[M]ONTPELIER — About 50 people, including teachers and gubernatorial candidate James Ehlers, picketed outside the Vermont State Colleges office in heavy rain on Tuesday, calling for higher wages for Community College of Vermont faculty.
The faculty at CCV formed a union last fall and has been in negotiations with the college administration. The union is seeking a new contract for part-time adjunct faculty. The contract would be a first for the 538 educators who work at CCV’s 12 campuses.
Part-time faculty members are asking for higher wages and job security. Workers at the lowest end of the pay scale earn about 2 percent less than their full-time colleagues; faculty at the highest end earn 43 percent less, according to data from the union.
Since instructors are currently neither salaried nor permanent, union spokesperson Emily Casey said each year instructors do not know if they will be asked back and many have two or three jobs because of the inconsistent nature of the job. Any instructor can be let go without cause.
“We are encouraged to have more jobs, they don’t want us to make a living on this job alone,” Casey said.
Jeb Spaulding, chancellor of the Vermont State Colleges, said some of the union’s statements were “misleading.”
According to a statement from Spaulding, negotiators representing the college and the union have met nine times. Vermont State College officials say it’s unclear why the union declared an impasse so early when it appeared that a compromise was imminent.
Spaulding, in a later interview, said CCV is not employing any delaying tactics and that first-time contracts usually take more than a year to write.
“We’re starting from scratch,” he said.
The union accuses the college of leaving the bargaining table.
The two parties have hired a mediator from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation service in Albany, New York.
Community College of Vermont has an enrollment-driven model that differs from other state schools. The college offers courses based on which ones attract the most students. Teachers are hired to fill positions as needed, according to an official from the Vermont State Colleges.
Casey describes the practice as a “gig economy,” in which instructors are paid for a teaching “gig.” Studies have shown that hiring faculty on an as-needed basis can cause student retention rates to go down, she said, and can erode faculty loyalty to the school.
In a statement on the union’s website, Jim Blynt, who has been a CCV humanities instructor for 12 years, said that he did not feel “respected” by the college.
“I haven’t always felt that I was a complete partner in the life of the college or that my work was fairly compensated or fully respected by those outside the classroom,” Blynt said.