The Human Face of Cervisi
Rodger Scott

Throughout California, part-time community college and adult school faculty are eligible for unemployment benefits--like other workers--when they have no job and no income. Aside from the psychic rewards of doing a good job in a field as important as education, there are few advantages to being a perpetual temporary employee who receives considerably less pay and fewer benefits for doing the same work as a full-time colleague with the same education and experience. Part-time, temporary employment in California community colleges is more likely to end with retirement or death or a job in another field than lead to a tenure-track position.

Until 1977, neither migrant workers nor part-time community college faculty were covered by unemployment insurance in California. And from 1977 until 1989, part-time faculty members with no work between terms were routinely denied benefits on the grounds that they had a "reasonable assurance" of returning to work at the beginning of the next term--in spite of having a tentative assignment to teach classes subject to cancellation for low enrollment or lack of funding. Their classes could--and still can--be reassigned to full-time faculty.
The precedent-setting Cervisi decision, which the First Appellate District Court issued in 1989, held that "an assignment that is contingent on enrollment, funding, or program changes is not a 'reasonable assurance' of employment." Bob Bezemek and Katie Riggs, attorneys who represented the faculty at both the trial and appellate court levels, and AFT 2121 representatives, who began the five-year legal battle for unemployment benefits, have provided information about Cervisi and assistance to individuals and faculty organizations from San Diego to Feather River--and in various other states as well.

There were two groups of San Francisco City College faculty claiming benefits in Cervisi: the first group filed claims in December 1983, the second in December1984. The Employment Development Department denied their claims, and administrative law judges at the San Francisco Office of Appeals and the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board in Sacramento ruled in favor of EDD. The decisions, in our view, not only contravened the Unemployment Insurance code but the ruling on one claimant severed totally the rationale of social insurance from the people it was intended to cover. City College had cancelled the under-enrolled class of Dr. Leo Seidlitz, a former full-time lecturer at Princeton, leaving him with no assignment--and demonstrating that the enrollment contingency wasn't simply a distant theoretical possibility. The administrative law judge, however, still found him ineligible for benefits during the intersession on the grounds that he'd had a "reasonable assurance" of returning to work. Seidlitz responded: "Work generates income; unfortunately, having a 'reasonable assurance' of work doesn't."

City College administrators at the hearings often represented the college at the bargaining table as well. They generally opposed--and even questioned the legality of--providing job security, health care benefits and equitable pay to "part-time, temporary employees." However, at the hearings those administrators acknowledged the college's dependence on part-time faculty, who taught at least 40 percent of the classes and had many years of commendable service. That existential appreciation prefaced the college's legal argument: The claimants weren't entitled to unemployment benefits because the work history of several consecutive semesters constituted a "reasonable assurance of re-employment."

Even though we considered the rulings weak legally, Bob Bezemek recalled our ambivalence about proceeding to Superior Court: "The case involved intersession pay, which was not as compelling as pay during the summer, and many of the claimants had a long history of working semester after semester." The choice was difficult. "We knew we were right on the law," Bezemek said, "so we decided to sue in court to reverse the full UI Board of Appeals."

Union attorneys Bezemek and Riggs, representing both groups, prevailed and all the claimants received benefits. "After we won in Superior Court," Bezemek said, "EDD appealed, thinking it was their best chance." We had won earlier cases in Superior Court for benefits during the summer but EDD chose not to appeal any of those decisions. Attorney General John Van de Kamp's office represented the UI Board of Appeals.
The appellate court ruled in our favor on February 1, 1989, but didn't consider the case important enough to publish. Our attorneys filed a motion for publication, and the court changed its mind, making Cervisi--the test case that EDD had chosen--a precedent for all community college and adult school faculty members in California. I asked Bob Bezemek how much money he thought part-timers had received in benefits since 1989. "Probably over $100 million. EDD invited me to speak at one of their conferences, and an EDD official said the cost was around $23 million in the first two years." (Maybe we owe the same gratitude to the EDD legal strategists who chose to make Cervisi a test case in appellate court as to anti-faculty administrators who do a better job than we could ever do of convincing faculty of the need to organize.)
As the Miranda and Cervisi cases illustrate, however, making judicial history doesn't necessarily improve one's life.

Of the 17 claimants in Cervisi, 15 were teachers, one was a counselor, the other a teacher's aide. Two people had Ph.D.'s and a third completed the doctoral program after the decision; one person was a published writer. Since 1985, six of the claimants have gotten full-time jobs at City College or other colleges--two of them as a result of a Union lawsuit for full-time jobs based on composition instructors in English and ESL teaching more than 60 percent of a full-time load. One person has been a department chair and one has had administrative assignments. Three people worked part time until they retired. One died shortly after retiring; another, who had gotten a full-time job at a four-year college, died in March 1999. The others continue as part-timers or have left the district.

Gisele Cervisi was born in France and lived in Canada for two years before immigrating to the U.S. in 1965. She obtained a B.A. from San Francisco State University and an M.A. from the University of California at Berkeley. She returned to San Francisco State for a teaching credential and did her practice teaching in former UESF President and AFT Vice President Joan-Marie Shelley's French class at Lowell High School in San Francisco. Mrs. Cervisi now works as a translator and teaches French at the Alliance Française. After working at City College for four years, she left the district before the decision bearing her name was issued. She didn't know about the appellate court ruling until 1991, when a journalist from Los Angeles telephoned her to request an interview. The writer offered to send her a copy of the decision but Mrs. Cervisi never heard from him again. Ten years after the precedent-setting ruling, she has finally read the decision that has helped thousands of highly educated yet marginally employed "migrant professors" survive periods without work.

I asked if she had heard the term "freeway flyer." "Oh yes," she said, "but I don't drive." When Mrs. Cervisi filed for unemployment benefits in 1983, she had been teaching at the University of San Francisco, the Alliance Française, and City College, where she taught both a non-credit French class at the Downtown Campus and two hours later a credit class at the Phelan Campus. Her husband was also teaching part-time at City College and the University of San Francisco. Gisele Cervisi's working at four sites was more unfortunate than rare, since many part-timers commute to multiple worksites; however, she was the first "freeway flyer" I'd met who commuted by public transit.
As Mrs. Cervisi looked over the case that has made her part of judicial history in California, I told her that part-timers' pay and benefits, especially health care coverage, had improved considerably since she had left City College--also that part-time faculty now have re-hire rights. But the battle for equity continues.

Students, unlike the administrators who determine the economic survival of part-timers, respect and appreciate teachers like Gisele Cervisi. A middle-aged woman at the Alliance Française described her as "an excellent teacher" then added: "She's like Edith Piaf--a tiny woman with a big voice and spirit."

Victories, like defeats, are sometimes more relative than absolute. Ten years after Cervisi, the legal literacy rate of the EDD staff is less than exemplary. After every term EDD determines that some part-timers have a "reasonable assurance of resuming work" and denies benefits; but, until this year, we had always won on that issue. In the past few weeks, part-timers from four community college districts have lost appeals before administrative law judges on the issue of "reasonable assurance." To our knowledge, these are the only cases lost at the ALJ level. Bob Bezemek is handling those appeals. Maybe some of our part-time remedial reading instructors could find room in their hearts--and classes--for the four administrative law judges who apparently have difficulty comprehending the central legal issue in Cervisi.
When I told Gisele Cervisi that part-time faculty across the state had gotten millions of dollars in benefits because of her case, she said: "The case has my name but other people deserve the credit."