November 2025 Union News Header

Contract Education: The Reduced Workload Program

By Bill Miller, LRCFT SCC Campus Union President

Have you been feeling a bit more curmudgeonly than you used to? Tired of hearing things being called “fire”, “lowkey rizz,” or “Ohio”? Perhaps you’ve been thinking of retiring or entering the Full-Time Pre-Retirement Reduced Workload Program?
The Reduced Workload Program allows you to reduce your workload up to 10 years before you retire if you are in CalSTRS, and up to 5 years before you retire if you are in CalPERS. You can request any load from 50% and higher, and that load is your average load over the entire academic year. For example, if you reduced your workload to 50% time, you could work 100% in the fall and 0% in the spring and still meet the 50% average for the academic year. You could also work 0% in the fall and 100% in the spring to work 50% for the year.

Benefits

One of the most important benefits of this program is that you accrue an entire year of service for CalSTRS while working less than 100% time.
Your retirement benefit when you do retire is based on the full-time salary in your final year of the reduced workload program for which you get a full year of service credit.
You are still eligible for full health benefits while in this program.
The ability to ease into retirement is also a huge benefit!

 

Caveats

  • You must be 55 years old and have 10 years of service credit before starting this program.
  • You pay into CalSTRS at the full rate as if you were earning your full-time salary. That will be a bigger percentage of your earnings than before going on the program.
  • You pay health premiums at the full rate, which is also a bigger bite of your reduced income.
  • Once you choose a percentage for your reduced workload, that percentage can only go down- it can’t go up. If you choose your annual workload to be 80%, you can’t then decide to go up to 90%. You can, however, decide to go down to anything lower than 80%; down to the minimum of 50%.
  • You must turn in your form by March 1st before the year that you would like to enter this program.
  • If you work more in the fall than the spring, you will be paid in equal monthly installments. If you work more in the spring, you will be paid as the workload is incurred (less in fall and more in spring).
  • As mentioned above, the minimum annual average workload is 50% for this program.
  • Anecdotally, faculty who enter this program don’t make it as long as they think they will.