Cuts for Pay Parity?

Leaders of the Portland Community College Federation of Faculty and Academic Professionals, the college's union, were happy to finish a contract last year that included a plan to create pay parity among full-time and part-time faculty.

After talking about pay parity for 35 years, Frank Goulard, president of the American Federation of Teachers-affiliated union, said he was satisfied with the agreement.

But the changes to the pay schedules came with an unfortunate hitch. Because of the variables involved, several hundred part-time faculty saw a pay rate decrease in their paychecks this fall -- amid a pandemic that's fueled a recession and stretched resources thin for many.

College administrators and union officials are working together to resolve the issue for part-time faculty, but some faculty members aren't confident the issue will be resolved.

The college provided a statement, saying administrators are "willing to discuss cost neutral alternatives if the federation has proposals to share."

The news was first reported by Oregon Public Broadcasting.

The bargaining contract, currently in its second academic year, includes a provision intended to align the existing part-time salary schedule and pay rate to be proportionate to the full-time faculty schedule and pay rate, according to Goulard.

The differences in the schedules meant that, in this year of the contract, some part-time faculty members fell behind the old schedule and received a cut. The first and fourth years of the contract should result in the largest pay increases, he said.

Of the 956 part-time faculty members in the union, 388 faced cuts in their first fall paychecks. The majority -- 217 members -- received 1 percent cuts. Another 152 received 4 percent cuts, and 19 members received about 7 percent cuts.

The other 566 members saw pay increases ranging from 1.5 to 12.6 percent. Over the four years of the contract, part-time faculty should see overall pay increases between 16 and 40 percent, Goulard said, assuming they keep their normal class loads.

Goulard said they didn't realize this was going to happen when they finished the bargaining contract. But, once this first phase is over, it shouldn't happen again, he said.

The union also didn't know about the decreases until the day before paychecks went out. The college doesn't update the contact hours for how much faculty members teach until September, and it doesn't provide those hours with names until shortly before paychecks are sent out because staff need to make calculations and adjust the database, Goulard said.

Once the union received the information, Goulard said they sent out emails to the part-time faculty members who were most affected -- those who received decreases of 4 and 7 percent. A week later, they sent an email to the entire union, including those who received 1 percent decreases. They've also held drop-in sessions for part-time faculty to ask questions about the situation.

A handful of members have left the union over the issue, according to Goulard.

Joyce Kaplan, a biology instructor at the college, is facing a 6.2 percent cut. Faculty now need 500 contact hours to move between pay steps, which bumped her down from step 11 to step 9 -- about a $6-an-hour pay difference.

"We’ve done a lot of extra work since COVID," Kaplan said. "A way of saying you’re going to our value work is not giving a 6 percent pay cut."

Kaplan isn't confident that part-time faculty who faced cuts will get their pay made whole.

"​They spent a year negotiating this contract, and every administrative response for most of that year was no to everything," she said.

In the meantime, she'll be redoing her financial plan to accommodate the dip in pay. She's already been dipping into her retirement savings as a part-time faculty member, she said.

"I still feel more for people at the lower end" of the steps, she said. "There are faculty who have to go to food banks."

The union is meeting with college administrators this week to continue working toward a solution to the problem. The bare minimum agreement must make whole the pay part-time faculty lost due to the new pay schedules, including retroactive pay for the first few paychecks of the term, Goulard said. The college has some savings from going remote in the spring and fall terms.

"This is happening during COVID, when people have enough stress in their lives," he said. "I’m strongly confident that the college will continue to work with us and reach a solution. The question is, what’s the solution going to look like and how is the cost going to be borne to help our part-time faculty, who are the least paid of our employees and critical to mission of college?" ​