Faculty Union in California Negotiates Less than One percent raise for Part-Time Faculty Members

LEADERS OF THE United Faculty of Ohlone College, an independent labor union in Fremont, California, recently negotiated a new contract which calls for the college’s more than 250 part-time faculty members to receive a pay raise of 0.97 percent. The adjuncts are represented by the UFO together with the college’s 137 full-time faculty members. The union negotiated a raise of 1.97 percent for its full-time members.

Though in terms of percentages both gains appear equally modest, a closer look reveals a clearer picture. According to the union’s full-time faculty salary schedule, available on-line at http://www2.ohlone.cc.ca.us/org/ufo/fulltime.html, a newly hired full-time faculty member with a Master’s degree would expect to earn a salary of $49,457. A newly hired part-time faculty member with a Master’s degree would expect to earn $47.17 per hour, or between $1,650 and $1,886.80 per course.Using these figures as a base for calculations, the union’s bargaining team negotiated an average yearly $16.50 raise for local’s part-time members, and an average yearly $975 raise for the full-time faculty members.

In addition to the raise, the full-time faculty also benefit from the college’s part-time faculty equity pay allotment. According to Carol Lawton, the lone part-time faculty representative on the union’s Executive Committee, the college’s total yearly equity pay allotment from the state of California totals $400,000. Bennett Oppenheim, negotiator for the UFO at Ohlone College, calculated that full-time faculty take home $28,000 per year of the part-time faculty equity pay in the form of overload pay. Ohlone’s faculty union is one of many in California which, in order to allow full-time faculty union members to take advantage of the part-time faculty equity money, classifies overload work as part-time employment.