H-0058.2
HOUSE BILL 1179
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State of Washington | 65th Legislature | 2017 Regular Session |
By Representatives Pollet, Haler, Appleton, Gregerson, Orwall, Stanford, Sells, Tarleton, Chapman, Goodman, Fitzgibbon, Peterson, Lytton, Doglio, Kagi, Frame, Farrell, Riccelli, Lovick, Pettigrew, Sawyer, Springer, Bergquist, Ormsby, Hudgins, Santos, and Macri
Read first time 01/12/17. Referred to Committee on Higher Education.
AN ACT Relating to part-time academic employees at community colleges; adding a new section to chapter
28B.50 RCW; and creating a new section.
BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON:
NEW SECTION. Sec. 1. Part-time nontenure track academic employees at community and technical colleges teach on average forty-six percent of all the classes taught in the state and are responsible for successfully educating thousands of students a year. Students expect the same service from their part-time instructors as they do from their full-time instructors, and often are not even aware whether their instructors are full-time or part-time. Students pay the same tuition whether they are being taught by a part-time or a full-time instructor. However, on average, part-time academic employees earn fifty-two percent of what full-time academic employees earn for teaching the same course or number of courses. Acknowledging this unjustified pay disparity, the legislature in 1999 allotted ten million dollars to the community and technical college system exclusively to start closing the pay disparity gap between full and part-time academic employees. The legislature also required colleges to match that amount so that altogether approximately eighteen million dollars was devoted to that goal. As a result, part-time academic employees' pay increased by twenty-two percent and went from forty percent on average of what full-time academic employees make to about sixty percent on average of what full-time academic employees make for teaching the same course. Every biennium after that and until 2008, the legislature allocated funding to continue to close the pay gap. In 2008, that movement toward equal pay stopped and no funding has been provided for this pay gap since then. There is still more to do. It is therefore the intent of the legislature to reach the goal of equal pay for equal work for part-time and full-time academic employees at community and technical colleges within the next four years.
NEW SECTION. Sec. 2. A new section is added to chapter 28B.50 RCW to read as follows:
(1) Pay for all part-time nontenure track academic employees must be prorated based on the employee's percent of a full-time academic workload as defined in RCW
28B.50.489(1).
(2) Pay for all part-time nontenure track academic employees must be increased to one hundred percent pro rata pay achieved no later than the 2020-21 academic year. The increases must be phased in over four years in equal increments starting in the 2017-18 academic year.
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