A Washington state superior court judge has ruled that part-time community and technical college faculty are due millions of dollars in retirement benefits retroactively because the state failed to count the faculty's working hours correctly. The court said that for the purpose of determining benefits, part-timers' working hours must be computed in the same way as full-timers' hours. Thus, the state must stop counting only the in-class hours of part-timers and include the hours these faculty spend preparing for class, advising students, and grading papers and exams.

The legal victory--which the state is appealing--is even sweeter because it is retroactive at least to 1977, the first year that one of the three primary plaintiffs in the case began teaching. The case is a class action and affects the several hundred part-time instructors who teach in the state community college system every year, says Stephen Festor, an attorney who filed the suit.

The suit came after years of efforts to get the state to compensate part-time faculty in the same way full-time faculty were awarded benefits for their work. Under Washington law, faculty who work 70 hours or more per month are eligible for retirement benefits in the state retirement system. The state said those hours had to be classroom time. However, full-time faculty were compensated for working 35 hours a week, even though their time was spent mostly out of the classroom. (In fact, not even full-time faculty spend 70 hours a month in the classroom, Festor notes.)

In 1995, the state Legislature became aware that the law was being applied differently for part-time instructors and sought a clarification, which the Washington state Department of Retirement Services provided. Still, the DRS failed to count the hours of more than a few part-timers differently and did not notify the affected group of the long-standing mistake.

Last fall, three part-time instructors filed suit on behalf of themselves and all of their colleagues. In the aftermath of the judge's decision, the state and the plaintiffs' attorneys are trying to determine liability and damages. The state could still appeal the case, Festor says.

"This is one more step in our ongoing fight for equal pay and benefits" for part-timers, comments Susan Levy, president of the Washington Federation of Teachers. The lawsuit came as a parallel effort to the work of the union to get legislation passed to correct pay inequities. Another piece of legislation is now under consideration; it would address the awarding of health benefits, sick leave and shared leave for part-timers in a way that is comparable to full-timers. "And next year, we'll be back to the Legislature for more money," says Levy, to pay part-timers and to strengthen wage and hour laws.

Students hold sway in sweatshop fight

Students protesting the sweatshop working conditions under which collegiate licensed apparel is produced are proving themselves a force to be reckoned with, universities are finding. Not since the Gulf War have students been so galvanized. In this national campaign, however, they are showing how effectively they can organize.

In February, anti-sweatshop protesters staged sit-ins in central administrative offices at the Universities of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, and at Indiana University. In the end, the universities bowed to the demonstrators' key demand--that they join the Worker Rights Consortium and shun the Fair Labor Association.

The Fair Labor Association was set up by the White House, working to find a middle ground for colleges and universities feeling student pressure, and for the big names in the clothing business, such as Donna Karan, Liz Claiborne, Nike and so on. In addition to producing clothing, these manufacturers produce T-shirts, hats, sweatshirts and sweat suits with college logos on them in an industry that produces sales of up to $3.8 billion annually. Although more than 130 institutions have signed on to the FLA in the past year, students have been critical of the association almost from the start because it includes the clothing companies, and its standards are not strong enough to improve the conditions in foreign factories.

The Worker Rights Consortium establishes the necessary principles for and acceptable workplace code of conduct and effective monitoring of apparel factories that produce university-licensed clothing. The provisions include full public disclosure of factory locations and monitoring reports; a living wage for workers producing university apparel; the primary role of local non-governmental organizations in monitoring; the education of workers regarding their rights; protection of their right to organize and bargain collectively; a system to adequately address third-party complaints; and university autonomy in the decision-making process. Unions, human rights and religious groups are members of the WRC, which is holding its first annual conference this month.

The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor agreed to join the WRC conditionally after a two-day sit-in in the dean's office. The students turned the office into a mock sweatshop. At Pennsylvania, the president bowed to the wishes of demonstrators after a nine-day occupation. In Wisconsin, despite the acquiescence of the president after four days, students continued their demonstrations and 54 were arrested.

Here are some useful Web sites to find more information about the anti-sweatshop movement: Fair Labor Association--www.lchr.org/sweatshop/main.htm and Sweatshop Watch--www.sweatshopwatch.org/.

Administrators' salaries hit a high, survey shows

College and university administrators won median raises of 5 percent for 1999-2000, the third consecutive year that their increases outpaced inflation, reports the College and University Personnel Association (CUPA). The increase for the executive positions, with titles ranging from system president to provost and deans, was the largest in five years. Last year, 1998-99, the median increase was 4.5 percent, and in 1997-98, it was 4.6 percent.

CUPA collected and analyzed salary information on 174 positions from 1,433 institutions for the survey. Of those, 1,236 were the same institutions that had participated in the past three surveys. Doctoral institutions account for 14 percent of the responding institutions; comprehensive institutions, 24 percent; baccalaureate institutions, 24 percent; two-year institutions, 23 percent; and "other" specialized or system offices, 14 percent.

With an inflation rate of 2.7 percent last year, the increases were another example of the effect of this booming economy, suggests Kirk Beyer, chair of the committee that directed the survey and director of human resources at Gustavus Adolphus College. "This sustained, real-dollar salary growth is unprecedented in the 32-year history" of the survey, he says. Beyer attributes the growth in part to a

.2 percent decrease in the unemployment rate for 1999. With the rate at 4.1 percent, the number of available workers is the lowest it's been since World War II, he notes.

By sector, the median raises ranged from 5.4 percent at doctoral institutions to 3.7 percent at two-year institutions. By job type, executives got the largest raisesÑ5.8 percent. Those in academic positions--such as provosts, deans and librarians--averaged 5.6 percent. The smallest increases were for jobs in student services or external affairs, which averaged 4 percent.

Average salary increases for faculty, which the American Association of University Professors compiles and releases each year at the end of April, aren't yet in for the 1999-2000 school year. Last year, however, faculty earned raises averaging 3.6 percent, nearly double the 1998 rate of inflation of 1.6 percent.