Adjunct Junction

Adjunct Junction
by Phyllis Eckler, 2nd Vice President, GCC Guild

Sorting out Parity

Phyllis Eckler,
2nd Vice President,
GCC Guild

UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS

     If you will not be working (or working at a much reduced level) during the summer intersession you have a right to apply for unemployment insurance benefits.
     There are some important things to keep in mind when applying for unemployment. First, call EDD directly rather than using their website (800-300-5616). As easy as their website is to use, the website is not set up to accommodate the unique nuances that affect adjuncts. For example, their website will not give us the opportunity to cite the Cervisi case. The 1989 Cervisi v. California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board states that adjunct faculty are eligible for benefits because we are on short-term contracts that do not provide "reasonable assurance" of employment. Adjunct assignments are contingent upon funding and enrollment. A request from your division chair for your availability is not assurance of actual employment. Remember you have no guarantee of a contract for the next semester even if your name is in the schedule of classes. Lastly, it does not matter if an adjunct is being paid during winter or summer for work previously completed (once you turn in grades, your work IS completed!). These facts of the Cervisi case will be helpful to you when you call to file for benefits.
     When should you file? You should file for unemployment on the last day of the semester, which is June 14. Yes, you may have a paycheck coming from Glendale College afterwards (see above paragraph), but when you turn grades in, you are unemployed! In the past we have suggested using your last final exam day but this is no longer safe. Human Resources, which reports your last work date, cannot know every part-timer's last final exam date, so your last work day is always reported as the last day of the semester. You, therefore, must also use that date.
     You also need to keep in mind that there is a week layover in receiving that unemployment check. When you call, have ready your social security number, and the name, address, and phone number of the college. Be aware that some of the questions that are asked are meant to trick you into saying that you will be back again teaching in the fall, or they will ask if this is a break period. You have to let the EDD know that you have been laid off because your contract ended and just keep repeating, "I have no reasonable assurance of work with this employer in the future."
     Something else to keep in mind: some EDD personnel may not be familiar with the Cervisi case and may deny your claim to benefits. If that happens, appeal immediately and be prepared to cite the Cervisi case again. Our Guild office will be available to help with the appeal, which is not difficult to win. &

If you have ever looked at the adjunct salary schedules at the end of our contract agreement you will notice that Appendix B-1 has a “parity allocation.” Many newer part-time faculty may not know what this additional percentage (around 10% of the base hourly rate found in Appendix B-2) represents. In 2000 the state legislature added three line items to the California community college budget; the office hour line item, the medical benefits line item and the parity pay line item. Each of these line items in the budget were set as fixed amounts and were meant to provide some relief to part-timers who were not getting paid salary or benefits equivalent to what full-time faculty were receiving.

Specifically the parity line item was meant to compensate adjunct faculty for the preparation, grading and assessment work that they were doing outside of their paid teaching hours. Full-time faculty have a required “load” which designates the number of in-class teaching hours that they must provide per week. Additionally they are also paid for the extra time that they must spend preparing class lectures, grading papers or grading assignments. A faculty member’s “load,” or in-class teaching hours, is determined by how much of this out-of-class preparation and assessment work is required in that particular discipline. In most credit subjects where full-time faculty are required to teach 15 hours, they are paid for one hour of preparation and grading for each hour taught. This is the crux of the pay inequity that part-time faculty suffer. While we are paid for our in-class teaching time, at what some would consider a reasonable rate, when one factors in all the hours spent on preparation and grading the overall compensation is poor. For those in subject areas where there is even more assessment and grading necessary, such as English composition, full-time faculty are paid for more hours of grading and are therefore required to do fewer in-class teaching hours. Unfortunately the adjuncts in those areas are not compensated at all for the time spent grading papers, and because of the “60% Law” (see last month’s Chaparral article) cannot even teach as many in-class hours as part-time faculty in other disciplines. On the other hand, full-time faculty in other departments such as Physical Education or non-credit ESL are deemed by the district to be relatively free from grading written work, so they are expected to put in more in-class teaching time. These full-timers are somewhat compensated for preparation but not for grading. The light grading load of part-timers in those divisions, in effect, makes their overall teaching pay higher.

Under the law that provided for this parity line item in the state budget, there was also a requirement that districts come to a definition of the duties and hours that an adjunct must provide to the college in order to get paid comparably to their full-time colleagues. We at Glendale College are now ready to tackle this task. While the in-class teaching hours are evident, we must come to a clear understanding of how much outside work is required in each discipline so that we can remunerate those adjuncts who are providing more of the uncompensated hours of grading. This would in turn give us a clearer picture of how much more or less each adjunct was receiving than a full-time counterpart. As we do this assessment, a clear percentage should emerge of how far part-timers are from their full-time colleagues in terms of pay, and we can hopefully all work to right these inequities. &

CHAPARRAL