Late Saturday night, the Oregon Senate voted unanimously to put the principles of  the FACE campaign into Oregon Law.  The Senate's 30-0 vote follows last week's nearly unanimous 54 to 1 vote in the House on HB 2557, the Oregon Faculty and College Excellence (FACE) Act. The bill is now scheduled to be signed by Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski.  This will represent the first time that components of AFT's Faculty and College Excellence Act is officially included in state statute.

"This is a great step for contingent faculty and for Oregon's higher education system," said David Rives, AFT-Oregon President-elect and part-time community college instructor who has taught English as a Second Language for the past 15 years. "I'm thrilled that we're finally getting public awareness about the faculty staffing crisis."

The FACE campaign presses for more full-time faculty and pro-rata pay and benefits for contingent or adjunct faculty. Dozens of AFT-Oregon members have attended hearings and written their legislators in support of the bill.  While FACE legislation introduced around the country has drawn significant attention to the staffing crisis in higher education and resulted in progress toward solutions including increased pay equity money for part-time faculty and money to convert part-time positions into full-time positions, this is the first time that a bill with the FACE title and principles has passed a state legislature.

Oregon's bill, as amended, allows part-time faculty at community colleges and universities access to quality health care insurance benefit plans through the Oregon Educator's Benefit Board (OEBB) health care plan. It also holds colleges accountable by requiring annual reporting and tracking of faculty staffing and salary ratios for review by the Legislature and Governor.

Representative Michael Dembrow carried the bill through the House, giving a passionate presentation on the bill on behalf of part-time faculty throughout the state.

"All of these faculty members are equally credentialed with their full-time colleagues, and most of them are excellent teachers.  However, they are paid much less, with few benefits, and they have little job security," Dembrow stated. "Many of them are in fact teaching full-time and more than full time, but their work is spread out over multiple institutions."

"Part-time faculty being excluded from health care in this country is a real scandal. Gaining access to the OEBB plan through HB 2557 will be a real victory," said Rives.

"This bill had its genesis in a nationwide effort to address this problem by a number of groups, under committed leadership from the American Federation of Teachers.  It's a problem that was long in coming-tied to the erosion of public investment in higher education-and it's a problem that will not be solved overnight, certainly not in light of our current budgetary limitations.  But there are some things that we can do in the short run at little public expense, and that's what  HB 2557 is all about," said Dembrow. 

Clearly, Oregon Senators agreed.

AFT Oregon's efforts demonstrate that even in the current economic environment there is important work to be accomplished with regard to academic staffing.

Jillian Smith and Rob Wagner from AFT Oregon contributed to this story.