Part-Time Faculty

Overview

Part-Time Faculty
Fighting for the rights of a contingent workforce

Part-time faculty play a very active role in the union and the CFT has a standing committee dedicated to the issues of part-time faculty. The purpose and goal of the CFT Part-Time Faculty Committee is to advance, through political action and collective bargaining, the interests of contingent faculty in both public and private higher education. Find resources for part-time faculty created by committee members, and more, on this page.

Resources

Part-Time Faculty Salary Comparisons 
Find the CFT’s  annual salary comparisons for part-time and full-time faculty.

Part-Time Faculty Issue Paper
This single-page paper prepared by the CFT Part-Time Faculty Committee provides an overview of issues facing adjunct faculty in California. 

Retirement Primer for Part-Timers
To make informed decisions, part-timers should understand their retirement options, understand how their chosen retirement plans work, be able to estimate their benefits from their plans, and understand what, if anything, they can do to increase their retirement benefits. This primer, written by a former part-time instructor, attempts to address those issues. Special attention is given to the CalSTRS Defined Benefit Program because a large number of part-timers are members of that plan and its benefit calculations are complex.

Useful Links

Article

CFT One Faculty Task Force Vision

Since 2023, the CFT One Faculty Task Force — made up of classroom and non-classroom part-time and full-time faculty from throughout the state — has met regularly to develop a strategic plan to transform the current exploitative two-tier system of faculty in the California community colleges into a one-tier system. As a first step in this process, the task force focused on clarifying what a one-tier faculty structure would look like. As we build a statewide campaign, the work of the task force will be driven by the following Agreements on Principles and Goals, which define our vision.

Article Geoff Johnson

CFT Pushes Forward on a Vision of a One-Tier/Unified Faculty Model

CFT’s One-Tier Task force and CFT members, after over eight months of discussion, has created a definitive list of basic components deemed essential for what a one-faculty model should look like in the California community college system.  

The work is the result of a team of core community college union leaders and activists, composed equally of both part and full-time members.

Article

Bittersweet Legislative Year for CFT Part-time Faculty

Bittersweet would best describe the end results of the 2022-2023 legislative season for community college 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.