Action 2000 Coalition Equity Week
by Linda Cushing
THE ACTION 2000 Coalition, a group of statewide faculty organizations working to promote equal pay for part-time community college instructors, hereby declares April 3 – 7, 2000 to be “Part Time Faculty Equity Week” throughout the State of California. Adjunct faculty comprise nearly two-thirds of all instructors in the community college system, yet they are paid on average only 37 percent of what full-time faculty make when teaching the same class.
Decrying the pay disparity between full-time and part-time faculty are the organizational members of the coalition: CFT (California Federation of Teachers), CPFA (California Part-Time Faculty
Association), CTA (California Teachers Association), CWA (Communiations Workers of America), FACCC (Faculty Association of California Community Colleges). There is also active participation by members of CCCI (Community College Council of Independents).
April’s “Part Time Faculty Equity Week” will be celebrated on campuses around the state by staging actions that focus attention on the plight of part-time faculty. These actions will serve as
lightning rods to expand the awareness of part-time instructors, students, full-time faculty, administrators and legislators. Actions will vary from campus to campus, but will include the
conspicuous wearing of buttons, armbands, and/or t-shirts. T-shirts will read: “Part-time Faculty, 100 PERCENT COMMITMENT, 37 PERCENT PAY.” White armbands will simply have a large scarlet letter “A” printed on them, mixing humor with the isolation and lack of respect many part-time instructors
feel. Buttons will have a simple dark field with a bold white equal sign on them.
Appearing on many campuses around the state will be the Coalition mascot, The Freeway Flyer, a large, academically gowned and winged figure, variously comical and dignified, whose devotion to teaching has him carrying his office on his back while he flits from college to college in order to cobble together a subsistance existence.
In addition, on many campuses literature tables will be set up, and discipline-specific lesson plans will be taught which touch upon adjunct faculty pay inequity. Petitions will be circulated for faculty and students to sign, and letters will be written to legislators, demanding “equal pay for equal work.”
On Friday, April 7th, the final day of “Part-Time Faculty Equity Week”, campus part-time leaders around the state will meet with their local assemblymembers and state senators to deliver the
petitions and letters collected that week, and to discuss part-time faculty issues. Local public and campus media will be invited to cover these dialogues with legislators. Copies of the thousands of
petitions and letters collected statewide will be delivered directly to Governor Davis or State Chancellor Nussbaum at the close of the week.
The Action 2000 Coalition will encourage statewide campus participation by supplying Action Packets containing infomation sheets, camera-ready flyers, posters, detailed lesson plans, petitions, sample letters to the governor, sample press releases for local media, as well a panoply of other ideas part-time campus leadership may implement at their own schools. In addition, buttons and t-shirts designed and produced by the Action 2000 Coalition addressing demands of equality and dignity for
part-timers may be ordered in advance at production costs.
“If you think what we’re doing is important and want to help make A2K a success, we will find a job for you,” says Linda Cushing, Coalition Chair. “We need writers, graphic designers, photographers, people who will design costumes, get out mailings, do phone calls, sit information tables. We can use helpers, supervisors and coordinators. Part-time faculty, we need your talent, intelligence, energy, and enthusiam in coordinating A2K actions statewide and on your campus.
“If we are strong and unified, we will send a very loud message to Sacramento. The local district negotiating table isn’t the singular solution for part-time instructors. We must hold our state
leadership in Sacramento accountable, from the Governor to the Chancellor to our legislators — until every single one of them becomes an advocate who effects laws which remedy the gross
mistreatment of part-time faculty.”
Interested individuals may contact Linda Cushing at 714/526-7220 or cushing@allweb.com.
