Bill Adds Benefits for Part-Time Community College Faculty

As many as 29,000 part-time community college faculty statewide may benefit from a bill signed Friday by Gov. Gray Davis aimed at helping such workers receive health benefits and pay for office hours.

The most ambitious portions of the bill, seeking large pay increases for part-timers, were tabled, but the California Postsecondary Education Commission will be asked to study the issue.

“It’s a partial victory,” said David Hawkins, legislative advocate for the Faculty Assn. of California Community Colleges. “It’s a very important first step.”

At most community college campuses, one-quarter or more of all faculty are so-called freeway fliers, part-time teachers who cobble together livelihoods by teaching at more than one campus.

Such teachers are often harder for their students to reach outside of class than their full-time counterparts. They also are paid less and get fewer benefits.

The bill signed by Davis, which was sponsored by Assemblyman Scott Wildman (D-Los Angeles), expands state matching funds for districts such as Los Angeles that compensate these part-time teachers for office hours and offer benefits. It will add about $1 million to such programs statewide, Hawkins said.

The new law also expands eligibility for health benefits to larger numbers of part-time faculty.

“It is going to make a significant difference in the quality of service we provide to students in community colleges,” Wildman said.

Jim Dawson, a part-time political science teacher at Los Angeles Pierce and Valley colleges, is among those who cheered the new provisions. Although he has worked in the district for four years, he is currently not eligible for health benefits, and depends on his wife’s job for coverage. “Many instructors don’t have benefits, and it’s scary,” he said.

However, the new law fell short of the part-time faculty’s larger goal of “equal pay for equal work.”

Those provisions of Wildman’s bill, which would have boosted part-timers’ salaries according to a rate matching that of full-timers, were removed through amendments. Faculty advocates vowed to try for the pay raise again after the state’s commission completes its study.