CHAPARRAL

Roots of Unity
by Mike Allen, Guild President

Thou Shalt Not Bump

One of the major misconceptions I have had to battle as president has been the belief among some full-time faculty (and even some division chairs) that they have the right to “bump” adjunct faculty and take their classes from them, should full-time faculty members’ classes turn out to be under enrolled.

      Article X of our collective bargaining agreement states that classes with fewer than 15 students enrolled may be canceled at the discretion of the administration, and also covers how many students need to be enrolled in sections designated as “large lecture classes” for instructors to be eligible for various levels of teaching credit.  Article X concludes with a section describing what may be done if under enrollment leads to a full-time faculty member earning less teaching credit than planned.

     The first option is for the faculty member to make up the lost teaching credit in a subsequent semester.  The second option is for the administration to reassign the faculty member in the current semester to other work such as curriculum development, assisting in the Cooperative Education (similar to Student Internship) program, or something of a like nature.  A third option not mentioned in Article X is for the faculty member to use previously banked time to plug the gap in the current semester’s load.

     Since full-timers have these various options, there is no reason for them to snatch away classes at the last minute from adjunct faculty, whose work is insecure enough as it is.  That was the understanding when this contract language was mutually agreed upon, and discussions between Guild leadership and former Vice-President of Instruction Steve White within the last couple of years have reaffirmed this agreement.

     In fact, Steve was more emphatic about this than the Guild was.  Another part of our collective bargaining agreement states that academic divisions shall develop their own scheduling policies for intersession teaching.  Guild leadership was of the opinion that a division could theoretically put into their scheduling policy that bumping was allowed in intersessions (you may recall that I encouraged you last semester to make sure your division’s policy on intersession scheduling was up to date).  We weren’t encouraging intersession bumping of course, but were merely pointing out that this section of Article X appeared to apply only in fall and spring semesters.  Steve felt bumping wasn’t allowed in intersessions, either.

     However, with Steve’s recent retirement, we are starting to hear from other administrators with very different views.  In discussing this issue recently, one told me that adjunct faculty “had no rights at all” when it came to scheduling.  This mistaken view overlooks, for example, the system of adjunct rehire rights we have at the college, the right for adjunct faculty to be notified in a timely manner whether they have been scheduled or not for an upcoming semester, and the right to a week’s worth of pay for preparatory work if an adjunct’s class is canceled during the two weeks before the semester begins, among other scheduling rights.

      Other administrators have tried to claim that, since Article X didn’t expressly forbid bumping of adjunct instructors, then it must be the case that the agreement between the Guild and the district allows bumping!  Of course there are an infinite number of other things that could be done with a full-time faculty member whose classes don’t make, and which are not expressly forbidden in the contract either.  Apparently they believe that, say, reassigning such faculty to roam the campus and pick up trash by hand is also allowed since the contract doesn’t say it isn’t.  (I know, don’t give them any ideas…)

     What appears to be driving this sudden resistance to the sensible agreement in Article X is a feeling among some administrators that the amount of released time available on campus is out of control.  They may very well be right about this—I think many of us have our own personal lists of RT/EP positions that we feel could be done away with.  But to link this to Article X is to confuse released time and reassigned time.

     If a full-timer’s class gets canceled at the last minute and the full-timer is reassigned, there is no need for a replacement in the classroom—that section is gone.  With released time, however, replacement faculty must be paid to fill in for the faculty member with the released time gig.  I share the administration’s concern that released time positions often do not go through the normal approval processes (at least at first) and that the replacement costs are often not clearly budgeted.  But those concerns have nothing to do with Article X.

      In conclusion, bumping is not allowed.  Only making up the lost teaching credit in a future (or previous) semester, or reassignment to projects similar to curriculum development, student internship management, etc., is acceptable.  If you are a full-timer whose enrollment numbers come up short, please don’t ask your division chair to let you bump.  By doing so, you put everyone in an awkward position, and threaten the livelihoods of our adjunct brothers and sisters.  Full-timers have other good options—many of our adjuncts don’t.

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