Cartoon by Ailsa Alipusan

While administrators were using their positions at SWC to collect heft six-figure salaries, faculty members and some classified employees were left out in the cold working for less money.  Some even lost their homes.  SWC faculty has not had a raise in seven years and is one of the lowest paid in California. This should not be tolerated nor accepted by this community, which holds SWC’s faculty in high regard.

After several years of labor negotiations, fewer classes and mismanagement of funds by the administration that culminated in the near-loss of accreditation and the infamous “South Bay Corruption Scandal,” the most recent assaults on faculty came last year when administration tried to coerce them into taking another pay cut—the third in ten years.

Although accreditation was eventually restored, classified accepted a coercive 5 percent decrease in pay from former superintendent Raj Chopra with the promise of no lay-offs. Faculty was force-fed larger class sizes and larger workload. Once the agreement was signed, Chopra laid off five employees (four of which were re-hired or paid restitution) and class schedules were cut. Since 2008 SWC has lost more than half its classes.

Overall quality of education has dropped because fewer full-time faculty members teach classes. Increased class sizes have forced many faculty members to teach up to 45 students at a time. Teaching schedules often force instructors to skip lunch and, despite office hours, they are unable to spend much out-of-class time with students because classes run back-to-back-to-back.

All the while, most members of the SWC administration have seen pay increases. Four vice presidents received huge raises while other employees faced salary reductions. Recent news on administrators taking a pay cut this past summer was a clever disguise to hide their net pay raise from the previous budget.

Some administrators work hard, but too many do not. One needs only to at their schedules. Extended lunch breaks are creatively disguised as “private meetings.” Some administrators have “private meetings” at the end of the day, particularly Friday afternoons. One administrator scheduled the commute home, with a reminder to leave campus at the end of the day. Perhaps this administrator should include the commute to campus in the morning, but that would require this person to show up on time and ready to work.

Professors and adjuncts are held to a different standard. They have to be available all day, report to classes and teach students. Unlike administration employees whose workday is over when they leave their office, faculty members require extra time to grade and evaluate students after classes have dismissed. Professors that run co-curricular programs (Mariachi, forensics, journalism, MESA and others) often work more than 80 hours a week.

Faculty should stand their ground against any more salary give-aways. Cutting salaries for faculty in the name of austerity cannot offset the money spent on new administrators and administrative support staff that have the luxury of a lenient workday. A century of labor struggles and decades of disputes have shown that concessions do not end well for those giving up their rights and benefits. Unions gain nothing from compromising with management. Negotiating salary cuts, faculty positions and class sizes leaves a weaker workforce for the next round of concessions that linger over the horizon.

More important, these cuts diminish educational quality and hurt students.

Though salary cuts are now off the table, faculty has been given a warning shot. Teachers are considered expendable commodities by this management. When faculty come under fire by visionless administrations, students take a backseat.

Every student on campus should be concerned about the future employment of the professors and adjuncts that teach their classes. Students need to talk to teachers, attend governing board meetings, get involved and take control of their campus—our campus. Only by working together can students and teachers ensure the best possible education. Lest the administration forget, without faculty and students there is no institution of higher learning.