By Barbara McKenna

Last year, part-time faculty in California got so fed up with delays, denials and the disrespect associated with their status, they did something radical. They stopped agitating among themselves and let out a unified roar.

Despite years of incremental improvements that came by way of both the bargaining table and the Legislature, the part-timers still felt progress wasn’t coming fast enough. Pay was a big part of the problem, says Linda Cushing, who at the time was an adjunct in the midst of organizing North Orange County Community College District. Pay inequities plagued unionized and non-unionized faculty to different degrees.

Plus, "we would hear stories of folks who, after 32 years of teaching for the district, suddenly weren’t invited back," says Cushing. "There were no benefits, no office-hours pay, no seniority or rehire rights, poor treatment, lack of dignity and respect for people who love teaching yet make one-third to one-half the pay of full-timers."

These conditions--and a governor who was slow to respond to plenty of evidence about the injustice--raised the heat on contingent faculty’s slow burn. The e-mails were flying; the list-serves were on overload.

It was as if all the various faculty groups in the state simultaneously reached critical mass. In a matter of months, says Cushing, who is now an AFT organizer, part-timers pulled together an ad hoc coalition of individuals, labor groups and faculty organizations focused on a single goal: pay equity. The coalition crafted a statewide campaign, called Action 2000, or A2K for short. A2K activists crafted multiple ways to get some simple messages across to the public and policymakers alike.

The coalition held rallies, sported buttons, plastered bumper stickers on their cars. Activists set up information tables on their campuses and enlisted the support of students, fellow faculty and passersby. They created a mascot, dubbed the Freeway Flyer, who was a part-timer dressed in a hokey costume of academic robes, tattered wings and an old backpack labeled "my office." They delivered to the governor more than 40,000 signatures on a petition that urged lawmakers to bring the state’s 30,000-plus part-time faculty to pay equity.

This past spring, when Gov. Gray Davis’s budget came out, faculty saw the results of A2K and their collaborative work. Davis proposed including $62 million for equity raises. The final budget, with $57 million for part-time faculty, was a tremendous victory--and a testimonial to the power of collective action.

How they did it

California’s part-time faculty unions, especially those represented on the California Federation of Teachers Community College Council, have a long history of setting goals and reaching them. The equity raises were the culmination of years of mounting and concerted action.

It started more than a decade ago when the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) was instrumental in getting Assembly Bill 1725 through the Legislature. That 1988 legislation set a hiring target for the community colleges of 75 percent full-time faculty to 25 percent part-time. This ratio has been achieved in only about 10 percent of the colleges, but it stands as an important benchmark.

Three years ago, the CFT and its Community College Council began a push that eventually led to the passage of another major bill for part-timers--AB 420. This legislation expanded part-timers’ eligi bility for health care benefits and increased the compensation for holding office hours. The bill did not go so far as to man-date "equal pay for equal work," which was the central goal of AB 420’s supporters. But the bill did direct the state to conduct a study of part-time employment and compen-sation practices, and it indicated an intention to try to achieve equity.

It was at this juncture that frustrated faculty realized the time had come to turn up the heat. Last February--at about the same time that A2K turned over its 43,000 petition signatures--the California Postsecondary Education Commission released its mandated study, which showed that the state’s part-timers make less than 42 percent of their full-time colleagues’ pay for similar work. The governor’s multimillion-dollar equity proposal followed shortly thereafter.

"This would never have happened without our efforts," says David Milroy, co-chair of the CFT part-time faculty committee. "People in power realize that [the part-timers’ plight] is an abusive situation, but they won’t change unless you get a big enough stick to hit them with. Public awareness is the stick that changes that."

The other tool is solidarity, organizers say.

Following the A2K model

The course California took now serves as the model for a national crusade. Campus Equity Week, Oct. 28-Nov. 3, will serve as both a public education campaign and an internal mobilizing tool for faculty to come together and realize their collective power.

Like the CFT, the Washington Federation of Teachers has been a leader in the fight to secure equity and dignity for part-time faculty, who number 10,000 in the state’s community colleges. In 1998, the WFT passed a resolution committing the federation to making pro rata pay for part-time faculty the number one goal of its legislative program the following year.

More than a tool for reaching legislators, the "Equal Pay for Equal Work" theme of WFT also helped the union get members more involved and participating in union events. One of the most successful programs of that legislative session was the "Adopt-a-Week" lobbying schedule. Locals throughout Washington state took responsibility for covering the lobbying duty for just one week of the session. Local members flooded representatives with phone calls, letters, e-mails, office visits and so on in support of pay equity.

The WFT drove a car up the steps of the state capitol building and parked it there with a placard inviting passersby to: "Step into my office."

Results of the WFT’s work include increased salaries, retirement benefits, pro rata sick leave benefits, and a further commitment by the state and colleges to explore the situation of part-timers and try to create more full-time jobs or better compensation for the part-time ones.

In Illinois, the United Professionals of Illinois/AFT adapted California’s strategy of getting legislators to mandate a study. Earlier this year, through the union’s hard work, the Illinois Legislature passed a bill calling for an assessment of the use of part-timers statewide and the cost of bringing them to parity. The state is supposed to release the study this month. UPI president Mitch Vogel says it will form the basis for more legislation UPI will promote to raise minimum salaries for teaching three-credit courses.

UPI and fellow academic unions are poised to make optimum use of the timing of Campus Equity Week. In conjunction with the Cook County College Teachers Union/AFT and the Illinois Education Association, the unions will hold rallies complete with people dressed in elephant costumes who will hand out bags of peanuts imprinted with this riddle: "What do elephants and part-time faculty have in common? Both work for peanuts."

Across the country, the united voice of a highly frustrated--and growing--group of exploited professionals resonates. "No matter where you go, or how colleges are set up, you can’t find a college where the part-time pay isn’t 37 percent to 45 percent" of the full-timers’, points out David Boetcher, president of the Madison Area Technical College Part-time Teachers Union. Along with the pay gap, part-timers voice concern over other missing elements of their jobs: health and pension benefits, sick leave, office space, pay for holding office hours, seniority and security guarantees.

With the first contract MATCPTU negotiated, it was able to boost pay from $18/hour to $32/hour in three years. This increased the union’s membership six-fold. Equally important, Boetcher says, is the sense of empowerment that came to individual part-time teachers the union represents. "Since the union has been around, some administrators have started involving part-timers in their committees and curriculum development groups. They now feel empowered to speak up without fear of automatic dismissal of their ideas or their jobs."

This year, Boetcher will meld his union’s efforts with those of The Association of University of Wisconsin Professionals (TAUWP) to make the most of Campus Equity Week. Their focus will be on getting legislation--based on the California model--introduced in Wisconsin.

Likewise, in New Jersey, efforts of the New Jersey Federation of Teachers and the New Jersey Council of State College Locals are focused on the Legislature. "No one college can achieve equity acting unilaterally," observes Elaine Bobrove, executive vice president of the Camden County College Adjunct Faculty Federation. "You’ve got to go through the state Legislature. Money has to be made available. Raises have to come across the board."

What’s more, she says, Campus Equity Week will focus on reaching the public. "When funding comes from the public sector, as it does with community colleges, the awareness has to be a public one."

The Camden County College local is planning to set up information tables on campuses, to hold a rally on the Blackwood campus Nov. 1, to join with faculty from Rutgers, Camden, for a meeting on the issue, and to send a busload of faculty to the state capital in Trenton to demonstrate and lobby. Members of her 500-plus unit of adjuncts--who don’t have health benefits, don’t have offices and make about $1,360 for a three-credit course--will put signs that read "Adjunct Office" on their cars parked in the college parking lot. "Makes a point, doesn’t it," Bobrove says.

Janet Cole, president of the NJFT, says the federation is working with other state unions and faculty organizations to press for legislation to study the equity--and inequity--issues of the state’s part-timers. This legislation is also modeled on the California, Illinois and Washington examples. Cole says the federation wants to use CEW to "raise awareness, get some press, educate, get support from legislators and unify our members around these issues." With a gubernatorial election coming up next month, she notes, this is a great opportunity to publicize the plight of the professionals.