posed advances, and significant changes in the definition of the work required to do our jobs. In a nutshell, we will get paid more and we will also do more work, but in the end, we will have equal pay for equal work – equal to that of the equivalent full timer on a per class basis.
Let’s start at the beginning. “Parity” or “parity pay” is about making part-time and full time salaries equal; if we were at 100% parity they would be exactly equal, and your salary per class would be the same as a full timer with similar credentials and experience. Your duties and responsibilities would also be equal, pro-portionally, and would include responsibilities both inside and outside the classroom – just like a full timer.
A full timer with a 15-hour-a-week teach-ing load is obligated to work at least 15 addi-tional 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 get paid less per class because, theo-retically at least, we work less per class. Most of us are not responsible for any of the outside-the-classroom work an full timer is contractu-ally obligated to do – office hours, committee meetings, club advising – any and all non-teaching duties. (The few who do have office hours are paid additionally for them.)
The new contract moves us over the next three years to a situation where most part-timers (all those teaching load factor 1.0 classes) will get 81.25% of the equivalent full time rate and have an office hour obligation proportional to their load - ten minutes per unit per week. Offices, by the way, are not in-cluded; it’s up to the teacher, or hopefully the department, to find a place to hold them.
The goal is to reach 100% parity in a fu-ture contract, at which point we will be obli-gated to work at least the same number of hours outside the classroom as in it, just as like a full timer. Most of us believe that this situa-tion is not only a fair deal for us, but that 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 stu-dents, and if we’re paid to be around, we will be.
Further, 100% parity would markedly re-duce or even eliminate any economic advan-tage the college would get from hiring Part-timers in the first place. If we cost the same per class, it may even be cheaper to hire one full timer (with one medical and retirement benefit) than two or more part-timers. Part-timers would be hired when it doesn’t make sense (or isn’t possible) to hire an full timer – or quite possibly someone who simply does not want to teach a full 15 unit load.
If you add the rehire rights already at-tained here in previous contracts - our Associ-ate Faculty status - and the medical benefits gotten 15 years ago, to 100% parity pay and work obligations, the end result is what is known as “regularization” – essentially turning part-timers into proportional full timers.
If this sounds good to you, then stick around, because that’s where we’re going at SMC. And while you’re here, be sure to appre-ciate and support the work of the SMCFA PAC, which worked very hard over the last few years to elect a progressive and accessible Board of Trustees. Without that, none of the above would have been possible.
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