Adjunct faculty in Washington State are not entitled to minimum wage.

by Geoff Fredericks

PART-TIME FACULTY AT community colleges are professional
employees who aren’t covered by the state’s minimum wage law,
the Washington Court of Appeals ruled on January 7, 2002. In a unanimous decision, the three-judge panel rejected a suit by unionized part-time faculty at a number of community colleges who claimed they are entitled to additional pay for time spent out of the classroom.

It is believed to be the first case in the nation to litigate the issue in the context of part-time community college faculty, lawyers on both sides said. A contrary decision could have cost the colleges an estimated $40 million in retroactive pay for a three-year period, according to Assistant Attorney Gen. Howard Fischer.

Steven Frank, a Seattle lawyer representing the part-time faculty, said at least 1,000 people statewide are affected by the case. For many of them, he said, the additional compensation would be as much as their contractual pay. Frank said his clients will ask the Washington Supreme Court to review the case. Part-timers at a number of colleges initially filed the suit, but it proceeded against Green River Community College in Auburn and Whatcom Community College in Bellingham.

The pay practices at all Washington’s community colleges
are essentially identical, Fischer said. The dispute focused
on whether or not the faculty are employed in a “professional
capacity” and compensated on a “salary basis” under the minimum
wage law. The appeals court upheld a decision by King County
Superior Court Judge Suzanne Barnett, who dismissed the case
without trial. The colleges hire part-time faculty under individual
contracts on either a quarterly or annual basis, according to the court. Their compensation is calculated by multiplying contact hours or credits by a rate negotiated through collective bargaining.

The contracts state that compensation includes pay for work
outside the classroom such as grading, preparation, office hours and student conferences, according to the court, but the part-timers argued that they are legally entitled to the same hourly rate for out-of-classroom time. In its decision, the appeals court said the part-timers aren’t paid as hourly employees. “The undisputed facts demonstrate that under each quarterly contract, the faculty members are paid a predetermined amount in equal installments and at regular intervals, regardless of how many hours they actually work,” it said.

“The fact that the faculty members are offered a new contract
each quarter is not, as they suggest, an attempt to ‘avoid the Minimum Wage Act.’ Rather, it is necessary to accommodate
part-time employment in step with the academic calendar,”
said an opinion by appeals Judge H. Joseph Coleman. Fischer
of the attorney general’s office called the decision “a reaffirmation
of the professionalism of the faculty” and a reflection of the fact that there is a “wide variability in work effort” and time spent out of the classroom. “You get paid the same amount regardless of the hours you work.”