FACE Talk has now officially moved to be part of the new and improved Faculty and College Excellence website. C'mon over and check it out!
We are going to keep this site up for a few weeks to catch folks who come here looking for news and discussion about academic staffing, but then it is to blog-oblivion for this version of the site.
Hope you will check out the new site, bookmark it, change your blog rolls, etc. and thanks for checking back in with us.
The FACE Talk Team
We are going to be in a bit of a slowdown here at FACE Talk as we prepare for the big move. Yup, that's right, this weekend we combine the old FACE site and this blog into one new official home. We will have more for you on the change soon.
Despite tough, tough budget battles going on in Rhode Island, the Rhode Island Fedeation of Teachers is working to keep the discussion about academic staffing in higher education going in their state legislature. Yesterday House Bill 8164, a version of the FACE legislation, was introduced by Representative Peter N. Wasylyk. This is a companion bill to Senate Bill 2449 introduced earlier this session by Senator V. Susan Sosnowski. Given the fact that the state is in the process of buying-out faculty, the FACE legislation has little chance of moving this session. But Rhode Island knows, as we all do, that you have to keep educating legislators so that when the opportunity presents itself to move legislation, they will know the issue. So props to the RIFT for keeping at it!
Last week we reported that the New Jersey Federation of Teachers passed a resolution supporting FACE, but we should have also noted that the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO also passed a resolution submitted by the Temple Association of University Professionals / AFT and the Faculty and Staff Federation of the Community College of Philadelphia / AFT. Read the full resolution.
The New Jersey Federation of Teachers recently resolved to fully support the FACE campaign. The resolution calls for NJFT to support FACE by:
AFT higher education members in New Jersey have clearly been involved in the FACE campaign since it began, but this resolution brings in the larger AFT membership in NJ. Commenting on the resolution which she introduced, Elaine Bobrove, president of the Camden County College Adjuncts Faculty Federation stated that:
Education is a continuous process from K-thru higher ed. It is something that concerns all our AFT brothers and sisters no matter which students they teach. We looked on this as a commitment of all of us to quality education.
Bobrove, who has taught as a contingent faculty member for more than 20 years, knows that this campaign isn't going to achieve its goals overnight, but is going to take a continuous effort to get there. She notes:
It may seem like a small step in the road to changing the situation at our colleges and universities, but sometimes small steps, if there are enough of them, are enough to get you to your destination."
Vermont legislators had a gratifying "say what?!" reaction when they heard testimony on the need for FACE legislation in the state. Though they’re holding off on action until the next legislative session, the legislators didn’t wait to write a letter to the University of Vermont president, urging him to correct how the university defines part-time and full-time work.
The Vermont Senate Committee on Economic Development and General Affairs held a hearing in February on Senate Bill 198, the FACE bill that committee chair Vincent Illuzzi sponsored and introduced last year. Committee members were very surprised when they heard testimony from United Academics/AAUP/AFT executive committee member Elizabeth Haggart, who described how it is possible for a University of Vermont faculty member to teach a full-time load and yet not receive benefits or be in the full-time faculty bargaining unit.
Haggart recounted how she frequently teaches more courses than her full-time colleagues in the art department but still is assigned to the part-time faculty bargaining unit. That’s because she receives her course assignments through two different divisions--the university's continuing education division and the art department. When this occurs, the courses cannot be added together to make a full-time load, which would put the instructor in the full-time unit.
The university's lobbyist tried to justify this practice by pointing to an existing university policy that predates the establishment of both the full-time and part-time faculty unions. However, members of the committee seemed unconvinced. They called the situation "unfair." Later, all the members of the committee signed a letter to the university president, objecting strongly to the practice and urging the university to make the necessary changes during the current round of bargaining for the full-time faculty unit.
While the FACE bill will not progress further during the current legislative session, the committee was favorably disposed toward it. One member characterized the working conditions for part-time faculty in Vermont as "slave labor."
Besides Haggart, others testifying for the bill included Jay Moore, a part-time faculty member at both the University of Vermont and Champlain College, Allison Fisher, a full-time tenured faculty member at Norwich University, Craig Smith, AFT deputy director for higher education and Steve Finner, lobbyist for the state federation.
Faculty leaders in Vermont are optimistic that the bill will come to a vote in the next legislative session.
Only of a sort. FACE Talk will be taking a break this week as most of our contributors will be busy attending the AFT-NEA National Higher Education Conference in Washington, D.C. We will be back with regularly scheduled blogging next week.
The California Federation of Teachers is back in Sacramento, working with Assembly Member Tony Mendoza to urge the California Legislature to correct the mistreatment of contingent faculty in the California Community College system and to meet the goals of FACE. This past week CFT leaders and activists testified before the Higher Education Committee in the Assembly, which passed Assembly Concurrent Resolution 91
“I left the hearing with a sense that an important foundation had been set for the real work—the lobbying of legislators, the multi-faceted organizing, the rallies, and much more—to gain needed momentum to have a chance at getting a FACE bill passed” said Julie Ivey, part-time instructor of English at Palomar. Ivey, who is also the co-president of the Palomar Faculty Federation, testified in support of ACR 91 along with Martin Hittelman, President of CFT, and Carl Friedlander, President of the CFT Community College Council.
The resolution sets forth extensive goals for the community college system in California, including establishing pro-rata pay and benefits for part-time faculty, creating more full-time, tenure-track lines, and establishing a process by which contingent faculty earn seniority and preferential consideration for tenure-track appointments.
Hittelman stated that this resolution was the first step in addressing the “marginalization” of part-time faculty “both in terms of pay and in terms of respect.” After the hearing, Ivey described her testimony where she talked about that marginalization.
My testimony came from the perspective of an instructor so underpaid I was forced into being a freeway flyer. My driving times and the distances between colleges made it almost impossible for me to consult with my students--even if I wanted to do so for free. My lack of job security and academic freedom also hurt students. A ‘new’ point that I’m glad I could enter into the record is how dangerous it is for the state to gamble that the nurturing instinct that accompanies teaching will keep egregiously underpaid instructors doing all they can to fully serve students for negligible compensation. Imagine if the state banked upon keeping 70% of teachers it needs in K-12 to properly educate students while mostly paying them in 'saint' currency.” Community college students deserve decently compensated faculty who can educate a large part of our present and vital workforce.”
Clearly the majority of the committee members agreed. The resolution, which was also endorsed by the Community College Association/CTA and the Faculty Association of the California Community Colleges, now moves to the Appropriations Committee.
The budget presented this year by the Washington State Senate included $500,000 “provided solely to convert classes taught by faculty employed in part-time positions to classes taught by faculty employed in full-time positions. Particular emphasis shall be placed upon increasing the number of full-time faculty . . . .”
When we started the year, we talked about the Academic Staffing Crisis in higher education and presented bills in both the House and the Senate that sought to improve the ratio of full-time to part-time faculty in the community and technical college system. The bills included "priority consideration" for qualified part-timers applying for the positions and called for the colleges to provide better security for part-time faculty who continue to teach in the system.
Representatives from the State Board of Community and Technical Colleges said they supported the new positions but were opposed to the "priority consideration" because it would interfere with the colleges' "flexibility." They also opposed the language calling for collectively bargaining better security for part-time faculty.
As reported earlier, we insisted that the language stay in the bills, and one bill died without leaving the committee while the other made it to Appropriations, where it died.
While we were able to get funding in at least the Senate budget, we lost most of the language that was intended to protect part-time faculty. There is a little good news, though. The budget language does specify that "the state board shall determine the distribution of these funds among the colleges in consultation with representatives of faculty unions." Hopefully, we will be able to include "priority consideration of part-time faculty" as a condition for receiving the funds.
Providing full-time opportunities for part-time faculty is one of the fundamental principles of FACE, and getting funding without the language is a serious blow. However, there is a little more good news. It seems that we do have some legislators who seem to recognize this fact.
Continue reading "Washington State Senate Provides Funds for FACE" »
As we near the end of February and enter the final weeks of this year’s legislative session, I’ve been thinking a lot about we have accomplished with our FACE campaign here in Washington State, and what do we still have to do.
Last year, we introduced FACE, which was a dramatic shift in the way we have been addressing the staffing crisis in higher education. Even before we began the program, I was warned that it generally takes three years to get new legislation through the process. In fact, I was told that we would be lucky to get a hearing. Well, we had a hearing in the Higher Ed committees of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. We also started attracting attention. We introduced a complex omnibus bill, which died in committee but attracted a lot of attention. In the biennial budget, we got our COLA, Increments, and the most generous Equity funding that we’ve had in at least a decade.
This year, our FACE bill focused on funding for full-time positions, priority consideration of part-time faculty for those positions, and bargaining job security. We again had hearings in both the House and the Senate (and this year things went much more smoothly), and the bill was voted out of the House Committee on Higher Education, after which it was sent to Appropriations. At about that time, we received budget projections that indicated we are entering an economic downturn. That, combined with the fact that this is the second year of our budgetary biennium, prevented us from being able to get funding in the House’s proposed budget. Currently, we still have hope in the Senate, and if we can get funding in the budget, we may be able to rescue some of our FACE Bill.
