President's Memo on PTL Waivers
The following is the text of an e-mail from 4C's President Steve Cohen sent to members who had questions concerning the union's policy of only granting PTL waivers in an emergency.
The 4C's policy of granting unlimited workload waivers for part-timers in untenable and will cease next fall. In brief, this policy is untenable because:
1) Granting workload waivers costs our part-timers a great deal. The attached summary tells part of the tale. Indeed, the BOT suggests their costs are reduced by $10,000 in pro-rated wages and benefits per waiver granted. (Part-timers with a waiver who are teaching 9 credits are losing $1,754.10 per person, per semester in pro-rata salary alone.)
2) With the recent Comptroller's agreement to partially reimburse part-timers who teach 9+ credits across public higher ed systems for their health insurance premiums, we see that these part-timers can receive eight months of health insurance at full-timer rates, while part-timers who teach 9+ credits with a waiver receive no such benefit. Indeed, two part-timers who received waivers from us, but who also taught for the CSU and/or UCONN, were denied their health insurance reimbursements by the Comptroller. This was because the 4C's granted them waivers. (Fortunately for these individuals, our BOT did reimburse them for their health insurance premiums.)
3) Management is awash in cash, and can easily afford to pay what our contract stipulates; they can even choose to hire individuals on temporary non-tenure track, full-time lecturer appointments. This year, in addition to their July raises of roughly 7%, management awarded themselves December raises of roughly an additional 3%. If the managers have the money to pay themselves, they have the money to pay the people who do the essential work of the system -- our members. (By the way, management had the money to reward themselves this way, in part, because our regular total of almost 100 waivers per semester saves them almost $2 million per year.)
4) By granting waivers to part-timers, we allow management NOT to hire full-timers in areas that would otherwise require additional full-time staffing. (At Norwalk, rather than hire ESL faculty, more deans are hired; obviously, Capital needs additional full-time science faculty.)
5) Whatever the rationale, undercutting our own contract hurts all of us. When we agree to work for less, we devalue ourselves, and we make it more difficult to negotiate increased compensation.
6) Our part-timers are among our most vulnerable members. Management, via waivers, treats them in ways no full-timer would tolerate, and I believe this is wrong. As an example, would full-timers agree to teach 18 credits per semester for no additional compensation? I think not. Yet, our part-timers lose even more with a waiver than our full-timers would lose by teaching an extra three credits for no compensation. Management is preying on our weakest members, and it is the union's job to protect members -- all of them.
7) It is illegal for management to engage in individual bargaining, yet when individual part-timers are offered the "opportunity" to teach if they agree to take less than what our contract stipulates, then they are being bargained with individually. I will not have the 4C's be party to, or to tacitly approve of, this behavior.
I hope the above helps to explain why we will now enforce the terms and conditions of our contract by not granting workload waivers to part-timers on a regular basis.
- Steve Cohen, 4C's President, March 3, 2008