While part-time professors are professionals with the same credentials and qualifications as their full-time colleagues, they labor under difficult, sometimes impossible conditions.

Abby Bogomolny, former part-time De Anza instructor, said that serving two to three campuses at the same time or spending more time on the highway than in the classroom and department offices, often affects part-time instructor performance.

“We need to be paid for committee work and service to the college, instead of providing free labor beyond our classes out of the goodness of our hearts,” she said.

Some say that little or no compensation for professional development, teaching at various campuses, no pay for committee work and limited or no health insurance, hampers their ability to teach.

“To put up with the conditions, you’ve got to love teaching,” Megan Elsea said.

In an effort to save money, districts will hire numerous part-time professors at lower pay rather than hire a full-time instructor. “This is the central reason, plain and simple – the bottom line,” Bogomolny said.

According to faculty union members, part-time professors earn about thirty-seven cents to a full-timer’s dollar, even though part-timers are required to have the same qualifications as full-time instructors.

“Part-time instructors are caught in an unconscionable, truly exploitative situation,” Bogomolny said.

According to a study released by the U.S. Education Department, the trend of hiring fewer full-time professors is continuing in higher education.

For three days, more than 160 academics packed into sessions on organizing, coalition building and collective bargaining at a conference aimed at mobilizing part-time instructors in the United States and Canada. The conferencewas held at San Jose City College on Jan. 12-14. This was the fourth conference of the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor – a group of part-time instructors, graduate students and full-time instructors who are off the tenure track.

Mary Ellen Goodwin, part-time De Anza professor and conference organizer, said that the goal of the conference was multi-dimensional to encompass public and political awareness, to build a broad coalition among higher education organizations at the local, state and national levels.

“We want this foundational work to have real and lasting consequences, and intend the conference to yield future action through the coalitions established, beginning with plans for a National Equity Week in Spring 2001,” Goodwin said before the conference.

She said that National Equity Week may be focused on the academic workplace nationally, or may be expanded to the issues of all contingent labor in the U.S.

Goodwin said that it is their conviction that basic equity and dignity, as well as productivity and quality, all speak to convince others that the problems and issues are serious and must be addressed because the core values of the community is in danger.

“Nowhere is this clearer than in the 30 year degradation of higher education and its promise to every student’s future. The National Conference [threw], and future activity [will throw] a bright light on the reality that has been too long invisible,” she said.

At the beginning of the conference Emilio Bruna, a part-time economic instructor at El Paseo Community College, showed a documentary entitled “Degrees of Shame.” The film compares the lives of adjunct faculty members to those of migrant farm workers.

Bruna pressed the filmmaker, Barbara Wolf, to send it to television shows like “48 Hours” and “60 Minutes.” He said that perhaps Oprah Winfrey would be interested. “I heard she was teaching part-time somewhere.”

Many said that the conference marked a turning point in the movement to organize part-time instructors.

Elsea said, “I think the numbers of part-timers grew and … masses of people who were really fed up [also grew]. She said that some districts had better conditions, especially re-employment.

To that end, COCAL pledged to hold a National Equity Week in the fall. The group aims to call attention to the plight of part-time faculty and non-tenure track instructors through teach-ins, petitions and protests.

A few days before the conference, part-time instructors celebrated a big victory when Gov. Gray Davis issued his budget request for the next fiscal year. Included in the proposal was $62 million to bring the salaries of part-time instructors at community colleges closer to that of their full-time colleagues.

According to Mary Bergan, the governor’s initiative provides support for the CFT Community College Council’s efforts, which convinced the community college board of governors to sign on to a three-year plan to close the pay gap between part-time and full-time faculty.

“It’s a step in the right direction; however, more funding is needed for true part-time equity,” Bogomolny said.

According to Elsea, it would take $144 million a year to achieve true pay equity for part-time instructors in the state.

Bergan said that by allocating $62 million in funding for part-time faculty compensation, and an additional $7.9 million for paid office hours, the governor has taken a major step towards bringing adjunct faculty pay in line with that of full-time instructors.

“Equally significant is that he is helping to make instructors more accessible to their students,” she said.

Elsea said that various groups and individuals have pressured Davis or as she quotes Assemblymember Scott Wildman, “[Davis is] shamed into doing something for us.”

Last April, during Part-time Faculty Equity Week, adjunct instructors and allies collected 40,000 petition signatures from 86 California community colleges. Elsea said that this did not influence Davis’ plan last year. “He vetoed money for us in 2000 but hopefully he’s realized his mistake.”

Part-time faculty and their unions have pushed part-time equity for years. They persuaded the California Legislature to appropriate money so community colleges could offer benefits and office hours to part-time instructors, although some still do not.

A statewide study of the compensation and working conditions of community college adjuncts, which Davis authorized last year, is expected to be issued this month.