Issue link: http://educator.cta.org/i/1535219
Long Beach City College adjunct art professors Karen Roberts and Seija Rohkea won a historic ruling in February that will have an impact on potentially more than 40,000 adjunct faculty in community colleges statewide. Part-Time Long Beach City College Faculty Win Landmark Ruling Judge rules adjunct professors not exempt from minimum wage laws, must be paid for hours worked By Julian Peeples " W E W E R E S O S U R E t h i s w a s t h e right thing to do but we were terrified at the same time," says Karen Roberts, art history professor at Long Beach City College (LBCC) and Community College Association member. "It felt like we were sticking our necks out — we're just a cou- ple at-will employees." Nearly three years after filing a law- suit against LBCC, Roberts and fellow par t-tim e ar t professor Seija Rohkea won a historic ruling in Februar y that will have an impact on the 1,000+ mem- bers of Certificated Hourly Instructors CTA/NE A (CHI) and potentially more than 40,000 adjunct faculty in commu- nity colleges statewide. In 2022, CTA filed suit alongside Rob- erts and Rohkea over the college's failure to compensate them and hundreds of other adjunct community college faculty at the minimum wage, as required by law. Their lawsuit outlined many addi- tional duties their teaching assignments required beyond the classroom time for which they were actually paid — colleges only pay adjunct faculty for the time they are teaching in the classroom. 28 cta.org Feature