Part-Timer

Overview

Part-Timer

Part-Timer promotes the interests of part-time faculty working in the California community colleges. It contains news about the movement to establish better conditions of employment for adjunct faculty, both in California and North America. Browse stories by date here or by index here.​​

Part-Timer is published twice during the academic year, in the fall and in the spring. The newsletter is emailed to part-time faculty. We welcome unsolicited articles, letters, and story ideas. Please send letters, submissions, or other inquiries to Jane Hundertmark, CFT Publications Director.

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Article part-time faculty

What I learned in my research of the “Involuntary Adjunct”

By Bobbi-Lee Smart, Cerritos Faculty Federation

My dissertation research focused on the perceptions of the impact of adjuncts on community college campuses in Southern California. I specifically wanted to understand the reality of involuntary adjuncts — those whose who want full-time tenure track jobs, couldn’t get a position, so worked as “full-time” adjuncts (those whose adjunct work is the majority or entirety of their income).

Article part-time faculty AFT Local Action

Freeway Flyers: Local action & quick news
Salary comparison, part-timer conference, celebrity part-timers

Los Angeles adjunct becomes chair of California Democratic Party

Rusty Hicks, known to the larger California public as the newly elected leader of the California Democratic Party, is known to the students of the Los Angeles Community College District and the Los Angeles College Faculty Guild, Local 1521, by another title since 2016 — Adjunct Instructor of Labor Studies.

Article part-time faculty

AB 897: Raising the cap and reducing freeway flying

FIRST PERSON | By Geoff Johnson

The term “freeway flyer” has for years been synonymous with California part-time community college teachers. Since 1968, California part-timers have been legally restricted to teaching a faction of a full-time load in a given community college district, and then generally paid only for their instructional hours.

The rationale for this rule was that it allowed administrators more flexibility to deal with the drop in student sections from the fall to spring semesters, and at the same time, a way to get out of paying healthcare and retirement benefits.

Delegates reaffirm support for part-time faculty voice in shared governance

While the issues of pay inequity, the lack of job security, and access to health benefits are major challenges that plague part-time faculty —collegiality, inclusion, and connection with their campuses and fellow faculty are also important for a part-time faculty member’s long-term involvement with a particular institution.

Key to increasing adjunct involvement and connection in the California community colleges is increasing both the opportunities for and compensation of part-time faculty participation in shared governance.

Article part-time faculty

Paid maternity leave: AB 500 empowers female educators, staff and their families

Pregnancy is a medical condition that requires women to take time off either to deal with the pregnancy itself and potential complications, to recover from child birthing, or bond with a child, which often requires far more than a just the few weeks that many female adjuncts may have in accumulated sick leave. It is not an illness, like a cold, nor a disability like throwing out your back. It is a temporary disability specific to women and needs to be treated as such.

Article part-time faculty student debt

Student loan forgiveness: Bill aims to help part-time faculty in California
AFT wants to hear from those denied application

Update: The governor signed AB 463 into law on October 4, 2019.

Presently working its way through the Assembly, AB 463, Cervantes, D-Riverside, seeks to make it easier for California part-time community college instructors to gain eligibility for the federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.

Article part-time faculty

Letters to the Editor

The real effort should be pay equity at the state level

I have taught part-time music at Cabrillo College for 31 years at the maximum number of units. I am a bit dismayed about the 80 percent cap (Convention votes to raise part-time workload cap to 80 percent, Spring 2018) because that means that the colleges can now cover more classes with underpaid part-timers.

This means fewer full-time jobs, which will make everything (committee work, student contact hours outside of the classroom, etc.) more difficult for the teaching staffs. I understand that the extra work is a godsend for many part-timers but the real effort should be pay equity at the state level, not the local level.

Article part-time faculty Rank & Files

Freeway Flyers: Local action & quick news
Yuba adjunct wins President’s Award, Fresno adjunct wins Hayward Award

This spring, Neelam Canto-Lugo, an adjunct professor of communications at Yuba College in Marysville, and member of the Yuba College Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 4952, was awarded the gold-level President’s Volunteer Service Award for her work in poorer communities of Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Nepal, among other countries.

Article part-time faculty resolutions AFT pay equity

AFT resolution supports $7,000 per three-credit course for adjuncts

One of the more talked about resolutions passed by the biennial AFT Convention this July was Resolution 15, which calls for AFT to support City University of New York adjuncts in their quest to achieve through “actions, demonstrations, and advocacy,” a minimum of $7,000 per three-credit class.

The resolution, which passed with resounding support and no opposition, also supports this minimum in “all other AFT locals’ campaigns for fair adjunct pay.”

Article Local Action part-time faculty
Local President Stephanie Rosenblatt and Cerritos faculty members organize to demand equity at the board of trustees meeting.

Cerritos Faculty Federation takes a stand for healthcare

Cerritos faculty are taking a stand for equity.

“Right now our college doesn’t provide any sort of health benefit to part-timers,” explained local President Stephanie Rosenblatt. “Most of the districts around us provide at least some sort of reimbursement scheme, in which part-time faculty are reimbursed at even a minimal level for their healthcare premiums.”

CFT’s efforts yield parental leave, more full-time positions, paid office hours, pay equity

If there were perhaps one way to describe the legislative campaign waged by CFT this year as it regards both part-timers and the community college system, one could say it was “spirited.” Despite the sea changes proposed for the entire system, the union still won improvements for part-timers.

Article part-time faculty Janus union fair share

Part-timers are still sticking with their union

On June 27, the storm clouds were gathering. The Janus v. ASFCME decision had just come down from the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 ruling, overturning 40 years of legal precedent and marking the abrupt end of union fair share, or agency fee, for public employees.

Now non-union members who benefit from the hard work of unions who still represent them at the bargaining table would no longer be required to pay their fair share.

Article part-time faculty Calbright

Oppose creation of unnecessary, fully online college

All of California’s 114 community colleges offer online courses, so why do we need a fully online 115th college, especially a non-union one which would hire adjuncts to work for even lower wages, without union protections?

The $120 million the governor is budgeting for this college could be better spent on increasing full-time positions, part-time pay equity, and more paid part-time office hours.

Article part-time faculty paid office hours

Support paid office hours for part-time faculty

Send a letter to Gov. Brown asking that more money be put in the State Part-time Office Hours Fund. These letters work. A similar campaign last year helped secure a $5 million increase in the fund, an increase of over 70 percent. That said, the state fund only matches about 10 percent of paid part-time office hours funds, which is why office hours funding is either limited or non-existent in most districts.