San Antonio College to Halt Use of Waivers That Sliced P/T Pay
No one teaches for the money, but even part-time professors have their limits. Administrators at San Antonio College have asked some adjuncts there to teach more than 12 hours, but to sign a waiver accepting pay for only 11 hours, forgoing their right to a higher pay rate and benefits that kick in at the 12-hour mark.
“I do not think that it’s right,” said Donnie Meals, an adjunct instructor who has taught in SAC’s radio, television and film department for 25 years and who signed the waiver last month. “They respect me, I respect them, but I was just like, ‘This sucks.’.”
Ruben Flores, dean of the evening and weekend division at SAC, said he only asks instructors to take a pay cut for classes that would otherwise be canceled because of low enrollment. He said the college has been using the waiver for years and that no one has ever complained.
“If they don’t want to do it, we don’t push them,” Flores said. “No one has ever told us it’s not right.”
But adjuncts say it’s a denial of the pay they are due and an example of how colleges routinely exploit part-timers with little job security.
Martha McCabe, a lawyer for Alamo Community Colleges, said the district’s officials were unaware of the practice until the San Antonio Express-News brought it to their attention. It will stop, she said, and Meals will be paid for the full course load, including partial benefits.
“The district is going to start monitoring adjunct employment more closely to ensure consistency across the colleges,” McCabe said. Since 2000, at least three adjuncts at SAC have been affected by the practice, she said.
According to Meals, his bosses asked him to teach 12.61/3 hours this semester, which would boost him to part-time status and nearly double his pay to about $15,000 a semester, plus cover half his health insurance premiums. As an adjunct, Meals receives about $7,000 to $8,000 a semester for 10 to 11 hours, and he pays out of pocket for private health insurance.
Instead, Flores asked Meals to sign a waiver agreeing that he would only be paid for 11.61/3 hours, waiving his right to higher pay and benefits. Flores said too few students had enrolled in one of Meals’ classes, and that if Meals didn’t agree to the deal SAC would be forced to cut the class.
Meals signed the waiver August 26th.
“I discussed it and that was just the way it was,” Meals said. “I was told I cannot exceed a 12-hour load. Or at least on paper.”
Across the nation, adjunct professors are becoming a larger and larger faction of the teaching force on campuses, largely because it’s cheaper than hiring full-time, tenured faculty members, said Gwendolyn Bradley, a senior program officer for the American Association of University Professors.
Bradley called the waiver an “appalling and exploitative practice.”
“It violates the basic principle that people should be paid for their work and demonstrates the extreme vulnerability of adjuncts,” Bradley said. “If these individuals had job security protections, they might not feel that they had to sign such a contract.”
At ACC, part-time instructors such as Meals teach 47 percent of all classroom hours, and budget woes have prompted administrators to push that number to 50 percent.
At SAC, that directive has deans and department heads/chairs scrambling to find more adjuncts to fill the gap as full-time positions go vacant. Asking them to take a pay cut probably won’t help recruiting, said Gerald Davey, an adjunct who teaches broadcast journalism at SAC.
“It’s a hell of headache for a part-time job,” Davey said.