|
« AAUP Homepage
|
Part-Time Faculty Build on Tech Workers' Win
By Hans Johnson
A January decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to let stand a ruling in favor of temporary workers at Microsoft was just one reason part-time professors in Washington state began the new year no longer resigned to their plight. The ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers Washington and other western states, held that long-term but officially "temporary" employees at the software behemoth are "common-law" employees deserving access to the same benefits as their full-time colleagues.
While the federal case won national headlines, a lower-profile state lawsuit seeking retirement and health-care benefits for faculty at Washington's thirty-three community and technical colleges also cleared a critical hurdle. In Mader et al. v. State, Stephen Strong, the same attorney who triumphed against Microsoft, is handling both a class-action claim for retirement benefits and another class-action claim for health-care benefits for part-time faculty. The case seeks such benefits under a state regulation holding that teachers who work at least half the amount of full-time instructors are eligible for some retirement benefits. On January 31 state superior court judge Steven Scott ruled that the state had erred in counting only in-class work hours by part-time faculty in computing their eligibility for retirement benefits. Strong and the plaintiffs persuaded Scott that in limiting the calculation of part-time professors' workload to in-class hours, the state unfairly left many well below the needed threshold.
"In essence, we told the judge that we know this is immoral, but could you tell us if it's illegal?" says Keith Hoeller, a professor of philosophy and psychology at two different community colleges in the Puget Sound area and a founder of the Part-Time Faculty Association. "Denial of benefits rightfully owed to part-time instructors at community colleges has been going on since the seventies," he says. "And for ten years, the state has known that the colleges haven't even been abiding by their own policies [regarding part-time employee benefits] and still haven't made the proper remedies."
According to state audits first reported by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, public officials assigned to calculate benefits for part-time faculty have realized since 1989 that part-time instructors were being improperly denied retirement benefits as a result of incorrect calculations of their hours.
"We've said it was unlawful manipulation, which a judge has now found," says Strong, whose Seattle firm specializes in benefits claims by so-called permatemps, or long-term, full-time temporary employees. Although the retirement and health-care claims are technically separate in Mader, Strong has adopted a similar legal strategy for arguing both claims: find the error in the logic in the state's computation and point out its unfair results in order to gain benefits for educators like Hoeller, who says he and his peers could use them. "People don't realize that most part-time professors, when they do have health benefits, can't accumulate sick leave. If they get an extended illness, their careers are over," he explains.
In addition to generating news coverage of the difficulties faced by contingent faculty, the litigation has jump-started the legislative process. Hoeller lauds a new bill sponsored by state senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles that would prorate sick leave for part-time faculty members based on the percentage of a full-time load they carry. The leave would be cumulative and, in keeping with a recent trend in leave allotments, could be shared with colleagues.
"I believe part-time faculty help subsidize lower tuition at our community colleges, and in a sense they're exploited by the state," Kohl-Welles told Academe. A former part-time faculty member herself and a lecturer in sociology, education, and women's studies at the University of Washington, she adds, "Clearly, we need to do more to help such faculty. This bill gives a green light to them and their institutions to begin to address the inequities they face."
|