A report of the nonpartisan California Bureau of State Audits has found a 31 percent pay gap between the salaries paid to full-time and part-time community college faculty with similar education, experience and teaching responsibilities.

Called "California Community Colleges: Part-Time Faculty Are Compensated Less Than Full-Time Faculty for Teaching Activities," the report says that "if part-time faculty were to teach a full course load at their current pay, they would receive an average of $13,042 (or 31 percent) less in annual wages than full-time faculty for teaching activities."

The report is a study of the compensation patterns for faculty in eight districts--two rural, three urban and three suburban. It is an interim study, conducted to provide information to legislators and the governor while the state awaits the more in-depth analysis of the part-time pay equity issue mandated by a bill passed in the last legislative session. That analysis will be done by the California Postsecondary Education Commission.

The audit also notes other inequities:

• Districts enhance pay packages for full-time faculty who have more education and experience, but they do not for part-time faculty.
• Districts benefit from part-timers who put together a full-time teaching load by working in more than one district.
• Districts do not provide medical benefits to part-timers.
• Part-time faculty have a difficult time securing the retirement benefits provided for full-timers.

For part-timers, who have been struggling to have public policy address pay inequity issues for years, the validation was bittersweet. Earlier in the legislative session, they had seen a $48 million proposal to correct some of the part-time salary problem slip away from them because the governor had threatened to veto it. According to the audit, the cost of eliminating the pay disparity would be about $144 million annually.

Union provides gerontology help for retirees

The New York State United Teachers has a free new program available to NYSUT retirees and their loved ones: gerontology services.

Gerontologist Laurie Kupperstein and Scott Hicks, certified social worker, offer services that include help in finding senior or retirement living communities, short-term counseling, intervention with hospital social workers and discharge planners, referrals to geriatricians and service providers in the community, coaching on how to deal with Medicare, referrals to home health agencies and even help with retirees' concerns about their adult children. Basically, says Kupperstein, "we deal with the concerns that come with getting older: their lifestyles, where and how they're going to be living and their general sense of well being."

During its first year, NYSUT Gerontology Services is being rolled out gradually across New York state and Florida.

The United Federation of Teachers in New York City has been offering similar services to its retired members for the last nine years. The UFT retiree social services department has two full-time social workers, a gerontologist and four part-time retiree case managers.

NYSUT's services are confidential and are available to retired members, who may also ask questions on behalf of domestic partners, spouses, parents or parents-in-law.