The Colorado AAUP’s Ray Hogler recently did a radio talk show on KGNU Boulder about the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and its pernicious effect on state political affairs. Colorado faculty members might want to inform themselves about this group. One idea being promoted by ALEC is a law requiring that faculty hours and pay be posted in an “easily available” web format. Other ALEC contributions include attacks on public sector unions, right to work laws, and the infamous “stand your ground” laws. More information is available here.

“It’s a Law.”  So proclaimed Governor John Hickenlooper after signing HB 12-1144– the enforceable contracts for contingent instructors bill–this afternoon at the State Capitol. On hand were the bill’s primary sponsor Randy Fischer of Fort Collins, and three tireless champions of faculty rights in Colorado: Suzanne Hudson and Don Eron of CU-Boulder, and Sue Doe of CSU-Fort Collins. Dean Saitta was in attendance representing the Colorado Conference. Dean and Steve Mumme, Colorado Conference Co-Presidents, send profuse thanks on behalf of AAUP to Representative Fischer for his energetic and persuasive efforts to support adjunct faculty in Colorado public colleges and universities. Some pictures of the event follow.

Representative Randy Fischer in his office before the signing (D. Saitta)

Suzanne Hudson and Don Eron in Rep. Fischer's Office before the signing (D. Saitta)

Gov. Hickenlooper signing the Bill. Sue Doe and bill sponsor Rep. John Kefalas (foreground) are to the right of Rep. Fischer; Don Eron is right behind. (D. Saitta)

"It's a Law" (courtesy Colorado House Media Office)

Yesterday the House Bill to provide greater job stability and academic freedom for non-tenure track faculty passed on its third and final reading in the Senate.  No amendments were added.  Hence, the bill has completed its legislative journey.  The next stop for the bill is the Governor’s desk for his signature. No problems are anticipated at that level.  The passage of this bill is a major achievement for AAUP forces in Colorado and our allies in the state legislature, especially the bill’s sponsor Randy Fisher (D-Fort Collins).

Randy Fischer’s HB 12-1144 enabling term contracts for adjunct/contingent professors passed out of the Senate Education Committee last Thursday afternoon on a 4-3 party line vote.    The bill now passes to the floor for full Senate consideration.

A house editorial in the May 2 Fort Collins Coloradoan makes a strong  endorsement of the contingent faculty contracts bill.  The article is here.

Last Wednesday morning, February 29, HB 12-1144 passed on its third and final reading in the Colorado House.  The vote was 36 to 29.  We are grateful for the leadership of several legislators, especially Randy Fisher (D-Fort Collins), Mark Waller (R-Colorado Springs, and assistant majority leader), and Rep. Brian DelGrosso (R-Loveland).

The bill is now headed to the Senate.  Bob Bacon (D-Fort Collins) is the Senate sponsor.  He is also chairman of the Senate Education Committee, to which we hope the bill will be assigned.  The process in the Colorado Senate is exactly parallel to the process in the House; i.e., involving the organization of committee testimony like that exemplified by previous blog posts.  This will provide another good opportunity to have a public discussion of contingent faculty issues.  There is still much work to be done to create real due process, equity, and academic freedom for Colorado’s contingent faculty.

Below is a transcript of testimony given by Don Eron of the University of Colorado-Boulder to the Colorado General Assembly’s hearing on House Bill 12-1144, sponsored by Rep. Randy Fischer and others, concerning authorizing institutions of higher education to enter into employment contracts for non-tenure track classroom teachers.  Don’s website is at https://sites.google.com/site/doneronaaup/

By Don Eron

My name is Don Eron. I am a senior instructor in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric at CU-Boulder, where I have taught since 1989. However, I testify today not as a representative of the University, but a private citizen.

When I attended CU over 35 years ago, at-will status for some faculty might have been considered unfortunate, at least for them, but tolerable. A relative minority of faculty were then employed at-will. The percentages were, arguably, acceptable; universities needed a certain degree of flexibility over the workface. Gradually, however, everything has turned topsy-turvy. Today, when the considerable majority of our faculty (approaching 75% nationally), who teach the majority of our credit hours, can be fired at any time for any reason, or for no reason—when the considerable majority of our faculty understand that if they are to fulfill their professional responsibilities they may do so at their peril—we have a guarantee of classroom mediocrity.

As somebody who has taught “contingently” for these last 23 years, in a position that the administration insists is temporary so that they can maintain maximum flexibility, I can tell you that at-will employment is a towering institutional disincentive against my fulfilling my professional responsibilities. When I walk into the classroom I understand that I am far more likely to get fired, or not be rehired, if I evaluate students honestly and hold them to rigorous standards, than if I don’t. If you don’t think that influences the way I teach, you imagine me being far more heroic, or reckless, than I am.

Similarly, when I attend a faculty meeting, if my administrator advances a policy that, through my years of professional experience, I know will be damaging to students or against the interests of my program or community, I understand that I am far more likely to be fired, or not be rehired, if I speak up and contribute my professional expertise and thus risk inconveniencing my administrator with my opinion, than if I keep silent. In other words, I am far more likely to lose my job, and possibly my career, if I fulfill my professional responsibilities, than if I don’t.

Some you may wonder why I am making so much out of at-will employment. After all, Colorado is an at-will state. Many of you, when you’re not serving in the legislature, are at-will employees. But the difference is that—and I say this unabashedly—as a university teacher I have unique responsibilities that require unique protections.

Here is what I mean by unique: Suppose that I was a construction worker, employed by Mr. X, who in turn was employed as a general contractor to build a house for Mr. Y. In the course of helping to build Mr. Y’s house, let’s say that I had suggestions that I believed would help us achieve our goal more efficiently. Let us also suppose that, rather than acting upon my suggestions, Mr. X found them to be inconvenient, and chose to fire me instead. In that I was employed at-will, I would be out of luck. Similarly, assuming that my idea was a good one from which Mr. X might have benefited had he been more receptive, Mr. X would be out of luck, as would Mr. Y, whose house might have been

built more efficiently. While we would all be out of luck, society wouldn’t be, for there’s no societal interest in whether Mr. Y’s house is built as efficiently as it might be. Indeed, the sole purpose of Mr. X’s business is to make money for Mr. X. That’s where the imperatives of business and education differ. There is a central societal interest in providing students with the best possible education to prepare them to face the challenges of our collective future.

And the truth is, not every university teacher requires the protection of a binding contract. There may be teachers who are happy not to challenge students in the classroom, and would not dream of speaking up at a faculty meeting to take a position on an important matter that may be contrary the position of their department head. Those teachers do not require protection because, always keeping their heads down, they will never give anybody cause to fire them.

But it is the teachers that you most want teaching your children who need this amendment. There are many problems in higher education that HB12-1144 will not remedy. But what it may do is mitigate the at-will status of our university teachers for up to five years, if the university decides that it is in their interest to take that step. I hope they will, because it will be an important step in providing our teachers with the tools to do their jobs. Our students and our state deserve no less.

by Douglas Duncan

Members of the Legislature:

I’m Dr. Doug Duncan.  I’ve done teaching and research at CU Boulder for 10 years.

I spent 10 years on the staff of the Hubble Space Telescope, and 10 years outside of academia, running the programs of a major museum.  I’ve hired and fired lots of people, and managed multi-million dollar budgets.

The bill before you has a potential economic impact on Colorado, and it’s a positive one.  You want more jobs in CO in the future?  What kind of jobs?  If you want more minimum wage jobs, you don’t need higher education.  But if you want IBM jobs, Lockheed jobs, Google jobs – high paying jobs that build the state economy, you do.  To prepare students for THOSE jobs, I have to make them work hard.  That’s not always popular, and it takes a few years to see the results from hard work.  Would you hire a football coach on a one year contract?  Why not?  Because it takes more than one year to build up a good program, and it takes time before you see the results.  The same is true for people like me, who teach Colorado’s future work force.  A multi-year contract means better results.

I grew up in California, when Silicon Valley was filled with trees, and apple was a fruit. Now it’s a company worth $465B – worth more than Exxon.   You don’t need resources in the ground to create the best jobs;  you need the best-educated people.   Last year I was selected the best college teacher in the United States in my field of science.  This bill would let me do a better job.

And – it would save money!  Surveys show that non-tenured faculty value stability as much or more than a raise.

Recently I took 100 Coloradans on a trip to China.  While there we visited private Chinese families, with a translator.  One Chinese mother asked me, “Why do you Americans want to spend all your money now? Why don’t you invest it in the future, like we Chinese do?  We want good jobs for our children.”

This bill is strategic.  It builds the loyalty of the best employees, which is good for any company, and it positions us to train the best future workforce.

Thank you.

Dr. Douglas Duncan

dduncan@colorado.edu

303-807-9636

http://casa.colorado.edu/~dduncan

Completing coverage in a trifecta of Front Range newspapers, last Sunday’s Denver Post printed, in its online version, a slightly revised version of Ray Hogler’s op-ed about “Football Coaches and College Teachers.”  This version incorporates the results of a Colorado House Committee’s deliberations of HB 12-1144 dealing with contingent faculty employment. The column is here and also reprinted below.

by Raymond Hogler

When Colorado State University fired its athletic director and its football coach late last year, it was liable for some $1.18 million for terminating their contracts. Kowalczyk, the athletic director, was owed $830,000 in salary, and Fairchild, the coach, could have gotten $350,000. Strangely enough, if CSU administrators fired a non-tenure track teacher in the middle of the school year, they wouldn’t have to pay her enough to buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Why the difference between the teacher and the coach?

Colorado legislators some years ago passed a law expressing their dislike of using taxpayer money to pay employees who were discharged in violation of their contract rights. The introduction to Section 24-19-101 of the Colorado statutes says that the “payment of compensation to government-supported officials or employees after such officials or employees have ended their employment creates unnecessary costs, which ultimately are borne by the taxpayers of this state.” The legislative solution was to declare that agreements for a fixed term were not really binding but could be terminated with or without cause at the whim of either party.

The legislature bowed to reality and made an exception for a limited number of employees in higher education if the contract was “necessary for the hiring or retaining of the employee in light of prevailing market conditions and competitive employment practices in other states.” Football coaches and other athletic personnel, of course, are highly-prized talent who need enforceable agreements that specify the terms of their employment. People who teach at the institution are not.

Given the conditions in higher education, most undergraduate students at our major research institutions and almost all community college students are taught by non-tenure track or “contingent” faculty. These individuals typically sign a document agreeing to work for a period of time, such as a semester or an academic year, but their contracts are merely a sham. They are employees “at will” under the statute and can be fired at any time, for a good reason, a bad reason, or no reason at all. Likewise, they can quit at any time with no further obligation to the institution.

Representative Randy Fischer, a Democrat from Fort Collins, introduced a bill to correct the situation. His proposal, HB 12-1144, is a simple one. It says that if the parties — the institution and the teacher — agree to terms of employment, it will be a legal commitment on both sides. This is hardly a novel concept, since it makes up one of the fundamental principles of our economic system.

Rep. Fischer’s bill came before the House State, Veterans, and Military Affairs Committee on February 15 and was voted out with a favorable recommendation. The four Democratic members of the Committee and Rep. Mark Waller (R-El Paso) made up a majority in favor of the legislation. It now goes forward to the House.

At the Committee hearing, a group of contingent faculty members offered eloquent testimony about their dedication to teaching and the measure of security that legitimate contracts would provide to them and the institutions. Provost and Vice-President Vicki Golich of Metropolitan State College assured the Committee that she supported the bill, pointing out that binding contracts helped to guarantee continuity and stability for students and administrators as well as teachers. Her explanation made clear that the bill protects all interests at stake in higher education. No one appeared at the hearing to speak in opposition to the bill.

Given the logic and intent of HB 12-1144, reasonable citizens should advocate its adoption. Most of us believe that in dealing with others, we should be honest and trustworthy and live up to the commitments we make. If members of the legislature share the same values, HB 12-1144 will move effortlessly through the legislative process this session.

by Ray Hogler, Colorado AAUP Vice-President for Legislative Matters

On February 16, 2012, the Colorado House Committee on State, Veterans, and Military Affairs voted favorably on Rep. Randy Fischer’s bill to make contracts between contingent faculty and higher education institutions legally enforceable agreements. Because of the peculiar nature of Colorado statutes, such contracts were considered to be “employment at will,” regardless of whether they were for a fixed period of time. Rep. Fischer’s bill, HB 12-1144, simply provided that institutions could enter into contracts that would be binding according to their terms.

By way of background, the Colorado General Assembly a number of years ago tried to prevent colleges and universities from paying unearned compensation to a public employee who was fired before his contract expired. The lawmakers bowed to the reality of athletic programs and exempted a specific number of contracts from the statute. As a result, for example, when Colorado State recently fired its football coach and the athletic director, it became liable for $1.2 million in unpaid wages to these two individuals (the claims were satisfied with “private” money).

The situation for contingents is much different than the scenario envisioned by lawmakers. Such teachers are typically hired for a semester or a year of work, and they are different than at will employees entering into an indefinite employment relationship. The contingents expect to work for the designated period, and the administration expects them to fulfill their promises. In such cases, the “employment at will” rule makes no sense whatsoever. Randy Fischer’s bill merely restored some measure of rationality to the occupation of non-tenure track teaching.

At the committee hearing on Feb. 15, faculty from CSU, CU-Boulder, and CU-Colorado Springs supported the bill. Ray Hogler of CSU testified on behalf of the state AAUP about why the bill was necessary to provide a degree of security for contingents and to eliminate the contradictory legal elements in their contracts. Suzanne Hudson, Mary Long, Doug Duncan, and Don Eron of CU-Boulder all talked about their experiences as contingents. All are long-term teachers who play an essential role in carrying out the educational mission at CU, yet they said they have no assurances they would be hired in the future. Suzanne Cook of CU-CS is a contingent who is active in faculty affairs. She said she had spoken with various administrators at the institution and believed that they supported the bill. Rep. Mark Waller (R-El Paso) questioned whether Dr. Cook spoke for the institution, and she said she did not but that she had been informed by email that top administrators were in favor of the bill.

After the faculty witnesses spoke, Dr. Vicki Golich, Provost at Metro State, testified that she and the institution wanted HB 12-1144 to be enacted. She explained that binding contracts were important to her and the large number of non-tenure track faculty at Metro. A representative of the CU system then testified about the school’s official position, which was “monitoring with concerns,” which is apparently political-speak for “we won’t publicly oppose it.”

Rep. Fischer accepted several friendly amendments. One was a concession to CU and provided that nothing in the bill required an institution to include any specific terms in an agreement with a contingent. Rep. Waller offered an amendment deleting certain language about contracts being terminable on condition of financial exigency. His point was that if the parties were at liberty to write the contracts they wanted, they could include a clause on inability to pay. Rep. Fischer agreed to the amendment.

The final vote was 5-4 to send to the House with a favorable recommendation. All the Democrats voted in favor, and Rep. Waller provided the one vote needed from the Republicans. He may have decided based on information that CU-CS, his constituent, indeed wanted the legislation, or he may have come to realize that freedom of contract is the bedrock principle of free markets in the panoply of conservative thought. In any case, his support tipped the balance.

The next step is a vote by the full House. If you want to help the cause, contact your representative and any administrator you think might be friendly to the legislation. The more public support we can generate, including that of higher education officials, the better our chances of victory.

Contact information for your representative and others may be found at the Colorado General Assembly homepage:   http://www.leg.state.co.us/clics/clics2012A/cslFrontPages.nsf/HomeSplash?OpenForm