Temptation
by P.D. Lesko
THE QUESTION WAS thorny: How could California community college part-time and full-time faculty pay be equalized? The answer was an elegant and simple idea for equity: earmark $57 million dollars every year to be distributed to the state’s 73 community college districts. The district officials would then channel the money directly to the part-time faculty.
The devil is in the details, however, and a slice of a $57 million dollar pie is hard to pass up. As Mae West drawls in the film “My Little Chickadee,” “I generally avoid temptation, unless I can’t resist it.” As it turns out, there are many full-time faculty and college administrators who share this weakness.
To begin, the statewide union activists from the California Federation of Teachers and the California Education Association, supported a part-time faculty equity bill that allowed equity money to be distributed to full-time faculty, as well. I have written about this before, but let me recap the strategy. Full-time faculty teaching overload courses may be classified as part-time faculty. As such, the equity pay law allows these individuals to be paid from a college’s part-time equity fund. At the Ohlone College, last year full-time faculty union members took home almost $30,000 in part-time faculty equity pay.
Next, instead of defining a standard formula for parity, the equity pay bill called for each district to negotiate a definition of parity with the part-time faculty. At several colleges with part-time faculty unions, this led to protracted battles between district negotiators and union negotiators about the definition of parity. Unions in two districts ended up agreeing to define parity for part-time faculty at 60 percent of what full-time faculty members earn.
At other districts, officials have refused to release any of the equity pay until union contracts are settled. Officials have used this bargaining chip to try to force unfavorable pay and employment terms, as well as low definitions of parity on the part-time faculty. According to the December 2003 issue of the California Federation of Teachers newsletter Perspective, officials at Palomar Community College have “failed thus far to channel state part-time equity monies to part-time faculty.” The college has withheld two years of equity payments from the part-timers, which total well over $1.5 million dollars.
Why would districts play hardball over the issue of parity? Acoording to the equity pay bill passed by the California state legislature, leftover equity pay money from each year’s distribution reverts back to the districts. How could there possibly be money leftover? At one district, in 2003 officials distributed equity pay as a bonus. They paid all of the adjunct faculty employed in the Winter semester, when colleges typically employ fewer part-time faculty. District officials aren’t the only ones unable to resist temptation.
At Victor Valley Community College and the College of the Canyons, shortly after the equity pay bill was passed, the full-time faculty unions, CEA locals, enrolled all of the adjuncts and took control of equity pay distributions topping $1 million dollars. As a result, adjuncts at both colleges filed lawsuits. Not surprisingly, the California state Labor Relations Board found that part-time college faculty have a legal right to choose their own union representation through elections.
Equity pay, in theory, should have gone a long way toward compensating part-time faculty in California’s community colleges more fairly. Unfortunately, some part-time faculty are under the impression that equity pay is pro-rata pay. At Glendale Community College, an $880,000 allotment meant a pay increase of 11.9 percent for each part-timer during 2002-2003. The money left the college’s part-timers in slightly better shape financially, but a long way from parity.
A $50+ million dollar allotment every year is a lot of money, and there are a lot of people in California these days who just can’t resist the temptation to grab a slice of the pie–even when the pie is meant for someone else.
