As Edie continues their journey to Sonora Pass, our contract negotiations also continue. Here’s the latest news from the negotiating room.
Union and Management Proposals
The Faculty Collective Bargaining Team met with the management team on Wednesday, April 8. At that session, the union team introduced a new proposal to strengthen the contract language regarding academic freedom. The goal of this proposal is to enhance the protections that faculty have in the classroom to teach what and how they like and protect faculty from reprisal from management. The union also clarified and reorganized the definitions of several academic job types. The union team is also developing some economic proposals, including proposals to increase faculty pay.
The management team introduced a proposal to change the language in the contract to remove references to DEI. They made it clear to the FCBT that the values of the college surrounding DEI have not changed, but they want to change the language used in the contract that discusses those values.
Paid Office Hours for Associate Faculty
The management team also countered the union’s proposal to change the contract language regarding paid office hours for associate faculty. The union is seeking clarity around when associate faculty should get paid for office hours and fighting to make sure associate faculty are paid for the office hours that they offer to students.
To be clear, associate faculty are not required to hold office hours for their students. It is not listed as a job duty either in the contract or in the posted job descriptions for associate faculty on the Edmonds College website. That said, we know that our associate faculty commonly hold office hours. There are many reasons that our associate faculty might do this. Associate faculty might feel pressure from their dean to hold office hours. They might be afraid of negative evaluations from students if they do not hold office hours. Many associate faculty hold office hours because they genuinely want to help their students learn. And of course they do! We chose this job because we love teaching and education!
Regardless of the reason, associate faculty are not paid to hold office hours. This means that some of our associate faculty are working for free. It also means that management is accepting free labor from their employees because they know how much we care about our students. The union position on this issue is that our associate faculty should be paid for their time and labor to the college. If management refuses to pay for these office hours, then they should not accept free labor from the associate faculty.
Workload Creep
This issue of associate faculty providing office hours for free is just one facet of a larger workload creep problem at the college, the increase in faculty workload that is caused by the actions of administrators. We want to discuss these issues here so that you can recognize them and push back against them to improve your working conditions with the support of your union. Here’s a few more examples.
Overloading Faculty with Extra Classes
Management has become very reluctant to open more sections of courses, even when past enrollments and current waitlists indicate that there are plenty of students interested in taking a class. Often the new sections are opened at the last minute, requiring department heads to either hire a new associate faculty member to take on the extra class on short notice or teach the class themselves. The associate faculty hiring process can take a lot of time and effort, and often there’s not enough time to complete the hiring process. The full-time faculty who take on these classes are already teaching a full load, so it is extra work for moonlight pay, which is less than the pay a full-time faculty receives for teaching classes. The administrators could avoid this issue entirely by opening extra sections earlier so that faculty have time to staff them, which means this is a manufactured crisis that seems intended to coerce faculty into taking on moonlight classes.
Overloading Classes
On other occasions where there are a lot of students on waitlists for classes, faculty are pushed by management to overload their classes with extra students. It is understandable why faculty would agree to do this. Faculty love to teach! We want our students to succeed academically! But when we agree to add extra students to our classes, that increases our workload for no extra pay. It means more grading, more advising, and more teaching without adding more hours to the day.
All three of these issues are leading to more burnout amongst our faculty, full-time and associate faculty alike. We need to stand together against the pressure to hold unpaid office hours, take on extra classes, or overload our classes. Instead, we should be fighting for the college to hire more full-time faculty and open more sections of classes sooner so that we can have the time and energy to help our students learn.
If you have been experiencing these or any other forms of workload creep, the union is here to support you. Contact your VP for Action and Advocacy, Chuck Mueller, at chuck.m.mueller@gmail.com to tell us about it.