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CCC NEWS
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| Campus
Equity Week, October 27-31, 2003 |
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Campus Equity Week
Contingent academic labor wants equal pay, fair play
 English
instructor Mary Millet (left) holds office hours on a trashcan
lid with her students at Palomar College in southern California.
Millet, a part-time instructor, was publicizing the lack of
amenities, fairness, and equal pay for equal work for contingent
faculty in California and across the nation during Campus
Equity Week, October 27-31. (Photo by Julie Ivey)
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Campus Equity Week in the News
- "Part-time
teachers rally for equal pay," San Francisco Examiner,
October 31, 2003
- "Part-time
Cabrillo instructors seek better pay, benefits," Santa
Cruz Sentinel, October 29, 2003
- "Adjunct
faculty demonstrate at Palomar College," North County
Times, November 11, 2003
Contingent Faculty
Want Fair Play, Equal Pay
by Fred Glass (from CCC Perspective, December 2003)
It took the biggest fire in California history to stop them, but
the part-time faculty at Palomar College had to postpone their Campus
Equity Week (CEW) demonstration. (They rescheduled for two weeks
later.) Elsewhere around the state, with no fires to deter them,
community college faculty reached out to students and the public
the last week in October with press conferences, demonstrations,
leafleting, signature gathering, town hall meetings and the like.
Faculty activists organized Campus Equity Week to draw attention
to contingent academic labor practices in colleges and universities
in the United States, Mexico and Canada, and to shine a spotlight
on the eroding quality of education as those practices multiply.
The
top rung of second class
At Cabrillo College near Santa Cruz, part-time faculty tabled, displayed
a wall with the names of all of the campus part-timers, showed the
video Degrees of Shame, and garnered some good local press. A generally
sympathetic article in the local daily newspaper noted the "tray
filled with peanuts, symbolizing part-timers pay" on their
table, and helpfully used data handed out by members of the Cabrillo
faculty to illustrate the inequities.
A few miles north and across the coastal range, faculty activists
in the San Mateo Community College Federation sat at tables on all
three district campuses. At one they continuously showed a different
video, Teachers on Wheels, as students stopped by to take in the
information and chat with their instructors. And the San Francisco
Examiner ran a story.
In that city, instructor Gus Goldstein and AFT Local 2121 president
Allan Fisher held a press conference together with UC Berkeley lecturers
to discuss the problems faced by contingent faculty at both levels
of higher education. Goldstein described the benefits enjoyed by
part-timers at SFCC, thanks to the commitment via collective bargaining
of Local 2121 to fair treatment. But even in San Francisco, where
part-time instructors have health benefits, paid office hours, and
85% pro-rata pay, they merely occupy "the top rung of second
class status."
New
AFT pamphlet
UC lecturers Kathryn Klar and Jim Stockinger offered their comments
on a new AFT pamphlet, "The Growth of Full-time Nontenure-Track
Faculty." The report documents the trend, in both four and
two year schools, toward hiring contingent faculty to replace a
corps of full-time, tenured faculty. The practice reflects the under-funding
of higher education, but also, says the report, the ascendancy of
a top-down corporate mentality in college and university administration.
An AM radio station played the story on the press conference several
times during the day, and Pacifica station KPFA ran theirs on the
news that night.
In the Peralta College district in Alameda County, part-time instructors
sent informational articles and mock letters applying for full-time
positions to the campus newspaper. They also urged students to send
letters to Governor-elect Schwarzenegger requesting full funding
for the community college system, similar to letters handed out
at Glendale Community College.
Labor
support for CEW
The North Bay Labor Council in Sonoma, and the San Diego and Imperial
Counties Labor Council, endorsed CEW, and passed resolutions supporting
the principle of equal pay for equal work for contingent college
and university faculty.
And the fire-delayed Palomar demonstration? On Monday, November
11, twenty-five creative activists from Palomar and Mira Costa Colleges
wore bird masks to represent their "freeway flyer" status;
partial caps and gowns emblematic of their part-time employment,
and ghost costumes to protest their anonymity in the campus community.
Members Roy Latos, Mary Millet, and Julie Ivey were quoted in the
newspaper coverage. The demonstration also garnered TV news stories,
and clarified for the public that the Palomar Community College
District administration has failed thus far to channel state part-timer
equity monies to part-time faculty.
Campus Equity Week may not have halted the trends moving in the
direction of increased usage of contingent faculty in higher education.
No one expected it to. But the actions held across California and
the hemisphere served continuing notice that the corporate mindset
of college administrations will not go uncontested. "Ultimately,"
says Gus Goldstein, "the solution to the plight of part-timers
is to increase pro-rata to the point that a district will find it
more economical to hire full-time faculty."
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