Cerritos, CACalifornia’s community colleges rely heavily on part-time instructors, and they also rely on cheap labor. Charles, a part-time college educator, says he was paid below minimum wage because prep time and class room set-ups aren’t billable. And he doesn’t qualify for health benefits.
“My rate as a part-time instructor at Cerritos College was $33 per hour but I only got paid for three hours in the classroom per day,” says Charles. “They don’t pay us prep time: time spent in the classroom setting up hearing aids and materials to cover the next day, which breaks down to an additional few hours each day. In reality, it breaks down to less than minimum wage.” Charles says he and his colleagues were paid for six hours on their weekly paychecks but they worked 15 hours.
Charles explains that the college recently hired lots of part time instructors, some of whom have full time day jobs and work a second job at night. “And the college makes a habit of hiring part-timers so they don’t have to pay any benefits,” he explains. “This habit of cheap labor has been going on for a long time. I know first-hand from being hired by a community college back in the 1990s and again in 2004 – nothing much has changed.”
According to Mercury News, California’s community college staffing system is broken. About 37,000 part-time instructors, nearly two-thirds of the teachers, keep the nation’s largest higher-education system running. But job security is about nil, they often do without...
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