Washington State 2ESSB 5194 is ANOTHER BAD BILL that doesn't help Adjunct Faculty. Hearing on Monday, Mar. 22, 2021

Info from the Washington State Part Time Faculty Association, 

Please contact Legislators to ask they do NOT vote for 2ESSB5194

This is a bad bill, that doesn't help all of the Washington State College Faculty.

 

"The Washington State  House College and Workforce Development Committee will be hearing 2ESSB 5194 this coming Monday at 1:30 p.m. Since the Chair has already scheduled it for a vote this coming Wednesday, it seems the Dems are intent on passing the bill this session.

 

The unions have run similar bills for years, all without passing. It is part of the AFT's Faculty and College Excellence Plan (FACE), which ultimately seeks to reverse the part-time/full-time ratio so 70% of the faculty will be full-timers. They aim to do this by taking courses from current part-timers.

 

While this bill had some language about "equal pay for equal work," it did not necessarily apply to part-timers, and it was dropped as the bill ran into problems.  There is nothing in this bill about improving part-time pay at all.

 

If you have time, it would help to drop even a short note asking the legislators to vote against 2ESSB 5194. It's quickest to send it to the chair, with copies to the committee members. But individual notes are nice, especially if they are to your own legislators" 

 

SAMPLE LETTER from Dr. Keith Hoeller:

To: " vandana.slatter@leg.wa.gov" < vandana.slatter@leg.wa.gov>

Cc: " debra.entenman@leg.wa.gov" < debra.entenman@leg.wa.gov>, " mari.leavitt@leg.wa.gov" < mari.leavitt@leg.wa.gov>, " kelly.chambers@leg.wa.gov" < kelly.chambers@leg.wa.gov>, " cyndy.jacobsen@leg.wa.gov" < cyndy.jacobsen@leg.wa.gov>, Bruce Chandler < bruce.chandler@leg.wa.gov>, Drew Hansen < drew.hansen@leg.wa.gov>, " larry.hoff@leg.wa.gov" < larry.hoff@leg.wa.gov>, " vicki.kraft@leg.wa.gov" < vicki.kraft@leg.wa.gov>, " dave.paul@leg.wa.gov" < dave.paul@leg.wa.gov>, Gerry Pollet < gerry.pollett@leg.wa.gov>, Mike Sells < mike.sells@leg.wa.gov>, " robert.sutherland@leg.wa.gov" < robert.sutherland@leg.wa.gov>

Date: 03/19/2021 12:08 PM

Subject: WA Part-Time Faculty Association Opposes E2SSB 5194

 

 

Rep. Vandana Slatter

Chair, College & Workforce Development Committee

Olympia, WA 98504

 

cc:  Committee Members

 

RE: WA Part-Time Faculty Association's Opposition to E2SSB 5194

Though you have scheduled E2SSB 5194 for a hearing this Monday, March 22, you have already scheduled it for executive session on Wednesday, March 24. This bill, sponsored solely by Democrats and pushed by the two faculty unions (WEA and AFT), is similar to previous unsuccessful bills seeking to create more full-time faculty positions by taking jobs away from current part-time faculty. I will explain why it is a shameful piece of legislation.

 

1.  More Full-Time Faculty Will Do Nothing to Improve Diversity, Equity, or Inclusion

2.  E2SSB 5194 Will Mean From 200 to 600 Part-Time Professors Lose Their Jobs

3.  Part-Timers May Not Be Able To Collect Unemployment

4.  More Full-Timers Will Not Increase Student Success

5.  2ESSB 5194 Will Increase the Number of Full-Time Union Members 

6.  WA Legislature Has Abandoned Its Commitment to Equality for the Part-Timers

 

1. More Full-Time Faculty Will Do Nothing to Improve Diversity, Equity, or Inclusion

 

2ESSB 5194 is supposed to be about diversity, equity and inclusion. Yet this multimillion dollar boondoggle has tacked on to it a plan to convert 400 part-time to 200 full-time positions. 

 

As I state in my New York Times article, " An Academic Divide," several research studies show that adjuncts and other contingent professors who teach off the tenure-track are in fact the better teachers, calling  “into question the myth that the two-track system in academe is an equal opportunity merit system. It is not; it is in fact a caste system with the tenured faculty occupying the upper caste and the off-track faculty serving as the 'untouchables.'”

 

 

2. E2SSB 5194 Will Mean From 200 to 600 Part-Time Professors Lose Their Jobs

 

Since it takes two part-timers working half-time to form one FTE (full-time equivalent) position, then a minimum of 200 and a maximum of 600 current part-timers could lose their jobs with this bill. 

 

And there is nothing in this bill about promoting current part-timers to full-timers at a particular college. The bill seeks to take away courses from current part-timers and put them on the state and national markets. The part-timers would then have to apply from scratch and compete with hundreds of other applicants to teach the same courses they taught successfully for years.

 

3. Part-Timers May Not Be Able To Collect Unemployment.

 

In " Why Adjuncts Deserve Unemployment Compensation," I wrote that teachers are "the only professionals routinely denied unemployment when they are not working." Our state unemployment law allows colleges to claim that when part-timers are not working they are just like full-timers who are on paid term or summer breaks and have "reasonable assurance" of returning to work after their break period is over. Many part-timers are hassled and many are denied unemployment compensation. So the part-timers who lose their jobs to create these new full-time positions may not even be able to collect unemployment.

 

4. More Full-Timers Will Not Increase Student Success 

 

 

Section 5 of 2ESSB 5194, entitled "Tenure-Track Faculty," says "The legislature recognizes that student outcomes and success, especially for first generation, underserved students, may be significantly improved by increasing the number of full-time faculty at community and technical colleges."

 

This statement is false. If it were true, the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities would have yanked the colleges' accreditation decades ago since part-timers teach nearly half of all the courses and outnumber the full-timers by two to one. There is no credible evidence that more full-timers will increase student retention or make students graduate at a faster rate.

 

Fifteen years ago, the AFT itself funded a seriously flawed study that purported to show that student retention and graduation rates were higher at colleges that use fewer part-timers.

 

For decades Doug Collins has been an adjunct instructor of English as a Second Language at South Seattle College. He explained the flaws of this research in a letter he wrote to KUOW's Ross Reynolds in 2007:

 

"When assessing graduation rates, Jacoby did not statistically segregate evening students from daytime students. This is a big oversight, because evening classes are overwhelmingly taught by PT  instructors, and because evening students are more likely to have FT jobs or other daytime obligations themselves while going to school (and thus have a harder time graduating on time). The FT/PT labor divide is largely a divide of shifts. The FTers mostly dominate the day hours, and the PTers overwhelmingly dominate the evening and other less-desired hours." 

 

 

5. 2ESSB 5194 Will Increase the Number of Full-Time Union Members 

 

The bill will increase the number of full-time members to the two faculty unions (AFT and WEA), who have been losing members and money since the U.S. Supreme Court's Janus decision (2018) outlawed "agency shop" contracts, whereby workers had to either become members and pay dues or pay a nearly identical representation fee to the union. Unions can no longer force non-members to pay them fees.

 

All full-timers tend join the unions and they pay more in dues because their salaries are so much higher.  Prior to the Janus decision, 90% of part-timers refused to join the unions where there was no agency shop contract forcing them to join or pay a fee.

 

6. WA Legislature Has Abandoned Its Commitment to Equality for the Part-Timers

 

From 1996 until 2009, the legislature allocated $50 million solely to increase part-time faculty salaries, but stopped with the great recession. If there is any money left in this year's budget, it should go "solely to increasing pay and related benefits for part-time faculty," as every budget did between 1996 and 2009.

 

Not only will 2ESSB force hundreds of part-timers to lose their jobs, it will do nothing about the huge pay disparity between the part-timers and the full-timers. It seeks to spend $16.6 million in the next biennium to create 200 full-time positions.

 

In 2009 the legislature also stopped funding incremental step raises for the community and technical college faculty. While many full-timers have seen their increments funded by local collective bargaining, many part-timers have not because two-thirds of the unions have failed to bargain any increments for their part-timers.

 

Despite several decades of representation by the AFT Washington and the WEA, two-thirds of part-timers are not eligible for incremental raises. Only 50% of them receive either health or retirement benefits. They are barred from working even full-time so as to keep them from qualifying for tenure and they do not receive paid sabbaticals. They are not paid for summers and term breaks and often are denied unemployment compensation on the bogus grounds that they have job security they do not have.

 

If there is any money in the state budget, it should go to increasing part-time faculty salaries, which average about $20,000 for teaching a half-time load. Full-time salaries average $60,000 a year, though many earn much more by teaching overtime. At last count, the pay disparity was $132 million per biennium; it surely has gone even higher by now.

 

Please do not pass a bill that will not raise part-time salaries and cause hundreds of loyal part-time professors to lose their jobs.

 

Cordially,

 

Keith Hoeller, Ph.D.

Co-founder (with Teresa Knudsen), Washington Part-Time Faculty Association 

Editor, Equality for Contingent Faculty: Overcoming the Two-Tier System

Seattle and Spokane, WA