Adjunct Community College Faculty Need Job Security that Two Current Bills Would Not Provide

By Keith Hoeller*

In the past few decades, community and technical colleges (CTCs) have responded to budget constraints placed upon them by the legislature by hiring thousands of “part-time” or “adjunct” professors and placing them on an entirely separate “track” from the tenured faculty.

Unlike tenure-track faculty, who now average $55,320 for nine months of teaching, adjuncts earn only 61 cents on the dollar compared to the tenure-stream faculty, or $16,945 if they teach half-time. This adjunct salary is equivalent to 170% of the federal poverty level for a household of one and would qualify the adjunct for food stamp assistance. It is just under the poverty level of $18,310 for a family of three.

CTCs currently save about $130 million per biennium by paying these adjuncts 39% less than the full-timers earn. And they save even more on benefits since 61% of the adjuncts do not qualify for state-supported health care and 49% are not eligible for any state retirement system.

With the recession, many of the colleges have handled their budget cuts by canceling classes and laying off adjuncts. As a result, the number of part-time faculty, which had been increasing in recent years, has fallen, even as enrollments have gone up.

The increasing layoffs of adjunct professors has highlighted a huge problem. Adjuncts have been a regular part of the community college system for decades. Yet since adjuncts teach off the tenure track, they have little or no job protection.

Most adjuncts are issued only quarterly contracts, which can still be cancelled for low enrollment, lack of funding, program changes, or for any reason or even no reason. Due process is non-existent for adjunct professors, who in many cases aren’t even given the opportunity to see or respond to complaints made against them.

SB 6746 (Jacobsen-D), which will receive a hearing today, and its identical companion HB 2584 (White-D), claim to provide adjuncts greater job security. But unfortunately, they could override many of the few protections some adjuncts already have, without providing a better alternative.

SB 6746 and HB 2584 would have the local chapters of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the Washington Education Association (WEA) collectively bargain 34 different probationary periods for all non-tenure track faculty, as well as 34 different processes for evaluating them and deciding whether or not to retain them or to let them go. If a college wishes to dismiss an adjunct, they need only give a “reason,” which the union, if it wishes, could “challenge” in some unspecified way.

The bills promise improvement, but could weaken or eliminate job security provisions for adjuncts, especially at those colleges where unions have already bargained significant seniority rights.

The bills assume the need for a new set of evaluation procedures for adjuncts. But at some colleges, adjuncts are already evaluated for every course they teach, while at others they are evaluated at regular intervals by tenure track faculty and administrators. Research shows that adjuncts are effective teachers, often getting better student evaluations than the tenure-track and tenured faculty.

The bills provide no provision for grandfathering in long-term adjuncts who have long since proven themselves to the colleges. Roughly ten CTCs in Washington now have some sort of seniority system, which grants the right of first refusal to adjuncts who teach successfully for a period of time and/or pass an evaluation. As an effect, the bills could make senior faculty prove themselves a second time, with the risk that they may be dismissed under the new rules.

Who will negotiate this new probationary period, the new evaluation processes, and the new challenge process on behalf of the adjuncts? Currently, the bargaining representative of each campus is a local chapter of either the American Federation of Teachers, or the Washington Education Association.

But these unions also include and are dominated by tenure track faculty who supervise adjunct faculty. Tenured faculty serve as the adjuncts’ bosses: they hire us, evaluate us, and decide whether or not to rehire us. Labor law generally forbids putting employees in the same unions with their supervisors, but not for adjuncts in Washington state.

There are numerous conflicts of interest between tenure track and adjunct faculty that SB 6746 and HB 2584 could deepen. The bills specifically deny adjuncts the right to challenge non-renewal for “enrollment, funding, and program changes,” so they reinforce the contingent nature of adjunct employment.

All union contracts prevent adjuncts from teaching up to a full-time load, thereby preventing them from qualifying for tenure. At most colleges, adjuncts can only teach anywhere between 60 and 90% of a full-time load, with 67% being the norm.

Yet all union contracts allow tenure track faculty to teach over a full-time load, sometimes twice as much. In addition, some union contracts give tenure track faculty the right to teach overloads before courses are assigned to adjuncts, thereby reducing the number of courses, and income, available to adjuncts.

If the legislature wants to provide job security to adjuncts, there are two better alternatives to SB 6746 and HB 2584 it should pursue instead.

As I wrote in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer last year, “Adjunct Professors Need Their Own Union.” There must be legislation giving adjuncts the fundamental right to have their own union separate from tenured faculty. That way, adjuncts can elect their own leaders, select their own bargaining teams, and bargain their own contracts. They should not be forced into the same units with the tenured faculty who serve as their supervisors and who have more power precisely because they are protected by tenure.

The second is to pass legislation similar to “The Adjunct Bill of Rights” (SB 5970) from 2006, which would have given annual contracts to all adjuncts who had taught for 50% or more for three years, with the presumption of renewal. Colleges could still have dismissed adjuncts for “just cause,” but each adjunct would have the right to grieve their dismissal with real due process rights.

The state spends billions on higher education in order to offer increased job opportunity and advancement to all of our citizens. Yet the colleges deny these opportunities to the adjunct professors who make them possible, including many of the graduate students who earn degrees and now find themselves forced into adjunct positions.

In recent years, the state has helped in-home health care workers, adult family workers, and child care workers gain collective bargaining rights. It is now time to give adjunct professors the same labor rights as other workers, including the basic right to choose their own union.

*Keith Hoeller is the co-founder of the Washington Part-Time Faculty Association and has taught in the community colleges for the past twenty years.

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