Groups to work through Legislature and in campus activities.
Part-time faculty are persevering in their quest for equity.
This time around, however, CCA's part-time faculty members have joined other part-time faculty groups to press their demands for equal pay for equal work, improved health benefits and other benefit enhancements.
Chris Storer and Judith Mandel talk to a participant in a recent CCA workshop.
CCA members, both full- and part-time, are working with their counterparts in the California Part-time Faculty Association, the Community College Council of the California Federation of Teachers (CCC/CFT) and the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges (FACCC), are lobbying for $62 million for part-time faculty proposed by the governor; supporting an interdistrict faculty pilot program that aimed at creating the opportunity for existing "freeway scholars" to become full-time faculty; and working on an observance of Campus Equity Week in the fall.
Co-sponsoring legislation
Faculty are also united on legislation, cosponsoring most of their bills and resolutions.
"I think the important thing is that all representative groups, full-time and part time - including the Academic Senate - are working together," said Judith Mandel, CCA's board member representing adjunct faculty. "We are unified in this drive to promote the issues of part-time faculty."
Like many others who are anxiously watching the state's energy crisis, Mandel hopes that the Governor's promised $62 million for part-time pay equity will be available before the budget process is completed this summer. The money is to be used solely to increase compensation for part-time faculty throughout the state and is to be used to assist districts in making part-time faculty salaries more comparable to full-time salaries for similar work.
"The governor has come to the realization he needs to do something for part-timers. Although we asked for $75 million, we've been promised $62," Mandel said, noting the proposal is the first year of a three year funding plan.
But, Mandel and Chris Storer, immediate past president of CPFA and a CCA member at De Anza College, cautioned that faculty must continue to lobby for the $62 million - and be prepared to press their administrators to apply for them once they become available. The funds, according to Storer, may amount to almost $1 million a year at many colleges.
Faculty Pilot Program
The part-time faculty leaders are also waiting to learn whether the Interdistrict Faculty Pilot, a program proposed by the Community College Chancellor's Office, will be funded. The proposal would provide funds to create additional full-time positions with loads distributed over two or more campuses.
Mandel also expects to help Storer in his efforts as "Temporary Steering Committee for Equity Week" as he prepares for Campus Equity Week 2001, an event that will take place in the United States, Canada and Mexico during the week of Oct. 28-Nov. 3.
Sponsored by a coalition of academic organizations, unions and associations, the week will bring attention to the problems facing contingent academic labor in all three countries.
"There is a real momentum being shown by these organizations," Storer said. "They are all getting on board with activities for that week."
Those activities, he said, are likely to include teach-ins, rallies, leafleting, "and in some instances, full strikes," Storer said.