Washington Part-Time Faculty Association Urges Veto of Section 5 of 2ESSB 5194
by Keith Hoeller
For nearly a decade, the American Federation of Teachers and the Washington Education Association have sought to replace the part-time faculty they represent with the full-time faculty they prefer instead. They have been losing members and nearly all the full-timers join the unions and pay higher dues because of their higher salaries. The majority of part-timers do not join the unions.
The AFT and WEA have come to Olympia with legislation seeking funds to convert part-time positions to full-time positions. They do not seek to promote actual part-timers to full-timers. They have been unsuccessful until this year when they hooked their bill to one claiming to be about equity and inclusion in the community and technical colleges.
Section 5 of 2ESSB 5194 would spend $5.6 million to convert 400 half-time positions to 200 full-time positions. From 200 to 400 part-time faculty will lose their jobs and their health insurance in the middle of a pandemic. There is nothing in the bill that gives any part-timer preference to fill these full-time positions. Since full-timers have the right to teach overtime, and more than half do, another 200 part-timers will lose their jobs. There is no equity for 8,000 part-time faculty in our community colleges. They are paid at half the rate of the full-timers, kept from teaching full-time, half lack benefits, and they have no job security whatsoever. And this bill proves the results of our state law denying part-timers their own unions separate from the full-timers who have tenure and who serve as their immediate supervisors.
I hope you will read the recent “Democrats and Unions Ignore the Plight of Nontenured Faculty” by my colleague Jack Longmate, who concludes: “When will Democrats and unions demand that colleges and universities extend the same upward mobility and career opportunities to their faculty that they offer their students?”
For the twelfth year in a row, no budget includes any money to raise part-time salaries, already at poverty levels. Called “equity money,” the legislature did appropriate $50 million for this purpose from 1996-2009, but stopped with the great recession.
Our state’s discrimination against part-time faculty also discriminates against students. Many part-timers have credentials and experience that surpass their full-time counterparts. But because union contracts give preference to full-timers in choosing courses, we are simply not putting our best teachers into the classroom. My New York Times article, “An Academic Divide,” points out that research proves the non-tenure-track faculty are the better teachers.
We urge the Governor to veto Section 5 of 2ESSB 5194 to preserve the jobs of hundreds of dedicated part-time professors.
