June 3, 2024
The new budget biennium is coming next year! This means that in February 2025, the state legislature will be making big decisions about how the state will distribute funds for community colleges. Before those decisions are made, legislators will receive a list of recommendations from the Governor, who will receive recommendations from the State Board of Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) and the Washington State AFT. These recommendation processes take time, so we need to start showing our support now if we want the SBCTC and Governor Inslee to ask the legislature for what our colleges need.
To organize this effort, the AFT has assembled a list of issues that need to be addressed in the next budget cycle. Let’s talk about pay equity for our associate faculty.
Associate faculty at Edmonds College are sometimes referred to as “part-time faculty” or “contingent faculty” at other colleges. They are paid a percentage of the pay that a full-time faculty member is paid each quarter. Associate faculty pay is also adjusted based on how many classes the associate faculty member teaches, or their load. Full-time faculty are expected to teach a full load each quarter. Recently, the Faculty Collective Bargaining Team for Edmonds College faculty did an analysis of the starting and ending pay percentages for associate faculty at nearby community colleges based on the information provided in their contracts. You can see the results below.
Figure 1: A comparison of starting and ending associate faculty pay by college and contract year. The percentage refers to the pay that associate faculty receive for teaching a full load compared to the same starting or ending pay for a full-time faculty member.
In the 2023 legislative session, we won a major step forward for equity for part-time faculty at community colleges: the 2023 budget requires the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) to develop a plan to increase funding so that by 2026-2027, contingent faculty earn at least 85% of full-time faculty with comparable qualifications. The plan is due by July 1, 2024. The AFT are seeking funding in the new biennium to start on this goal.
The legislature identified pay inequity as an issue nearly 30 years ago. Prior to the great recession they allocated millions of dollars to address this systemic inequity. The commitment to 85% that legislators made with the 2023 budget closes the current gap between full-time and part-time faculty instructional work. Washington needs an educated workforce, and relies on hard-working and underpaid associate faculty to teach that workforce; it’s time to pay these faculty fairly so they can focus on their students rather than on second and third jobs. This directly improves student support and outcomes. Full-time faculty spend approximately 85% of their time on instructional work, and our comparably-qualified associate faculty should receive the same compensation for the same instructional work.
What can you do to help?
We need you to ask the state legislature to give CTCs more funds to increase associate faculty pay to 85% of full-time faculty pay with comparable qualifications. To learn how to take action, see our Budget Biennium Action page for suggestions on who to contact and how. Also consider joining your fellow union members at the Lobby Days in early 2025, where we can speak directly to legislators about what our colleges and our students need to be successful.