News Tribune - Treat College Part-time Faculty Fairly

by Keith Hoeller
Last updated: November 20th, 2005 05:40 AM (PST)

Why on Earth would a national movement emerge to call attention to the exploitation of college professors?
After all, everyone knows that professors are high-paid professionals who teach only a couple of classes a quarter, have summers free, enjoy paid sabbaticals and have lifetime job security in the form of tenure.

Yet an adjunct faculty movement has emerged in the past decade, in order to highlight the fact that tenured professors deserve a place on the Endangered Species List.

Indeed, tenured and tenure-track faculty now form only about a third of all professors nationwide. The other two-thirds of the nation’s college professors have low pay, few benefits, no job security and teach nearly half of all courses.

Washington has been no exception to the rule. The State Board for Community and Technical Colleges has over 10,000 part-time faculty, compared to 3,500 full-timers. These part-timers would earn $27,406 annually if they were allowed to teach a full-time load, compared to a full-time salary of $48,303. Yet since most part-timers only teach 50 percent of full-time, their actual annual salary is more likely $13,703.

A decade ago a small group of independent part-time professors jump-started the part-time faculty movement in Washington state’s two-year colleges by presenting legislators with the details of this separate but unequal system of tenured “haves” and untenured “have-nots.”

This two-tiered system was collectively bargained by the two faculty unions, the Washington Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers Washington, whose leadership has long been dominated by full-time faculty.

The 1996 state Legislature did pass two bills directing the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges to develop a 10-year implementation plan to address “compensation and staffing issues” (SB 6251), and “to convene a task force to conduct a best practices audit of compensation packages and conditions of employment for part-time faculty” (SB 6583).

The few part-timers who served as members of the task force were chosen by the union leadership and outnumbered by full-timers and college administrators. The independent part-timers, denied membership on the task force, met separately and issued their own “Equitable Practices Report,” calling for equal pay, equal raises, job security, academic freedom and a full package of benefits.

Not surprisingly, the official “best practices” report fell short of equal pay for equal work for all part-timers. The suggested changes in working conditions were vague and modest, and few of these proposals were ever implemented through the collective bargaining process.

In the past decade, all of the major gains for part-timers have come from the Legislature, including $20 million in salary increases and prorated sick leave for all part-timers.

Surprisingly, state Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-Seattle), who had championed the adjunct cause for years, introduced a union-sponsored bill (SB 5087) last session to do the Best Practices Task Force all over again, thereby putting the solution back into the hands of those who had created the problem in the first place: the colleges and the unions.

Repeating the mistakes of the first task force, this second one was composed of a minority of part-timers, all of whom had been chosen by the union leadership. The independent part-timers were excluded once again, and they remain skeptical that college-by-college bargaining will provide the strong and quick solutions required to end this crisis.

How can we have a “world-class” community college system when the colleges pay their faculty Third World wages and treat them like indentured servants?

Sen. Ken Jacobsen (D-Seattle) has introduced two bills that would solve the two most pressing issues for part-timers: pay and job security. His equal pay bill (SB 5871) would compensate all part-time faculty at the same rate as full-time faculty, prorated for the number of courses they teach, and ensure that all part-timers receive equal annual step raises. His job security bill (SB 5970) would grant part-time faculty the presumption of continuous contracts after three years of successful teaching.

Rather than support these bills, and solve this crisis right away, the unions would apparently prefer to spend the next 30 years as they have the last 30: bargaining scraps for the part-timers and full-course meals for the tenured faculty.

It is time for the Legislature to step up to the table and provide the part-time faculty a full serving of equality.

Keith Hoeller is co-founder of the Washington Part-Time Faculty Association and a member of the Contingent Faculty Committee, American Association of University Professors.

Originally published: November 20th, 2005 02:30 AM (PST)
 

See original article at the News Tribune.

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