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Roots of Unity by Mike Allen, Guild President |
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Mike Allen,
President, |
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The Elephant It is good that the Guild has recently had some spirited internal discussion about the load banking system for full-timers and how it might be changed. It is also good that the recent presentation of data comparing our full-timer salary schedule with neighboring districts has sparked interest in raising those portions of the schedule that fared poorly. However, as we have been generating heat and light on these issues I feel that we have been overlooking the dead elephant in the living room, as they say. That elephant of course is the serious inequities between how our full-time and part-time members are treated here at the college. For starters, note that adjunct faculty at GCC often are not provided access to the supplies, telephones, departmental copy machines, office (or at least storage) space, individual mailboxes, and clerical support that we full-timers take for granted. They are not eligible for sabbaticals nor load banking to manage their time here at the college. Part-timers are also excluded from the various benefit programs the college offers full-timers such as dental and vision coverage, district-paid life insurance, and our PPO and Kaiser medical plans. Many are also not allowed to buy in to our Blue Shield HMO plan, and those who are must pay 100 percent of the premium, with a small portion rebated to them later on. Since our administration will no longer kick in money for this purpose, the rebate depends entirely on how much Sacramento budgets for it, and in recent years it has only amounted to 15 - 20 percent of the premium the part-timer has to pay. Wait—I'm just warming up. There is also the fact that in just about every division adjuncts are lowest in the pecking order when it comes to assigning work, meaning they are often stuck with the least desirable options. But in the name of flexibility, even if their work has been judged to exceed the professional standards we have established, they haven't even been guaranteed any assignment at all from semester to semester until recently. The new system of rehire rights only guarantees those who qualify (it takes a new adjunct faculty member at least three years to do so) a minimal assignment, and then only if there is enough left for them after full-timers have had their pick. Of course there is also the matter of how adjunct faculty are paid. To focus matters, consider adjunct instructors in a discipline where the load is 15, and presume (unrealistically) they were allowed to teach a full load for the year (if they were allowed to do so for three semesters out of any consecutive 6, the "60 percent law" would require that we could no longer leave them as adjunct). Their pay, including that for office hours, would fall in a range that is about $24,000 to $35,000. A full-time instructor in the same discipline earns pay that falls in a range of about $40,000 to $86,000. This disparity is in part due to there being far fewer steps and columns on the adjunct salary schedules (e.g., an adjunct with a Ph.D. gets no boost in pay, unlike a full-timer), but even when looking at comparable steps and columns on the full and part-time schedules, there is a large gap. Now some will point out that the full-time instructor does do more office hours for this pay (5 per week instead of 2), and is also expected to take on a broader range of professional responsibilities (attendance at faculty and division meetings, committee work, etc). However, we all know of individual full-timers who do little to nothing of this ancillary labor, and whose availability during scheduled office hours is iffy. Even for those of us who do a lot of ancillary work, is there any way one could argue that it justifies this large gap in pay? Others will point out that our adjuncts can now get pay for whatever ancillary work they do, but they should remember that this will amount to a maximum of $1000 per year, and is only now becoming available. Is there anything else that can justify the gross difference in pay? Some will argue that more rigorous hiring processes, evaluations (especially during the probationary years), and peer pressure lead the average full-timer to do better work than the comparable part-timer. True or not, we all know of individual part-timers who can run circles around comparable full-timers, and even ignoring that one still has to wonder just how large a gap in pay this could possibly justify. Thus, I feel we are going to have to address this elephant in a more serious way than we have in the past. While we worry that the low end of the full-time salary schedule might be discouraging some good people from applying, I think that our collective awe at Institute Day each year when the new full-timers are introduced indicates that we are able to attract excellent hires for these positions. However, our dismal pay for adjuncts makes it hard to attract applicants, and division chairs sometimes have to resort to "any warm body" hiring, which is bad for our students and bad for our reputation. For the good of our institution, we must start hacking away at this thing and dragging away its parts to the dustbin of history. As usual, let me close with some information about the benefits of membership in our union. Part-timers in particular might be interested in some medical discount plans available through the AFL-CIO's Union Plus program (http://www.unionplus.org/benefits/health/savings.cfm), especially if they don't have medical insurance. Also, the CFT has announced its annual Raoul Teilhet Scholarships, which range from $1000 to $3000. See me for an application soon if you are a Guild member and have a child or dependent who is a graduating high school senior, since it must be completed and postmarked by Jan. 31 (the information can also be downloaded from www.cft.org). Lastly, at the beginning of spring semester, current students at GCC can apply for our local Guild scholarship through our Scholarship Office, so start thinking about students you would like to encourage to apply. & |
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