Because of CFT’s successful campaign, CA law now provides college districts that provide part-time faculty some form of health insurance with reimbursement for 50% of district’s costs.
Part-time Healthcare: CFT Locals in the Fight for What’s Morally Right
Because of CFT’s successful campaign, California law now provides college districts that provide part-time faculty some form of health insurance with reimbursement for 50% of the district’s costs. Full reimbursement is available when the insurance is offered to all multi-district part-time faculty and the employee’s assignment is equal to, or greater than 40% of a full-time assignment.
To date, twelve CFT locals representing approximately 10,650 part-time faculty have potential access to AB 190 Option 1 (100% state reimbursed) healthcare. For other CFT locals representing part-time faculty, the fight goes on.
Since this past May, CFT’s One Tier task force has been in serious discussions to find solutions to the overuse and exploitation of part-time higher education faculty. This task force was created based on the resolution at the 2022 CFT Convention.
There is an urgency in the work in that over the past 25 years little progress to address the issue significantly has been achieved. In 1998 AB 1725 called for a full to part-time ratio of classes taught in community colleges of 75/25. This was followed in 1999 by AB 420 which called for a study of “options to achieve pay equity between community college part-time faculty and full-time faculty.”
It is hoped that in the next few months, the task force will be able to report out their vision of a one tier model and a long-term strategic plan to get the job done.
A summer vacation and the birth of a child should create happy memories, but for Trevor Krapf and Jennifer Wu, the reality of being part-time and having tenuous healthcare turned both their experiences into financially tragic near misses.
Krapf contracting the West Nile virus during a lapse in health coverage racked up a $30,000 bill. Hu, after giving birth to her son who spent over a month in the NICU just nearly dodged a half million dollar bill.
The rare good fortune that Krapf and Hu had in covering their medical costs belies the reality that part-time healthcare precarity leaves them ever anxious and uncertain. Offering full-time equivalent healthcare to these faculty costs districts nothing but would mean everything to those they provide it to.
Bittersweet Legislative Year for CFT Part-time Faculty
One of the clear positives was the realization of a record 8.22% cost-of-living allowance for California Community Colleges, up .09% from Governor Newsom’s initial proposal of an 8.13% COLA in January. The COLA followed off a fairly robust COLA of 6.56% in 2021-2022.
“Getting the Governor to not only fully fund the 8.13% COLA, but to raise it to 8.22%, is reflective of CFT’s and other education advocacy groups’ efforts to get both the governor and the legislature to make community college funding and student success a priority,” said Jim Mahler, Chair of CFT’s legislative committee.
The high COLA should hopefully translate into needed salary increases for part-time faculty particularly hit hard by inflation and enrollment declines due to COVID.
Sent via ActionNetwork.org.
To update your email address, change your name or address, or to stop receiving emails from CFT Newsroom, please click here.
