Part-time teachers at a standoff with Madison Area Technical College over their contract status began posting signs about two weeks ago claiming “MATC exploits part-time workers.”
To educate the public on the matter and to garner support for their proposals, the union took to placing the signs around the Madison area, according to Vice President of the MATC Part-time Teacher’s Union Bob Curry.
“We realized we weren’t going to get anywhere if we didn’t educate the public as to how the part-time teachers are treated compared to other faculty, staff and full-time teachers,” Curry said. “We think it really resonates with people — the idea of equal pay for equal work.”
He added the part-time teachers have the same certification, degrees, workload and number of tuition charged students, yet the college does not seem to recognize the difference.
However, according to MATC Legal Counsel Jon Anderson in a statement, the signs are ‘unfair and untrue,’ and MATC does not exploit its part-time workers as the signs explicitly say.
He said the teachers are treated fairly and the college is paying them the going rate.
Remaining concerns, according to MATC officials in a statement, are still the issues of compensation, with union workers demanding the gap between part-time and full-time teachers to be significantly closed, and concerns with job security and class assignments.
“We are working on the economic proposal and job security, which are the two outstanding issues,” Curry said. “We can’t count on anything because we don’t even know what classes we’ll get from semester to semester. If a full-time teacher wants my class, they can take it away and give it to him.”
He went on to say progress has been made on a lot of non-economic things. There have been tentative agreements to 30 or 40 smaller points the part-time teachers were contesting. However, he said the two main issues are the ones that need to be resolved quickly, since the current contracts expired seven months ago.
When full-time teachers receive pay raises, part-time teachers receive a percentage of that raise.
Part-time teachers are making a fifth of full-time teacher’s salaries — approximately $2,600 per class without benefits, whereas full-time teachers average $13,400 including benefits, according to Curry.
“Even if they give us double the raise, we still aren’t getting what they are. It’s getting further and further behind to the point where it’s practically a volunteer job,” Curry said. “We really don’t have anything to lose at this point.”
The economic proposal of the teacher’s union wants to tie part-time wages to those of full-time teachers dollar-for-dollar, without using percentages.
“This isn’t something that can’t be done,” Curry said. “Now we’re just looking for some creative leadership within management. If you’re going to give full-time teachers $800 raise, give us the same, and not just a percentage. Two percent of dirt is dust.”
Negotiations are at a standstill, as the union and MATC officials are waiting for a state arbitrator to come in and mediate to reconcile the differences.
