Where in the World is Jean Culp's $57 Million Dollars?
by Brian Cole
In her 17 years as a U.S. and California state History adjunct, Jean Culp experienced first-hand the hardships of being a part-timer on the campus of Citrus Community College. Among them were low pay, the lack of medical benefits, strict limits on course loads, and having to share a 10 x 12 foot office space with almost four hundred of her part-time faculty colleagues. But her passion for teaching has kept her at the southern California community college.
“I love being in the classroom,” she said. “I am dedicated at what the community college is doing in America: creating opportunity.”
In an effort to improve their plight on campus, Culp and a group of other adjuncts organized a recognized union, Adjunct Faculty United (American Federation of Teachers Local 6106) in the spring of 2001. Culp is now co-president of the union, with fellow part-timer Linda Bassett. Incidentally, that same year California Governor Gray Davis allocated $57 million dollars to the state’s community college system to help raise part-time faculty salaries and benefits to equitable levels. Citrus Community College’s allotment of the funds totaled about $580,000.
Despite an established practice of giving full-timers and part-timers equal yearly raises, once the Citrus adjuncts started organizing, they stopped receiving pay raises, while full-time faculty members received 20 percent increases in their salaries over the same two-year period. The funds given to Citrus for part-time faculty compensation sat in the district’s bank account collecting interest until a recent contract negotiation.
“(Citrus) administrators were unwilling to put one penny towards the part-timers,” said Linda Cushing, chief negotiator for Adjunct Faculty United. As a result, explained Cushing, “There is a tremendous amount of anger over the injustices in this matter.”
According to union officials, Citrus administrators recently came to the bargaining table with a low take-it-or-leave-it offer, threatening to withhold from the part-timers any of their portion of the state allocation, or not offer them a contract at all. In the end, the fledgling 110-person union, representing 380 part-time faculty, accepted a contract with a pay increase, at a contested percentage rate of full-time faculty pay.
Union co-president Bassett has taught English at Citrus for the past 16 years, and has seen many good adjuncts come and go, many in search of better pay and treatment. She believes the union had no choice but to accept the District’s terms in the latest round of negotiations when it was apparent that the alternative was to receive nothing.
“That is not negotiating, that’s blackmail,” Bassett said. “They continue to punish us for forming our union.”
According to the union officials, district negotiators assert the average full-timer earns $47,326 a year, or $49.82 an hour. Using those figures, the new part-time faculty contract would give them average earnings of almost 95 percent of full-time pay. However, the union claims the district’s numbers are based on an abbreviated pay schedule, leaving out the higher salaries in figuring their averages. According to Adjunct Faculty United officials, calculating the entire full-time faculty schedule brings the average of a full-timer to $55,000 a year, or $104.76 an hour. Thus, the union agreed to a contract which defined as parity a new part-time pay schedule which is, in reality, only 58 percent of what a full-timer earns.
To add insult to injury, the union members were forced to declare that this agreement gave the part-timers equity in the district, while few believed it to be true, Cushing said.
“It’s like getting kicked in the stomach,” Culp said. “They really put the screws to us.”
Although Adjunct Faculty United had Cushing, an AFT national representative, as their chief negotiator, they had no real bargaining power in their negotiations with the Citrus administration. Cushing said that Citrus’s Board of Trustees threatened to pull the entire contract out from underneath the part-timers if they didn’t agree to the district’s defined percentage of equity.
“This was tantamount to holding a gun to their heads,” Cushing said. “And, they stopped talking to us so there was no mechanism by which to convince them they were wrong.”
In the end, the union decided to accept the terms and live to fight another day. The problem is this: despite having reaches an agreement with the part-time faculty union, Citrus College has still not disbursed the part-timers’ share of the $57 million dollar equity pay allotment.
According to Dr. Jean Malone, Citrus Community College Vice President of Human Resources and district chief negotiator, college officials have been slow to hand out the funds because of the uncertainty of future disbursements. The district will be using last year’s allocation for this year’s compensation, and this year’s allocation for next year’s compensation. Malone said she was assured by the California Community College Chancellor’s Office (CCCCO) that this method of distribution did not violate any part of the legislation regulations.
“Because the funding is at risk (like other funds) due to the severe state budget reductions, we want the money in our hands before we negotiate how it will be distributed,” Malone said. “This year’s allocation has already been reduced. We don’t want to commit the funds and then have them cut again in the middle of the year.”
According to Robert Turnage, Vice Chancellor of the CCCCO, the provisions for the money mandate the CCCCO encumber the funds to the districts in the fiscal year of the appropriation, but remain silent on timetables for their distribution to adjuncts.
“It might be a good policy that the district spend the money in the same fiscal year, but there is nothing in the legislative language or state law that requires that,” Turnage said. “We have done everything we can to encourage unions and districts to reach timely agreements and spend these funds in as timely a manner as possible, but ultimately it is up to the unions and districts to resolve their issues locally.”
Governor Davis originally set aside the money for part-time equity in the 2001-2002 California Budget Bill. The money was to come from a one-time funding source (the Proposition 98 Reversion Account), and planned to continue in future years through Proposition 98. The California Community College Chancellor’s Office was charged with setting up distribution guidelines for the state’s 72 community college districts. In September 2001, Frederick E. Harris, Director of the College Finance and Facilities Planning division of the CCCCO, sent a memo to each of the district’s Chief Executive, Business and Human Resource Officers, outlining the following provisional language requirements to access their portions of the $57 million dollars.
1. “Funds shall be distributed to districts based on the total actual FTES (full-time equivalent students) served in the previous fiscal year and shall include a small district factor.
2. These funds are to be used first to assist districts in making part-time faculty compensation more comparable to full-time faculty compensation for similar work, as determined by each district’s local collective bargaining process.
3. These funds shall not supplant the amount of resources each district has used to compensate part-time faculty.
4. These funds shall not be used to exceed parity of part-time faculty employed by each district with regular full-time faculty at the same district, as certified by the Chancellor.
5. If a district achieves parity, its allocation may be used for any other educational purpose.”
With those guidelines in mind, each Chief Executive Officer was to sign a request for allocation, including documentation of the collective bargaining process and an expenditure report on the use of the funds.
Also in 2001, the Part-time Issues Task Force of the CCCCO attempted to aid districts in determining the percentage of part-time faculty work that is comparable with full-timers, allowing each district to determine their actual figure through a collective bargaining process. However, their suggestions meant little as district administrators and union leaders fought for the largest amount they could negotiate.
In addition, district administrators appear to be actively pursuing as much of the allocation as they can for use in their general budgets, leaving a deep chasm between faculty and administration in deciding what is fair. With a mounting $35 billion dollar deficit in California, Governor Davis reduced this year’s allotment to just over $50 million. However, many administrators believe future funds are in further jeopardy. Recently, California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office proposed eliminating the part-time compensation program entirely to help balance the state’s books, while other proposals offer only partial cuts.
“[District officials] are certainly paranoid,” Cushing said. “They are predicting the worst, financially.”
In order to give the districts a time guideline to negotiate equity, the CCCCO Board of Governors adopted, in September 2001, a Policy Statement on Part-time Faculty Compensation, in part, which reads:
“As a condition of participating in the program and being eligible to receive infusions beyond the level provided in the first year, the district must have bargained its definition of ‘parity’ before the middle of the second year (essentially by January or February of 2003, just before the apportionment goes out). A district not reaching agreement regarding ‘parity’ will retain its first year allocation, and will again become eligible for allocations beyond this level when it provides its locally bargained definition of ‘parity.’”
Interestingly, the CCCCO is continuing to distribute funds to the districts, whether or not they have reached parity agreements, according to Harris. As long as each district submitted progress reports of their negotiations by the deadline finally agree upon, they continue to receive their allocation.
“Getting people to agree on parity is difficult for some,” Harris said. “Although there is recourse if a district is found to be misusing the funds, districts continue to receive allotments and are free to keep past disbursements.”
The CCCCO is currently compiling the data for a report on the progress of the districts reaching parity. Officials disclosed that currently 33 of the state’s 72 districts (about 46 percent) had yet to successfully agree to an equity percentage, with each in varying stages of negotiation. Because the Chancellor’s Office declined to provide information about which specific districts haven’t been successful, coupled with the vast difference of employed adjuncts between districts, figuring how many part-time faculty are impacted because of failed negotiations is difficult.
Harris said it is up to each community college district, and not the CCCCO, to ensure its money is being used for part-time parity, although it is the CCCCO which ultimately answers to the legislature about the use of the funds. He insists that the current disbursement system, which allows districts to keep the remaining money after parity is reached, is sufficient incentive to encourage districts to negotiate in a timely manner. And the fact that some districts haven’t successfully negotiated parity shouldn’t prevent them from starting to use the funds to compensate adjuncts.
Districts that already had a history of working well with part-timers and their unions were able to negotiate quickly and access those funds, according to Cushing. Other districts, like Citrus College’s, have just reached agreements, or are still negotiating. The best agreements provided permanent increases in the part-timers’ pay schedules. Later, as California’s fiscal picture became bleaker, adjuncts were unable to negotiate such agreements. For example, adjuncts at a few community colleges have had to agree to accept bonuses, as opposed to raises in hourly pay, in their equity agreements.
At Citrus, the the part-time faculty pay scale was increased, with leftover funds going to health benefits and an office hour compensation plan. In the event there are still an excess of funds after these expenditures, the remaining amount is supposed to roll over to help pay for next year’s adjunct office hours, leaving nothing for the administration’s general funds, Bassett said.
In an ironic twist, many unions are having a tougher time negotiating fair contracts for part-time faculty because of the equity funds. In those districts, the compensation funds have eroded the little bargaining power the unions had in contract negotiations.
“It all comes down to leverage, Cushing said. “And in this game, the districts have more than the part-timers.”
Cushing believes that in most of the districts, the trouble reaching successful definitions of parity is caused by administrators using the part-time compensation money as weight to push unfavorable contract terms on their adjuncts. She has even heard rumors of district price fixing, whereby administrators collude with surrounding district leaders to hold down parity percentages in their area.
At Palomar Community College, the first year allocation, $940,000, is parked in the district’s account, with this year’s disbursement soon to join it. According to the Palomar Faculty Federation (AFT Local 6161), the district is holding these banked funds hostage, as officials there try to negotiate all faculty contract issues.
“Rushing to settle and sign a contract so that these monies can be distributed right away, however, would require the faculty to accept ridiculously large class sizes, greatly increased workloads in many departments, reduced pay for lab and non-credit class hours, and increased managerial control in evaluations, assignments and scheduling, and other faculty-governed areas,” union officials explained to members in the February edition of the union’s newsletter, the Palomar Faculty Forum.
“The PFF feels that under these terms, the distribution of the growth and equity funds would be a small, temporary, self-sabotaging ‘win’ at best.”
Jean Culp feels that the state has placed the responsibility for policing of the equity funds into the hands of the adjuncts, overestimating their power and influence on campus. This is particularly true at Citrus College. She likens the current experience of being a part-time faculty member there to that of a migrant worker. Adjuncts are being exploited, with the justification being that their employer needs flexibility.
“The administration says they value adjuncts, but their actions are telling us otherwise,” she said.
Dr. Jean Malone, Citrus Community College Vice President of Human Resources and district chief negotiator, disagrees with those sentiments, citing that their adjuncts now have an average hourly salary of $47.29, ranking them fifth out of 14 surrounding and competing districts. The union claims that the average rate of pay for adjuncts is actually $60.95 per hour, based on the entire pay schedule. However, even at that higher rate, their pay would fall well short of parity with full-timers.
Despite the problem of getting the $57 million dollar equity compensation funds into the hands of all the state’s adjuncts, Cushing believes that overall the process has been good. The allocation has served to urge the districts to accept the principle that part-time faculty should be paid equitably.
“This has forced districts that never wanted to pay part-timers equally into a dialogue with the unions,” she said.
While the compensation allocation has spurred some much-needed dialogue about the worth of part-time faculty on campus, as well as resulted in supplemental income for many adjuncts, it has fallen short of its intention; Governor Davis’s $57 million dollar allocation has not created equity among all of California’s faculty. Due to the state’s current budget woes, many part-timers are still having trouble collecting on their share of the money. Unless California politicians figure out how to fix the state’s fiscal crisis, and to hold those distributing the adjunct equity funds accountable, future opportunities to level the financial playing field between the haves and the have nots of academe may eventually disappear.
