Part-Timer
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.
Sign up now to get Part-Timer by email! »Subscribe here
Freeway Flyers: Local action & quick news
Contract gains and remembering Sam Russo
Union mourns the passing of activist Sam Russo
Sam Russo, one of the core group who organized Adjunct Faculty United, AFT Local 6106, died on May 5. He was president of the local for 12 years, and served on the negotiations team for a number of years.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
State Council resolution reiterates support for statewide health insurance for part-timers
On May 5, the State Council approved a resolution put forth by the CFT Part-Time Committee, calling for CFT to sponsor legislation “to establish a permanent healthcare program for part-time faculty and their dependents.”
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.
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.
Plan your local campaign now for Campus Equity Week
The month of October is once again time to give special attention to part-time faculty issues. Officially, Campus Equity Week is the week of October 22-26, but what’s more important is that campus communities get the word out this fall before the legislative process begins.
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.
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.
Los Rios wins top award for its Part-Timer’s Almanac
There are adjunct survival guides out there which give basic union info, and perhaps maybe where the copy machines are located on campus, then there’s The Part-Timer’s Almanac, A Compendium of Valuable Information, which is perhaps the most comprehensive, adjunct-oriented union publication published by a local union.
Yes, Virginia, adjuncts can get unemployment benefits
Even if you have received a tentative offer of employment for the next semester, you are entitled to apply for unemployment benefits over the break immediately upon completion of your last working day of the semester.
Adjunct instructors are considered at-will employees, because despite the “tentative assignment offer” one may receive, this is not legally considered a “reasonable assurance of employment.”
Membership drives in the community colleges mean more adjunct power
The forthcoming Supreme Court ruling in Janus vs. AFSCME poses a serious threat to union strength. Any union is only as strong as its membership base, and when unions have higher percentages of the workers in its unit as active members, they are stronger at the bargaining table, and better able to protect its workers from violations of their rights.
Part-timer health benefits: The successes and challenges ahead
Among the many challenges that part-time, or contingent faculty face, health care benefits, or rather, the lack thereof, has been one of the most significant.
According to Bloomberg, healthcare is the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States, and in spite of the passage of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, in March 2010, the number of bankruptcies attributed to healthcare costs tripled in 2017, while the general rate of bankruptcies fell overall.
Convention votes to raise part-time workload cap to 80 percent
At this year’s CFT Convention, delegates passed Resolution 15 calling for the CFT to support changing the workload cap in a community college district to 80 percent of a full-time equivalent load, effectively allowing part-time faculty to teach up to 12 units.
Freeway Flyers: Local action & quick news
New study explores sociology adjunct working conditions
As the only part-time faculty member of an American Sociological Association taskforce assembled to investigate the teaching of sociology within community colleges, Peralta Federation of Teachers member and Laney College instructor Cynthia Mahabir co-authored a scholarly study of data collected from part-time sociology instructors in the nation’s community colleges.
Falling enrollment, cancelled classes, and part-time faculty
FIRST PERSON | Renee Fraser
Many of us have been teaching in community college for 20 years or more, and we remember the days when the mission was education, not production. Classes might have 25 or 30 students, so we could have seminar-style discussions and individual project presentations, and even memorize the names of our students. We might assign lengthy papers and essays, and we had time to read each one, make comments, and allow students to rewrite them.
Campus Equity Week can build adjunct-student solidarity
October 24-28 is Campus Equity Week
Most part-time instructors are aware of how damaging adjunct working conditions can be to our lives economically, physically, emotionally, and psychologically. You may also be aware of how these working conditions can hurt students, the institutions, and tenure-track, full-time employees as well.
But how aware are students?