Part-Time Teachers See a Lesson in Their Situation : Education: ‘You can give more if you have more,’ asserts one such instructor at Long Beach City College, where part-timers now have union representation to seek better pay.

Pat Saylor, an English composition instructor at Long Beach City College and elsewhere, says she spends 40 to 70 hours a week lecturing, preparing for class or giving her students the extra time she believes they deserve.

Yet she receives only $17,000 a year and no health benefits.

“I had no heat all winter and my kitchen floor is torn up,” said Saylor, who is in her 40s. “If something goes wrong with me (medically), I don’t know how I’ll pay for it.”

She is one of 757 hourly instructors at the college who receive compensation averaging $15,000 to $20,000 a year. The root of their problem is that they don’t have contracts. Instead of working as regular faculty members with benefits, they work piecemeal for a fraction of the money paid contracted teachers with the same level of experience and academic preparation.

At Long Beach City College, according to information supplied by the office of personnel services, fully two-thirds of the instructors are considered part-timers, a designation many reject as an inaccurate description of their jobs. The reality, according to Saylor, is that 76% of them consider teaching their primary profession and 40% say that it’s the only thing they do.

“Students ask you if you’re a real teacher,” Saylor said. “I don’t even get paid to hold office hours.”

Four years ago, fed up with what she perceived as her second-class status, Saylor started organizing. The result is a newly certified union ready to bargain for the rights of Long Beach City College part-timers.

“I’m overjoyed,” said Ara Prigian referring to the new Certificated Hourly Instructors union, which he described as a rarity on community college campuses. An official of the California Teachers Assn. with which the new union is affiliated, Prigian helped get the group started. “It’s very healthy,” he said. “I hope this sweeps the state.”

The preponderance of hourly instructors on community college campuses, of course, is not unique to Long Beach. While campuses have always relied on part-timers to some extent, the practice began growing more than a decade ago after the passage of Proposition 13, the teachers claim. By dramatically curtailing property taxes and thereby reducing college budgets, they said, the measure induced some institutions to save money by gradually replacing full-time faculty members with part-timers who typically earn half the hourly pay; about $28 for part-timers compared to about $53 for full-timers, according to the California Postsecondary Education Commission.

College administrators say the difference is fair, given the increased requirements placed on full-timers, such as holding regular office hours and providing other services to the college.

“You have to remember that many of (the part-timers) have other jobs,” said Barbara Kalbus, LBCC’s vice president of administrative services. “They’re not teaching as many hours, and they’re not doing the same service.”

Nonetheless, by last year the presence of part-timers had become so pervasive on the state’s community college campuses that lawmakers found it necessary to enact reform legislation to reduce the colleges’ dependence on them. Earmarking funds for the hiring of new full-time faculty on community college campuses throughout the state, the law’s goal is to reduce the percentage of classes for credit taught by part-timers--now about 35% statewide--to 25%, the national average, by 1992.

Officials at the Long Beach college say they have already taken advantage of the new law to increase their number of full-time teachers from 321 to 342. As a result, they say, part-time instructors now teach only 44.45% of the college’s classes, contrasted with 45.52% a year ago.

But the percentage is still well above the state and national averages. And the college’s army of hourly instructors, many of whom have been awaiting full-time positions for years, say they are tired of suffering in silence and are seriously concerned about the effect on students of their low morale and general lack of participation in campus life.

“You can give more if you have more,” said Howard Roth, an instructor in German who, after teaching on and off for 23 years, earns about $20,000 annually for his efforts.

“We should be role models for getting an education, yet we are compensated on a poverty level,” said Saylor, whose income includes money from part-time teaching jobs at other colleges.

After receiving the proposal for the union in 1986, she said, it took four years for the Public Employee Relations Board to approve of the idea. To date, said Saylor, who is the union’s president, the union has about 170 paid members. It is authorized, however, to negotiate for all 757 of the hourly instructors, a group that, unlike the full-time faculty, has never before been represented.

Last week, the new union presented the college administration with its initial list of demands and a request to begin bargaining on July 20.

The teachers’ main demand is salary and health-care benefits commensurate with that of full-time instructors. In addition, they are asking for paid preparation time, a guaranteed number of hours per semester and the right to choose teaching assignments based on seniority.

Kalbus declined to comment on the specific demands, saying that they would be formally presented to the Board of Trustees later this week. The new unionists, meanwhile, say they are ready to fight to make their points.

“What is happening to us is happening nationwide,” Roth said. “As teachers, we have a responsibility to reverse the trend.”

Said Kathryn Parry, an English teacher and the union’s vice president: “We want to go all the way.”

BACKGROUND Community colleges have always depended on part-time instructors to some extent. That dependence, some teachers say, has increased over the years as shrinking college budgets created financial incentives for institutions to replace some full-time teachers with part-timers who receive no benefits and about half the pay. One result is that in California today, about 35% of community college credit courses are taught by hourly instructors, compared to about 25% nationwide. Last year, legislation was enacted to create as many as 1,500 new full-time positions statewide in hopes of bringing that percentage down to the national average by 1992. Long Beach City College employs more than 750 hourly instructors who account for two-thirds of the faculty and teach more than 44% of the courses. In the mid-1970s, when the college’s full-time instructors unionized, they voted to exclude the part-timers, who remained unorganized until 1986, when they began lobbying for a union of their own. Challenged by the college administration, the certification process dragged on for four years through a series of hearings before the Public Employee Relations Board. Earlier this year, the union was finally established and last week made its first formal demands.