California Colleges Cut Adjunct Pay
by Michele Alperin
The United Faculty Negotiated a Contract That Cut Faculty Salaries. Union Leaders Say They Tried to Spare P/Timers, but the District Wouldn’t Budge. District Officials Say the Union Never Proposed Leaving P/Timers Out of the Equation. Regardless of Who Proposed What 1,000 Hourly
Adjuncts Suffered a “Catastrophic” Financial Setback.
In theory, unionization and collective bargaining are supposed to increase the pay and bolster the benefits of members. In California, however, during recent negotiations, part-time faculty union members were dismayed when their union negotiated salary reductions and cuts in benefits. These reductions were described in a fact-finding report as “catastrophic.” The salary reduction, though the same percentage as imposed on full-time faculty, and less than that imposed on administrators, resulted in the lowest paid employees actually losing the most money overall.
During contract negotiations in early 2005 between the Contra Costa Community College District (CCCCD) northeast of San Francisco and United Faculty, the independent collective bargaining agent for the District’s approximately 1,000 part-time and 490 full-time faculty, the District demanded, and won, percentage pay cuts from both full- and part-time faculty.
The budget for the District, which comprises Contra Costa, Diablo Valley, and Los Medanos Colleges, projected that expenses would exceed revenues by $4.7 million for the 2004-2005 school year. Already in the spring of 2003, the District had been placed on the Community College Chancellor’s “watch list,” because the Chancellor’s office determined that the District was in danger of experiencing serious financial problems. The Chancellor’s office suggests that community colleges maintain a reserve of 5 percent of their expenditures, and if districts fall below the required minimum 3 percent reserve, they are placed on a “watch list.” If the Contra Costa Community College District did not stabilize its finances, the Chancellor would have the authority to appoint a special trustee to help the District resolve its fiscal problems.
The District’s dire financial situation was confirmed by the report of the Fact-finding Panel—appointed jointly by United Faculty and the District to resolve an impasse and a failure of mediation. The report found that the District had an “inability to pay,” a term meaning that an employer is incapable of meeting a union’s demands. To stabilize the District financially, the report suggested that all faculty salaries would need to be slashed by 4.5 percent for the entire 2004-2005 fiscal year, which was, at that time, almost at an end. To avoid a “retroactive” salary decrease, the panel recommended instead a whopping 13.5 percent decrease on salary earned April 1 through June 30, 2005. After June 30, the current faculty salary schedules would “be decreased only by 4.5 percent until an increase is negotiated by the parties.” It also recommended new faculty contributions to medical premiums, and a decrease in District contributions to retirement health benefits for new hires.
Following fact-finding, further negotiations spread the cuts over the full 15 months of the new contract, reducing both part- and full-time salaries by 6.9 percent between April 2005 and June 2006. This cut represents an effective reduction in faculty salary schedules of 3.38 percent for 2004-2005 and a 5.25 percent reduction from current schedules for 2005-2006. In addition, all faculty must contribute six percent of the monthly cost of their medical and dental insurance. What this all means for the average part-timer, who earns $58.33 per hour, is a drop of about $4 in hourly pay, with the monthly medical contribution varying depending on the type and extent of coverage.
United Faculty’s negotiators say that in negotiations they pressed to alleviate the burden on adjuncts.
“A high percentages of classes are taught by part-timers,” observes Fletcher Oakes, a part-time instructor in multimedia at Diablo Valley College and member of the union negotiating team, “which is why the District was reluctant to let part-timers off the hook.” The fact-finding report estimates that part-timers teach 42 percent of classes in CCCCD.
According to the fact-finding report, a comparison of faculty salaries at CCCCD with those of comparable community college districts in the same geographical area suggested that part-timers would suffer a larger relative decrease than full-timers. For part-timers, the maximum rate of $85/classroom contact hour would fall to about $79.05—from 4th to 6th among comparison colleges—and the mean rate of $64.34 to about $59.64—from 6th to 8th.
The union “felt over a barrel” in its negotiations for several reasons, says Oakes. Foremost among those reasons being the District’s real financial difficulties.
Union representatives also felt pressured to accept salary reductions because the rank-and-file lacked the will to strike due to a depleted strike fund. Further, the negotiations between the District and United Faculty came at the end of the semester.
Lee Loots, who teaches public speaking at Contra Costa College, says about the new contract, “We could have voted it down and gone on strike, but we felt like our hands were tied. Had we not approved it, the [District’s Governing] Board could have imposed its own conditions for employment. They probably would have been worse than what we voted on, and a strike would have hurt the students.”
Oakes clarified what the District could have imposed in the absence of an agreement—its last and best offer, which he says was “draconian.” It would have included an across-the-board seven percent pay cut, would have ended the contract in June, and would have eliminated health care for adjuncts.
Another issue that pushed United Faculty representatives to accept the salary reductions was that District administrators had already imposed a seven percent pay cut on themselves at the beginning of the 2004-2005 year, and Oakes explains that “it was one of the things they were holding over us.” In addition, the classified employees—including librarians, counselors, faculty who deliver services to disabled students, gardeners, and bookstore employees—were put on a seven percent furlough that was tantamount to a seven percent cut in their pay. It is worth noting, however, that before the administrators slashed their own pay, their average salaries were higher than the statewide average: for the District’s educational administrators, salaries were 18 percent higher and for classified administrators, 21 percent higher. By contrast, the maximum faculty salary at that point was only 4.5 percent higher than the statewide average for instructors with a doctorate.
Oakes feels that “our team was very supportive of part-time faculty and tried to lighten their load in many ways. At one point they proposed that part-timers not take a pay cut, and at another, that part-timers not take a hit in terms of increased health benefit payments. In the end, he says, the District wouldn’t budge.
Mr. Doug Roberts, VP of Finance and Administration for CCCCD, however, says that he does not recall United Faculty putting on the table a proposal that had different pay cuts for part-timers and full-timers.
“The District was looking for a certain dollar amount,” he says, “and how it got there could be done through many different avenues.”
Music instructor Deborah Dahl-Shanks, who repre-
sents the part-time faculty from Diablo Valley Col-
lege on the United Faculty executive board, remembers hearing Sheila Grilli, board president, say at an open meeting aid that in these negotiations they didn’t want to discuss pay cuts for part-time faculty.
“What she was getting at,” explains Dahl-Shanks, “was that the intent of the trustees was to cut full-time salaries, and they didn’t want to see the part-time faculty hurt.”
Dahl-Shanks observes that the fact-finding report also mentions that pay cuts would be “more catastrophic for part-timers.”
Besides the personal financial burden the pay cut represented for part-timers, “it would make CCCCD far less competitive in terms of keeping the better part-time faculty,” says Dahl-Shanks, by bringing the mean hourly rate to one of the lowest in the Bay area. In fact, she says, since the new contract, many of the District’s part-timers have gotten full-time jobs elsewhere and others have chosen to leave teaching altogether. Part-timers who fell in the category of “industry experts,” for example, no longer felt it was worth their while to share their expertise at a community college for lower pay.
Sue Shattuck, President of United Faculty, does not remember the board members making any distinction at all between full- and part-time faculty [salary cuts]. During mediation, however, she says the union did give counter-proposals that would have excluded part-time faculty, but the board refused to consider them.
“They said that would not give them enough money,” she recalls.
Dahl-Shanks believes that in the end the reason that everyone took an equal cut was due to the District’s history—“if one takes it, everyone takes it.”
Even though adjuncts in the end received the same pay cuts as full-time faculty, Oakes believes the union did win some concessions for adjuncts. The first was an agreement to have reemployment rights for adjunct faculty in the contract language by September 2006, something part-timers had been seeking for several years. Shattuck says this provision “gives some semblance of security.”
The second concession was to specify that the parity pay set aside by the state to augment the salaries of hourly faculty at community colleges would no longer be shared with full-time faculty teaching extra courses.
“That offset the pay cut somewhat,” says Oakes, and Roberts estimates that the change might make up about 35-40 percent of the 6.9 percent cut, amounting to an average of between $1.41 and $1.61 per hour.
Dahl-Shanks acknowledges that the District believed that by turning all of the state parity money over to part-timers, they were making up most of the difference, but she also thinks the board was mistaken.
“It may be making up some of the difference,” she says, “but not enough.” She explains, “There’s a finite amount of money and if we hire more part-timers, what we have will be spread thinner among more people,” she observes, adding that over the last three years many of the District’s full-time faculty have retired and none have been replaced. The additional dollop of parity pay that went to full-time faculty teaching overload will be spread over increasing numbers of part-time faculty.
Another adjunct also takes issue with the claim by the
United Faculty leadership and some part-time faculty
representatives that this change in parity pay would “cushion” the effects of the pay-rate reduction on part-time faculty, but she was leery of criticizing United Faculty publicly and wished to remain anonymous.
“The problems with this argument,” she writes in an e-mail message, are that: (1) the continuing availability and amount of these annually appropriated state funds are uncertain; and (2) the parity funds always should have been paid exclusively to part-time faculty, so belatedly complying with the legislature’s intent and then using that to partially justify the retrogressive pay rate reduction is a kind of shell game—giving with one hand while taking away with another.”
Dahl-Shanks explains that in the opinion of part-time statewide leaders, “There has been tremendous disagreement about the bottom-line purpose of the [parity pay] legislation,” she explains.
On the one hand, the legislation itself states that its aim was to bring part-time salaries up to par with full-time faculty salaries. But, says Dahl-Shanks, a deal was struck between the Chancellor and some of the statewide union leaders who agreed to support the part-time faculty parity pay legislation if it made available the state parity funds to full-time faculty teaching overload courses. Their belief was that full-time overload was the same as part-time, because both were paid hourly and because many of the part-time faculty also had full-time jobs. A loophole in the legislation allows each faculty union to negotiate whether it pays parity to their faculty teaching overload or not. But Dahl-Shanks points out that there is a definitive difference between part-timers and full-timers: “They have contracts and we don’t .”
Roberts’s take on the “intent,” of parity pay is that, by
definition, “parity pay and how it is distributed is a
negotiated item,” and the original contract negotiations, full-time instructors teaching overload courses were included. Shattuck confirms this assessment. The new contract, however, stipulates that parity pay will go to adjuncts only.
According to the fact-finder’s report and reports of several interviewees, faculty members also believe that they are being made to pay for past administrative mistakes. The report says:
“The Faculty argues that the District’s real problem is misplaced priorities. It presented evidence that the District has increased spending on administrative salaries at a much faster rate than on faculty salaries. Between 1998-99 and 2003-04, faculty salary expenditures increased 26.6 percent. In the same period of time, salaries for managers, supervisors and confidential employees increased 44.4 percent.”
“The excesses that had put the District in the red were not anything we caused,” says Lee Loots.
He claims that CCCCD has more administrators than any other community college district. The fact-finder’s report cites a comparative analysis of the number of administrators per full-time equivalent student from data obtained from the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office. In Fall 2003, the District had 110 students for every administrator, 25.5 percent below the state average of 139 students per administrator. A similar comparison of faculty-to-administrator ratios showed that the District had about 8 full-time faculty members for every administrator, about 27 percent higher than the statewide average of 10.
Loots explains that management numbers increased when the District replaced rotating department chairs, occupied by faculty members who were also income producers, with deans who were “outsiders with six-figure salaries.” Shattuck adds that as a result of this restructuring, “$3 million more was spent than had been four or five years ago.” CCCCD VP for Finance Roberts, however, emphasizes that the new management structure “mirrors management at other community colleges.” The previous structure meant that deans would be available only 10 months a year, but, he says, the college decided it needed full-time deans.
Loots also names as a problem a chancellor, subsequently fired, who “instituted programs that served his ego but not his District.” The regional training center he created took over from the individual colleges the role of offering services to local businesses.
“The center, which required a new building and an expensive director, never operated in the black,” she observes.
Roberts acknowledges that the Regional Training Institute (RTI) did not fulfill its goal of becoming self-supporting after five years. As a result, the interim chancellor requested a study, which concluded, he says, that “although the mission of RTI is a good one from the standpoint of economic development, it started off bigger than what the market could support. He adds that the contract of the chancellor that Loots complains about was not renewed.
Shattuck believes that another poor administrative decision is still affecting the District and its financial status. Three years ago, Governor Gray Davis said during his January budget revision that there were likely to be major cuts in state allocations for the rest of the year. In a preemptive attempt to cut costs, the CCCCD cut 500 sections of classes and was unable to put them back into the schedule when the governor’s threatened cuts failed to materialize. She says this decision “brought on a downward spiral from which the District has never fully recovered,” and that there has been an enrollment decline since that decision.
Believing it unfair that the faculty should bear the brunt
of what it felt were irresponsible administrative deci-
sions, the union negotiating team had fought the pay cuts, suggesting alternative ways to reduce the deficit.
“A better decision would have been to cut management positions,” observes Oakes. He adds that early in the negotiations the union had suggested “constructive, creative programs to increase enrollment” that were rejected out of hand.
Roberts, however, believes that the fiscal crisis went way beyond management decisions; in a letter to the Contra Costa Times dated April 10, 2005, he attributes CCCCD’s financial problems to a state cut in funding of $4 million between 2002 and 2004, and an increase in the cost of health care premium benefits of $6.1 million. He adds that between 2000 and 2003, the District had granted 17.5 percent in salary increases to its employees, which exceeded the state COLA. What he does not point out is that until the newly negotiated pay cut, faculty pay had just kept up with cost-of-living increases, and has now fallen behind.
After many months of negotiation, the District filed for an impasse with California’s Public Employment Relations Board (PERB); an impasse occurs during the collective bargaining process when the employer and the union, both acting in good faith, fail to reach agreement. Upon declaration of impasse, PERB informs the State Mediation and Conciliation Service, which assigns a mediator (a state employee) to assist the parties in a voluntary resolution of their disagreements. The mediator failed to resolve the issues between the parties. At that point, PERB provided a list of “so called neutral” fact-finders, and the District and the union had to select one they were “willing to live with,” explains Oakes. That person headed a three-person panel, which also included one District and one union representative, to investigate the facts and issue a report.
In this case, the “neutral” person, Thomson, issued the report. However, both the District and United Faculty reps. wrote their own dissenting opinions. The most important finding was that the District was unable to pay, says Oakes, which the union had disputed all along. CPA Henry C. Levy, faculty representative on the fact-finding committee, noted in his dissent that he did not believe the salary reduction was “necessary in order to keep the fund balance from falling below the 5 percent level this fiscal year.” He also wrote that the salary reduction “represents the faculty’s short-term contribution to a financial crisis caused in equal parts by decisions made by the management of the District as by economic conditions in the state.”
Under the auspices of the previous contract, the District had paid varying percentages of the average health plan premium contribution plus dental contribution for part-time faculty, based on the size of their teaching load. Levy wrote the following about increased health-care payments by faculty: “Such a reduction on top of such a substantial salary cut would be a great financial hardship to many full-timers. It would also be particularly difficult for part-time faculty, who already get paid very little, already earn less in comparison to their counterparts in neighboring districts, and for whom the District already gets some funds from the state to partially offset the cost of health benefits.”
The part-time faculty member who wishes to remain anonymous says she would have been happier accepting the agreement if the bargaining agent had negotiated reduced percentage pay cuts and premium payments for part-time faculty.
“It would have been a signal of something progressive,” says the same faculty member, adding that “morale is low among the faculty, who feel disrespected and beaten up.”
Dahl-Shanks agrees that it would have made more sense to have the cuts graded, for example, administrators getting ten percent, full-time faculty seven percent, and part-timers four percent. “The cuts should have been based on the salaries people were making and how they could adjust their livelihoods to a cut,” she says.
Roberts acknowledges that the CCCCD community has “gone through a really tough time,” but he hopes that “not everyone looks at the District the way they had been.” He thinks that the contract negotiations have given many people a greater understanding of the District’s finances and a realization that the District “does not have ultimate control over its revenue.” He adds that with the recent arrival of a new chancellor and the loss of much of upper management through retirement or resignation, a whole new team management team is in place.
“I hope that with better communication, we can weather this and look at the long term,” he concludes. “Then we’ll all make gains.”
Dahl-Shanks has a different take. Yes, the anger following the negotiations has settled down, she says, and people have made any adjustments they feel they need to make to live with the current situation. But she says that many in the faculty still feel disrespected.
“Disrespect is sometimes totally separate from the money issue,” she explains. She says that she might have been happy to take a cut that would make the District solvent, “if in return I’m getting something that gives me a sense of more autonomy and respect.” For example, the District might have given the faculty a greater voice in scheduling, in enrollment management, and in general planning. But the message that the District gave to the faculty, she says, is “Not only do we want money from you, but we don’t want you to be in control of your life either. That’s a blow to morale and ego.”
It’s a blow to all of California’s 40,000 part-time faculty state-wide, as well.
