A key component of the CFT One Faculty campaign, which aims to create an equitable system that benefits all faculty, is making sure part-timers have some job security and due process.

That’s why it was a huge accomplishment when Governor Newsom signed AB 1028 in October, after a CFT campaign asking members to let the governor know why they supported it.

“That was the first piece of this big puzzle,” said Jim Mahler, president of the Community College Council and leader of the AFT Guild Local 1931 in San Diego. “We needed to get that in place. And one thing preventing that from happening was education code 87665, which basically says they can fire people whenever they want to.”

After going through some changes, the final iteration takes that clause out of the education code and replaces it with something that gives part-timers more job security.

“I’m happy with what we ended up with because just getting rid of the old language was the big victory,” Mahler said. “And then on top of that, they have to negotiate locally, which is a win for us.”

The One Faculty campaign came out of a resolution passed at the CFT State Council in 2022. That led to the One Faculty Task Force, which works on changing the structural inequities in the two-tier system, so that all faculty will have the same hiring processes, compensation schedules, and benefits.

Linda Sneed, a Tri-Chair on the Task Force, says the transformation will be better for everyone involved — part-time and full-time faculty as well as students.

They are celebrating the passage of AB 1028 as a big win that has a significant impact, she said. And like Mahler, she emphasized the importance of getting rid of the definition in the Education Code of part-timers as temporary.

“We have been understood as ‘at-will’ employees, meaning that quite literally, we could be terminated at the will of employer at any time, so it could be part way through a term or a semester,” she said. “This is an important step in clarifying that in spite of our condition as temporary according to the Ed Code, that unions do have the right to negotiate actual processes to prevent abuse of power and disruption to employees and students. It’s worker justice, it’s about workplace fairness, and it’s also in interest of the continuity students deserve.”

Sneed says members of the task force worked hard to help ensure the governor would sign the bill,

“We definitely got the word out that we needed people to communicate the importance of this bill to the governor because we know that just because something makes it through both houses, there’s no guarantee he’ll sign it,” she said. “We were dogged in urging colleagues to communicate with the Governor’s office.”

Jessica Thompson, a member of AFT Guild Local 1931, also works with the Task Force. She says she joined because she saw there was a lot of concrete work to do, and she wanted to be involved.

Like Mahler, Thompson considers it a win that now the locals will need to define and enforce fair termination procedures. The passage of this bill gives members a greater sense of stability, she thinks.

“It’s meaningful. It requires that districts follow collective bargaining agreements when ending part-time assignments for adjuncts and it creates a more respectful and consistent process for adjunct faculty,” she said. “But there’s still a lot of work ahead to make sure adjuncts have more stable and predictable careers.”