The benefits gap
Why part-timers are losing out in today's economy

Like most part-time faculty members, David Milroy received no benefits and chose not to buy individual health insurance. It ate up too much of the monthly salary he pieced together from teaching French at four different San Diego-area community college campuses. Last November, Milroy was finally going to get HMO coverage. Thanks to the strong lobbying of unions such as the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) that represent part-timers, the state Legislature had passed a bill last summer that would provide some health coverage. But before the insurance became available, he had an attack of appendicitis. The final bill for his emergency appendectomy: $12,000. For someone like Milroy, who makes about $28,000 in a good year, that was a devastating economic blow.

The southern chair of the CFT's part-time faculty committee, Milroy returned from surgery to resume a killer schedule that on some days keeps him away from home from 8 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., which includes a couple of hours driving to different sites. A number of terms have been coined to describe Milroy and the thousands of higher education part-timers, or adjunct faculty, who carry the bulk of the teaching load in many community colleges and other institutions: roads scholars, freeway fliers, gypsy scholars. Their numbers are staggering. California alone has 30,000 part-time community college instructors. One group puts the national total at 400,000. A 1998 AFT report on the subject found that the number of part-time faculty increased 226 percent from 1970 to 1995.

"It certainly doesn't make teaching any easier," says Milroy in a huge understatement, noting that he has headed to one campus with a briefcase full of papers and books for the wrong course or driven toward the wrong school by mistake. "Fortunately, I love teaching French."

While adjunct faculty in higher education are a particularly glaring example of part-time workers who face inequitable treatment compared to their full-time counterparts--adjuncts often receive no benefits and make less than half the salary of full-time faculty who teach identical courses--they are far from alone in their plight. Even as the U.S. is in the midst of an economic boom, a huge chunk of employees, including many union members, are treated like second-class workers in jobs without health insurance, pensions, job security and many of the things other workers take for granted.

In fact, some of the most profitable companies are the worst offenders. Microsoft has become known as the home of an army of "perma-temps," 6,000 temporary workers and contractors--including highly skilled engineers, programmers and technical writers--who often work for years employed by temporary agencies rather than by Microsoft, even though they do the same work as the company's 19,000 full-time employees. In all, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), about 30 percent of the U.S. work force is employed in "nontraditional" arrangements--such as part-time, temporary, contingent and independent contractors. In Silicon Valley, home of countless high-tech multimillionaires, the figure is more like 40 percent.

Without a doubt, some people prefer such flexible work arrangements, and some independent contractors in particular can earn very comfortable livings. But the majority--almost 60 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports--would prefer a full-time job. And contingent workers are far less likely to have important benefits, such as health insurance or retirement plans, EPI reports indicate (see charts on page 7).

Many workers, like AFT member Lin Frasier, have probably stopped looking for full-time positions. Frasier, who teaches English at a number of community colleges in the Sacramento area, applied for almost two dozen full-time faculty jobs her first year as a part-timer, and quite a few more the second year as well. But after two years of nothing but rejections, she stopped sending out applications. "I would love a full-time job, but realistically, given my age [51] and my lack of a Ph.D. [she has a master's degree]," she explains, "I doubt I would get it."

Among AFT members, the problem of part-time work is not limited to higher education. (Ironically, however, one of the biggest concerns facing the union's Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals members is forced overtime, brought on by staffing shortages and attempts to squeeze more profits out of the medical system.) Many paraprofessionals and school-related personnel, for example, are working in districts that are bringing in growing numbers of full-time substitutes, sometimes keeping them in that status for years, in order to save money on benefits. Another discouragingly common management practice is to limit employees' work hours, to, say, 19, so they never reach the threshold to earn benefits.

In the Brazosport (Texas) Independent School District, as one example, more than half the foodservice and custodial workers are full-time substitutes, reports AFT member Margaret Kimmel, a secretary in the district. Secretary-clerical vacancies, she adds, are usually filled by someone from a temporary agency, and the temps are rarely hired full time by the district. In many districts, when school boards contract out some service previously performed by district employees, such as bus drivers or custodians, the contractor turns around and offers to rehire the employees--but inevitably at lower pay and fewer benefits.

Adjunct advocates
In places where the AFT and its affiliates represent part-timers, especially in higher education, the union has sought to end some of the glaring second-class treatment such workers face. The AFT has become known as the leading advocate for part-time faculty, representing them in about a dozen states from Alaska to New York. But while it's easy to argue for equity for part-timers because they are so exploited, progress toward that goal has been slow, especially given the price tag of paying tens of thousands of workers wages that are comparable to what full-timers earn. Colleges and universities have come to rely on cheap part-timers to balance their budgets.

The Washington Federation of Teachers, which represents a large number of higher education employees, has put a legislative priority on part-time issues in the past couple of years and has enjoyed some success. In the 1999 legislative session, the union won passage of $10 million for part-time pay raises and $1.9 million for part-timers' retirement benefits. Although it's still far short of providing "pro-rata" pay and benefits--essentially equal pay for equal work--it's more than many unions have won. Local unions in Washington and elsewhere have improved the lot of part-timers through collective bargaining, winning improvements such as pay raises, better access to office space and seniority in class assignments.

In California's legislative session last year, part-timers from the CFT and other organizations worked together to push through a part-time faculty "bill of rights." The final legislation improved health insurance and brought paid office hours but no new money after the governor threatened a veto. Instead, the law called for a study of postsecondary education that will look at pay, workload and other issues of part- and full-time faculty in California and elsewhere. Full pay equity for part-timers could cost about $500 million, says Scott Suneson, part-time faculty coordinator for CFT's community college council.

Even for adjunct faculty who work part time by choice, such as AFT member Dianne Daniele in New Jersey, the ideal situation would be something like half-time work, with half the pay and benefits of full-timers. In return, Daniele says, she would willingly serve on committees and assume other roles that are mostly taken on by full-time faculty. Even if adjuncts want to become involved in campus life, it's almost impossible because they are always traveling to different sites, says Daniele, an English instructor who eats two meals a day in her car and keeps a different colored bag in her trunk for each school so she doesn't get them mixed up.

New attention
The concerns of part-time and contingent workers are starting to get more attention, both from the AFL-CIO and its member unions and from other organizations. The AFL-CIO, as part of its campaign of winning "full-time rights for part-time workers," is pushing for federal legislation that would make it more difficult for employers to misclassify workers as independent contractors. Pro-employer groups, however, are lobbying for changes that would have the opposite effect and lead to more conversion of full-time employees into independent contractors.

At Microsoft, a Communications Workers of America affiliate known as WashTech has fought for better pay, benefits and job security for the company's temps, 60 percent of whom would prefer full-time permanent jobs, according to a WashTech survey. Collective bargaining rights may not come anytime soon, but the group hopes at least to improve the way Microsoft treats its perma-temps. In the Silicon Valley, another center of high-tech temporary workers, the local central labor council has gone a step further and launched its own temporary agency. As a nonprofit, the agency can pay its temps moreŃ$10 per hour vs. $8 per hour for clerical employees in for-profit agencies--and it is also developing group health insurance programs and job training .

An independent group, Working Today, advocates the idea of portable benefits that are not tied to any employer but instead allow the employee to accumulate benefits in a variety of jobs. Unionized building trades and film, TV and radio industry employees work under such a system of benefits. "Workers at all levels of skill and education want flexibility," says Sara Horowitz, the group's founder and executive director. "But too many workers are experiencing flexibility as a euphemism for jobs with no benefits or security. The answer to this inequality is to make flexible jobs good jobs."

American Federation of Teachers, AFL•CIO - 555 New Jersey Avenue, NW - Washington, DC 20001