FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Suzanne Hudson, Secretary-Treasurer
American
Association of University Professors
Colorado
Conference
DENVER -- JAN.
19, 2014
Fischer,
Kefalas sponsor bill to strengthen Colorado’s community colleges
Speaking from the steps of the State Capitol and
surrounded by professors, Colorado State Representative Randy Fischer (D-53) announced
Friday the introduction of the
groundbreaking Community College Pay and Benefits Equity Act of 2014
(HB14-1154). The legislation promises to strengthen the academic environment
throughout Colorado’s Community College System (CCCS) by eliminating
institutionalized wage and benefit disparities between so-called “regular
faculty” and “instructors.”
“Passage
of the bill will eliminate the perverse incentive that motivates the CCCS to
keep many of their instructors on part-time status and poverty wages,” Fischer
said.
“The current system is exploitative, demoralizing,
indefensible and detrimental to the workforce development mission of our community
colleges,” said Fischer, noting how the majority of CCCS faculty earn
poverty-level wages and are kept as “part-time” faculty for years. The bill, co-sponsored
by Colo. Sen. John Kefalas (D-14), formalizes the state’s recognition of all
CCCS professors as highly qualified educational professionals who deserve:
·
Equal workplace treatment,
·
Fair compensation,
·
Robust professional development
opportunities,
·
Strong voices in the governance of their
colleges,
·
Open access to due process,
·
Academic freedom, and
·
Health care and other benefits.
Funding
for the measure is already in the CCCS budget, explained Don Eron, who is on
the executive committee of the Colorado Conference of the American Association
of University Professors (AAUP). He said that the AAUP’s recent analysis of
CCCS’s towering financial profile was verified last month by revelations from
Colorado’s own Joint Budget Committee (JBC).
“This bill should not cost the state a single cent in
extra expenditures to the CCCS,” said Eron. “As of 2012, the CCCS had $299.5
million in their reserve fund.” AAUP’s financial analysts have learned that
instead of paying $50 million earmarked for instructional salaries, the CCCS
has instead, for two of the past three years, placed the money in reserves, he
explained.
“These are boom times for the CCCS,” he said. “The JBC
rated the financial health of the CCCS in first place, occupying its own
stratosphere far above all nine of Colorado’s public colleges and universities.
Accounting experts will tell you that there is no acceptable rationale for a
public enterprise the size and function of CCCS to store $300 million in their
reserves. These hundreds of millions of dollars in reserves come at the price
of an impoverished, demoralized and deeply resentful workforce,” he added.
According to bill co-sponsor Kefalas, “this bill is about
fairness and dignity. It invests our community college teachers with the
resources that currently exist for this purpose. It is not right when skilled
teaching professionals must visit food banks to make ends meet for their
families and children,” he said.
Ellen Slatkin, executive vice-president of the
American Federation of Teachers in Colorado and president of the Metropolitan
State Faculty Federation, spoke to the statewide, economic benefit passage of
the bill will deliver.
Said Slatkin: “If
we want to see workforce development and economic growth in Colorado, we need
quality education in community colleges, and 75 percent of those classes in
Colorado are taught by overworked, underpaid, exploited adjuncts [part-time
professors],” she said. “Change has to come, and needs to come now,” she
concluded.
A video of the press conference can be viewed at the
following link:
#
# #
