After months of negotiations, the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) has agreed to offer adjunct faculty the same health care benefits as full-time faculty.
According to a press announcement released by LACCD on April 12, the benefits option will be available to all adjunct faculty employed at a 0.33 full-time equivalent.
The benefits also extend to eligible dependents and will take effect after the part-time health care measure from COVID expires later this summer.
AFT 1521 Chapter President Angela Belden said the change has been a long time coming.
“Part-time faculty are essential to the mission of community colleges and essential to the mission of higher education,” Belden said. “We absolutely cannot educate students without them.”
Formal negotiations have been ongoing since last fall, but for Belden and her colleagues, the seed was planted about one year ago.
It was not until Governor Gavin Newsom earmarked $200 million in a state budget proposal in January 2022, that the discussion started gaining traction. Belden said she went to Sacramento herself to lobby for this bill.
“I was up there with my colleagues, knocking on doors, shaking hands and pleading with legislators to please keep this $200 million in the budget and to allow us to provide health care for part-time faculty,” Belden said.
Pierce College alone has over 600 adjunct faculty, and even though they will have the right to opt-in to the benefits, it is unclear how many of them will benefit from the health care options offered.
Adjunct Professor of Anthropology Angela Kirwin said it would be helpful for herself and her family.
“The adjunct health insurance benefit was a wonderful surprise for me,” Kirwin said. “It will make my life much easier as it will save me a lot of money each month that I am currently paying out of pocket for my husband’s insurance.”
Assistant Professor of Cinema, Screenwriting & Media Arts Daniel J. Nyiri has been an adjunct professor at LACCD for about eight years. He said if the benefits offered are affordable he will take advantage.
“If the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is honored, then I will probably switch to an insurance plan comparable to the one I have now,” Nyiri said. “Which will greatly improve my life, give me better access to health care, and save me a lot of money.”
While some faculty are celebrating the MOU, others feel there is still much work to do to create true parity between full and part-time faculty.
“Every victory is a step in the right direction,” Belden said. “But until we have 100% parity for our part-time faculty, there’s still work to be done.”
To be eligible for benefits, adjunct faculty must maintain 33% of the required annual course load and each discipline has its own requirements. For example, psychology and statistics are 30 units per year or 15 units a semester. For other disciplines, it is less but it can also go up to 24 credits per semester.
However, it can be hard to get that many classes when full-time faculty get the first pick of what to teach. Since getting a class may be difficult at their home college, adjuncts often look to additional opportunities at other community colleges within LACCD or even outside the district.
Belden noted that many adjunct faculty teach part-time, but they do it full-time across a handful of schools which can be logistically difficult.
“Let’s say you were going to teach a 9:35 a.m. class at Pierce on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and then you got offered a class that started at 11:30 a.m. at Valley or Mission,” Belden said. “You probably wouldn’t be able to take that class because it takes 30 minutes or longer to drive between the two campuses.”
Nyiri notes that even if he works 12 teaching hours a week that works out to almost a full 40-hour week with all the work that goes on outside of class time.
“I have about 70 students currently in the district, and I figure that works out to about one hour per student per week if I do my job well,” Nyiri said.
Belden said having affordable health care through LACCD is one less thing for adjunct faculty to have to worry about.
“Having affordable health care that they can count on from LACCD is absolutely essential,” Belden said. “When our faculty are healthy, they’re better at serving our students. They miss fewer classes, they’re more attentive and they’re able to just be human. That is so important.”
