This is post #3 in my newly re-activated blog about contingency in higher ed.
When Governor Newsom vetoed AB375: “It’s not just your work that doesn’t matter. It’s your life.”
Contrary to the hopes of community college contingent faculty in California, Governor Newsom vetoed AB 375 on October 8, 2021. This bill, which was supported by all the faculty unions and passed through the legislature with no opposition, would have enabled part-time faculty to consolidate schedules and teach at fewer institutions. Today, your typical “freeway flyer” is teaching at 2 or 3 institutions in order to scrape together a living
The demand to lift the cap had been raised by part timers for many years. In fact, similar faculty demand in the past had raised it from 60% to 67%. AB 375 would have increased the percent of a full-time load part-timers could teach from 67 % to 80%.
You might ask, why a cap in the first place? The cap was a legislative compromise in the 1970s, back when casualization in higher ed just got started. A complaint had been raised by full-time faculty in the Peralta Federation of Teachers Local 1603 about the increasing number of part-time faculty. The cap was supposed to limit the reliance on part-time faculty, by making them harder to hire and supervise. This disincentive did not work. What happened instead was that colleges just hired more managers to watchdog the per cents, and then more bodies who would teach fewer classes.
What was the threat or penalty that hung over a college that violated the cap? Anyone who taught over the cap for 3 semesters in a row would have had a right to claim tenure track status. This would result in more full-time faculty. To whom would this seem like a penalty? Not the students, not the institution itself. A few people did get jobs that way, but mostly not. When it did, it happened through administrative scheduling error or incompetence.
Fast forward 40 years from the installation of the cap and two generations of part time faculty have been running around to multiple institutions for a long time now and hate it. There are sick jokes about holding office hours in cars, eating in cars, grading papers in cars, sleeping in cars. Many forgo basic healthcare because of the cost of insurance. However, AB 375 was never a sneaky attempt to get health insurance. It was about consolidating jobs, and it was such common sense that a lot of people weren’t paying attention and assumed that once the demand got through the legislature, it would be a done deal. Governor Newsome had just won his recall election – what did he have to lose?
Then he vetoed it.
Newsom’s reason for vetoing the bill was not that he mis-read it or failed to recognize common sense. On the basis of false numbers, he vetoed it because he estimated that lifting the cap might make some part timers eligible for employer-sponsored health insurance. In doing so, he sent the cruel message, “It’s not just your work that doesn’t matter. It’s your life.”
The State Chancellor’s office had prevailed upon the legislative analyst to estimate a cost that was way out of line. They said there were 40,000 part-timers working in the community college system and that each of them would get over 80% of a load and then would all be eligible for ACA health insurance which would cost $11,000 each. The analyst multiplied $11,000 times 40,000 and got a big number intended to scare the governor: $440,000,000.
There are in fact (also Chancellor’s office figures) more like 36,000 part-timers, not 40,000, and some of them certainly have health insurance through partners or other jobs, and besides, not all of them would be able or want to consolidate their teaching into one place.
Newsom’s position was also fallacious because first, the bill did not mandate that people be elevated to 80% of a full time load, only that they would be allowed to teach that much; it would be up to mangers to allocate the schedule, just as they do now. Second, all of this would have to be bargained with the unions in different districts anyway, because many districts have provisions duplicating the state cap in collective bargaining agreements.
And this matter of healthcare? Everyone who has worked in the community college system, or as a contingent in other systems, knows someone who has suffered because they could not afford to get basic healthcare. This in the midst of COVID, with teachers coming off of zoom and into the classroom. How terrible would it be if someone was able to see a doctor when they were sick? But passing the cost of an ACA policy onto the shoulders of someone who is teaching 3 classes a semester at $4000 per class — so including summers, that $36,000 per year — is just a cynical way to say forget it — who can afford $11,000 for health insurance?
People who have paid attention to this drama are so pissed off that they can hardly speak. It’s a bit complicated, and takes a few minutes to explain, so the anger goes unexpressed, which is not good in the long run. Anger like this shows up in other places — sometimes as despair, where it runs so deep that it can’t be constructively used.
Helena Worthen
21 San Mateo Road
Berkeley, CA 94707
co author with Joe Berry of Power Despite Precarity: Strategies for the Contingent Faculty Movement in Higher Education, from Pluto Press, August 2021
Power Despite Precarity 