The Adjunct Advocate

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ARCHIVE: May 2008

May 28th 2008

Mazel Tov!

Junior or external (temporary) lecturers in Israel, of whom I have written about here, in January 2008, and here are celebrating this week. In May, Israel's 5,000 temporary lecturers began a series of revolving work stoppages to protest their low pay, lack of job security and benefits. The lecturers, who belong to a union that represents only temporary faculty, watched their full-time colleagues muscle through an 84-day strike last Fall that almost derailed an entire semester. Junior lecturers did not strike in support of their colleagues; relations between the two groups are very strained.

The Israeli government, obviously, did not want to have yet another drawn out strike by academics. More than that, though, the public in Israel was behind the junior lecturers and their demands, as were the media. Last Fall, editorials in the Jerusalem Post called the senior lecturers (full-timers) selfish and unthinking, and used the two-tier system of academic employment as an example of the callousness of the full-timers. An editorial in the Post said that the senior faculty cared only for themselves and their own needs. Of course, it didn't help that in 1994 the Senior Lecturers Union (SLU) bargained and signed a contract that excluded the junior lecturers.

As a result, according to this piece in the Jerusalem Post, senior lecturers did not win the immediate 25 percent pay raise they demanded, but they did win a 15.3 percent raise, as well as 1.5 percent pay increases through 2015, to combat inflation. In total, the senior lecturers won a 27.3 percent pay increase over the life of the new 8-year contract.

The results of the "warning strikes" by junior lecturers, who teach 40 percent of the classes offered at Israeli universities, were stunning. The group won a 17.5 percent pay raise, contracts extended beyond the current eight-month agreements, and a first-ever package that includes social benefits and retirement/pension rights. Previously, junior lecturers were fired at the close of each semester to prevent them from qualifying for social and academic benefits, such as eligibility for sabbaticals.

To Dr. Eli Leher, who heads the forum coordinating the junior faculty, and to Sion Keren, the chairman of the Junior Faculty Union, I send a hearty Mazel Tov!

P.S. Here's an interesting blog post from the blogger Paul Kandel. Kandel writes about Israel's higher education unions. Have a look.

Posted By Part-Time T. at 10:07 AM

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May 23rd 2008

When Will We Learn?

Today, at InsideHigherEd.com, and on the AFT Face Talk blog, we have the makings of a bona fide tizzy. Ms. Margaret West lost her job as a part-time faculty member after 21 years of employment at Edmonds Community College in Washington State. Take a deep breath, and let's unbunch our collective bloomers for a moment.

First of all, why did AFT leaders choose to be outraged about Margaret West? Was it because she is a union member with AFT Washington? AFT Washington represents about 1,500 faculty who hold part-time and quarter-time appointments. Many of them lost their jobs at the end of the semester. So why the outrage on behalf of Margaret West, and not on behalf of all of her fellow colleagues at Edmonds Community College who were let go, or for that matter, all of the other part-time faculty in Washington State who were let go?

Let me tell you a bit about Margaret West. She serves on the AFT Washington Committee on Contingent Faculty as a representative from her college. She taught English courses part-time, and was one of the lucky part-time faculty at Edmonds Community College who worked under "assurance of employment." Under the terms of the union's contract, the college was obligated to offer this kind of employment to only ten of the 320 part-time faculty employed by the college in a single year. Margaret West was one of those ten. The other 310 part-time faculty at Edmonds Community College were employed on a part-time quarterly basis; they were at will employees.

Last Fall, Keith Hoeller and his colleagues worked with a Washington State legislator to craft a piece of legislation that would have guaranteed all 10,000 part-time faculty in Washington State multi-semester contracts, such as the one Margaret West had for many years. Not a single member of the AFT Washington Committee on Contingent Faculty, including Margaret West, testified on behalf of Hoeller's bill.

The outrage the AFT national Higher Education Group, through the Face Talk blog, is trying to whip up on behalf of Margaret West's "plight" is disingenuous, at best. Here's why. Her employer was able to dismiss her because her employer has a contract bargained by the AFT Edmonds union leaders that did not protect the jobs of the part-time faculty members in the local. After decades, at Edmonds Community College, the majority of the 320 part-time faculty are still contractually disposable. AFT Washington's Committee on Contingent Faculty, not to mention the state leadership, walked away from an opportunity to support legislation which would have protected Margaret West's job, as well as the jobs of 10,000 other part-time faculty. Finally, in 2001, AFT Washington worked to have a law passed that meant part-time faculty could collect unemployment insurance between semesters, but which also made the following language law:

"In the case of community and technical colleges assigned the standard industrial classification code 8222 or the North American industry classification system code 611210*, for services performed in a principal administrative, research, or instructional capacity, a person is presumed not to have reasonable assurance under an offer that is conditioned on enrollment, funding, or program changes." In other words, unless included in the language of a union local's contract, every part-time faculty member in Washington State on that day in 2001 lost any hope of having reasonable assurance of continued employment.

Margaret West will be able to collect unemployment thanks to her union, but in the 20 years it has represented her, her union never negotiated to protect her job so that she wouldn't have to rely on unemployment! Now, the AFT national office wants to assign all of the blame to the employer for Margaret West's lost teaching position. Worse still, we are supposed to jump to the conclusion that she was let go, because she was running for the office of union president. Again, thanks to West's own weak union contract, as it applies to the part-time faculty, her employer does not have to explain or justify the reasons for refusing to renew her yearly appointment.

To be sure, losing one's job is traumatic, and no one deserves to be treated disrespectfully by one's employer. However, had Margaret West read her contract she would have understood that every clause which made it easy to dismiss a part-time faculty member—even the ten like her whom university officials were obligated to offer assurances of employment—were not being represented with equal vigor by the union that took their money for 20 years, and never bargained to protect their jobs.

If anything, Margaret West's story is a morality tale.

Posted By Part-Time T. at 8:00 AM

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May 22nd 2008

Putting Your Mouth Where Your Money Is

In Adjunct Advocate's May/June 2006 "Colleagues Abroad" issue there was a piece about part-time and contract faculty in India. The piece, titled "The Three Dollar Professor: Teaching Ad Hoc in India," was an eye-opening first-time look at the use of part-time faculty in India. The higher education system in India is only slightly smaller than that of the United States. However, part-time faculty in India's 28 states and seven Union Territories have repeatedly sued, gone out on strike and agitated for the regularization of their positions, and for higher salaries.

In this piece, published in The Hindu, a national newspaper in India, the headline reads "Contract lecturers stage dharna." In case you are not one of those clever part-timers who speaks, reads or teaches Hindi, a dharna, according to Wikipedia (धरना) is a fast undertaken at the door of an offender, especially a debtor, as a means of demanding justice.

In Andhra Pradesh, India, the Contract Lecturers Association members recently staged a dharna in front of the state Assembly Building (Collectorate). The contract faculty want their positions regularized, and they want payments of Rs.15,000 ($350). Contract faculty at Indian universities can earn as little as $3 per class. Full-time Assistant Professors in Indian universities earn, on average, Rs.29,000 per month ($690). The Lecturers Association is also asking for retirement plan contributions, and maternity leave for female contract faculty.

Could a dharna work for part-timers here in the U.S.? We'd have to be willing to put our mouths where our money is.

Posted By Part-Time T. at 1:31 PM

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May 19th 2008

Denouement in CA: Force People to Pay? Why Not Inspire Them Instead?

Mark Miller is the President of the part-time faculty union at Allan Hancock College, in California. I recently read a piece he wrote titled "In Defense of Unions," about talking to a member of his unit who rang him up to express her opposition to union leaders having negotiated what is called an "agency fee." For those who are not unionized, what this means is that whether or not you choose to actually sign up and become a union member, as an agency fee payer, you must pay dues to the union nonetheless. If you are an agency fee payer, you may not vote in union elections, however. On the other hand, if the union scores a fat raise, you can belly up to the bar right along-side your colleagues who chose to join the union.

In fact, this is the major argument put forth by union representatives to support the fairness of agency fees: people who benefit from the work of the union, should pay to support the union's efforts on their behalf. In California, about 7 percent of the 78,627 members of the California Federation of Teachers (the state umbrella organization to which Allan Hancock Part-Time Faculty Association belongs) are agency fee payers. Those people have not joined the union, but dues are still deducted from their paychecks. At Allan Hancock, the membership of Miller's union ballooned to almost 500 dues paying members with the single stroke of a pen, thanks to negotiating agency fees.

This is why, evidently, Mark Miller felt comfortable telling one of the new agency fee payers to piss off. Well, what he said was this (Miller writes):
"'I want you to know that I am not a union person," were the words of a part-time instructor who called our office to object after we negotiated the agency fee in 2003.

"She was opposed to unions philosophically, she said. and she resented having to be associated with one. She saw no need for a union of the part-time instructors at Allan Hancock College, and said that as far as she was concerned it would have been better if the union had never been formed at all.

"I told her that if you truly detest unions there is a way you can prove it. Start by giving back the raises we have negotiated for you. (In our first contract alone we were able to wring a 14% pay increase for the part-time faculty out of the administration). Refuse to accept any increases in pay we get for you in the future. Return the state parity money, (the distribution of which the union negotiated on your behalf). Refuse to avail yourself of any of the rights we have won for part-time instructors, such as office hours, rehire rights, and the right to file a grievance. Do all this, and you will prove that your anti-unionism is genuine. If you don't, I'll know you are just looking for a free ride.

"The conversation came to an abrupt denouement...."

Um....may I ask just one question? If union leaders are confident of their union's benefits (and why shouldn't they be?), why push agency fees at all? Won't people who benefit from the union's hard work just, well, eventually join anyway? One major objection made by agency fee payers has to do with the unions' use of dues for political purposes. The California Federation of Teachers, for instance, takes union dues and uses the money for political purposes. Unionists argue that, of course, the money goes to support politicians and causes that, ultimately, benefit the union members. But hey, what if I actually support Ahhhhnold for Gov.? In 2006, CFT doled out $539,570 of member dues money to pols, and didn't give a penny to a single Republican. May I point out that the CFT is now trying to convince Ahhhnold that cutting money to education is baaaaaad? Let's hope the Governor doesn't remember or care that CFT (and AFT headquarters in Washington, D.C.) were among the top 10 donors who supported his opponent, Phil Angelides.

Further, CFT sends dues money to be used for politicking straight to AFT headquarters in Washington, D.C. AFT Washington gives money to religious organizations, such as the Faith and Politics Institute. Founded in 1991, the organization "helps public officials stay in touch with their faith and deeper values as they shape public policy." What if I think "faith" shouldn't impact political decision-making? What if I'm a (gasp) atheist? AFT Washington gives to the Jewish Labor Committee every year. What if I'm not a Jew?

Mark Miller might tell me to zip it, or join the union and vote on how my money is allocated. What if I just don't want to? Why is the default that I have to volunteer my time and give my money to an organization I don't want to be involved with just to have a job? Part-timers who refuse to pay dues under agency fee schemes are fired. Maybe Mark Miller would, then, just tell me to return my raises and equity pay money. Why isn't the answer for his union to bargain on behalf of the people the union actually represents? If Miller has 15 members, and the union wins a 14 percent raise (which it did in its first contract--about $100 per course), why shouldn't just the union members benefit? The rest of the freeloading part-timers who didn't join up can either go straight to Hell, or to the union office to sign up as members.

The truth of the matter is that Mark Miller needs the woman he so proudly writes about telling off. He needs her and her fellow agency payers badly. Otherwise, with a minority of part-time faculty as members, administrators at Allan Hancock would tell Mark Miller to piss off when he went and asked for the rights he thinks are fair, the money we all know we deserve, and the respect we are all due.

Union membership rose 1 percent last year in the United States. It was the first year overall membership has risen in decades. With the Mark Millers out there its no wonder. Hubris does not inspire people to join an organization, nor does high-handedness, defensiveness, or being stiff-necked in the face of a difference of opinion. Perhaps Miller would never have convinced his agency fee paying member to look at unionism from a different perspective (that's its beneficial to all and necessary to win substantive gains from management). Would it have killed him to have asked what her objections to the union were? Mightn't he have taken a moment and realized that, perhaps, the $100 raise did not, for her, justify being forced to pay dues?

I don't know why the Allan Hancock part-timer was so against the part-time faculty union. I have a good idea why the agency fee system left her cold. It leaves me cold, as well. I worked at a college with such a system. However, unless union leaders will actually engage with people inside and outside their unions who raise objections to practices which can only be termed as "business as usual," unions will continue to be resented and perceived as bastions of corruption run by top-down management that doesn't give a fig for what members have to say—unless what they have to say resembles very closely what leaders want to hear.

When union leaders brag, as Miller does, about phone conversations with members that end in denouement (hang-ups), it's not a successful "defense" of a union, as Miller argues. It is a tragic failure to communicate the benefits of union membership to the people who need most to be inspired. At the very least the opinions of people, such as the woman of whom Miller so smugly writes, need to be treated with all the respect due someone whose agency fees are paying the rent for the office space unionists such as Miller occupy, not to mention the bills for the phone calls, such as the one Miller recounts to readers, that end so very badly.

Posted By Part-Time T. at 8:00 AM

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May 14th 2008

A Cheeky Plea For Faculty Unity

If you haven't noticed from my past entries that I like a bit of cheekiness (well, maybe even a lot of cheekiness), then you're not reading my entries closely enough. Failure to read closely is the kind of thing that can you into serious trouble. Like when you email to your student: "I want that paper turned in PORNO!" You meant to type "PRONTO," but well, you didn't check over the email closely. (This actually happened to a faculty member whom I know.)

Back to cheekiness.

I am of the opinion that it's time for adjunct faculty to step up to the plate and start shaping the course of the national debate about our own issues. Keith Hoeller has done so for over a decade (and gotten himself beaned by critics). There are part-time faculty writing about our issues (pay parity, pay equity, job security, participation in governance, etc...). Cary Nelson kicked it off with his essays, op-eds and books about the exploitation of part-time faculty and grad students, Marc Bousquet is a strong supporter, but I really believe that we have to speak for ourselves in the higher education and mainstream media. This means fewer bitch sessions in print, where we talk about how bad we have it, and more thoughtful analysis of what it means to our students, the profession, society, and higher education as a direct result of the things we have every right to bitch about.

Enter stage right: Steve Street. He's a lecturer at SUNY-Buffalo State College. Take a few minutes and read the piece he wrote for the May/June 2008 issue of Academe, the magazine of the American Association of University Professors.

Street's publishing his piece in the right place. AAUP's membership is 92 percent tenure-track and tenured. AAUP's membership profile: Middle-aged, white guys. These are the ones who are clinging to their privilege like starving babies clutching warm bottles of formula. (Please don't give me grief about the nursing versus bottle feeding debate. I needed a metaphor, and decided bottles were safer than breasts, ok? The visual of a 55-year-old guy suckling from the teat of Mother Academe is just too—well—unsettling—even for me).

I'm not sure Steve Street's cheeky plea for tenure-track faculty to use their votes over budgets and institutional governance to win higher pay and job security for part-time faculty will evoke a rush of support. But Hell's Bells, you never know until you ask, right?

Posted By Part-Time T. at 12:08 PM

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May 12th 2008

Competing Head-to-Head, or the Tarnished Dozen at NYU

Congratulations to the adjunct faculty at NYU who won Outstanding Teaching Awards last week. The Outstanding Teaching Award is a sub-category of NYU's "Golden Dozen," competition. The Golden Dozen awards are given out by the College of Arts and Sciences and, according to this article in the NYU News, "recognize tenured professors, clinical faculty and full-time language faculty who have demonstrated exceptional contributions and services to undergraduate students. Candidates for the award must have held their current position for at least three years and are chosen based upon nominations and recommendations submitted each spring by students and fellow CAS faculty members."

So, faculty nominate their colleagues (or themselves), and students nominate their teachers for the Golden Dozen Awards. Golden Dozen winners receive "$1,500 addition to their base salary. Award recipients' respective departments also received a one-time grant of $500 from the university to enhance undergraduate education." Outstanding Teaching Award winners receive—you guessed it—not a penny.

If part-time faculty ever expect to earn equal pay for equal work, they are going to have to compete head-to-head with full-time faculty for teaching awards. The Outstanding Teaching Award is akin to nice, cushy seats at the back of the bus. Riding in the back is better than walking, but eventually people like to sit where they want to, and not where they're told they must for form's sake. Of course, it would be a fiasco for full-time faculty at NYU if their part-time colleagues captured the majority of the Golden Dozen. However, shouldn't the best teacher win the teaching award and get the cash?

NYU has a part-time faculty union. Union leaders could offer to pony up the money to double the Golden Dozen prize, and then bargain for part-time faculty to compete right alongside their full-time colleagues in the Golden Dozen competition. Then, and only then, will there be an honest-to-goodness competition to recognize and reward faculty excellence at NYU. As always, my money is on the part-timers to sweep any teaching award competition. Maybe that's why the tenure-track faculty and full-time lecturers at NYU are content to participate in a rigged competition that ought to be more aptly named the Tarnished Dozen.

Posted By Part-Time T. at 7:41 PM

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May 7th 2008

When Will Substance Finally Supplant Seniority?

In California, higher education leaders are freaking out. Well, calmly, of course and with regal bearing and presence of mind, as Chancellors and Provosts are expected to do. Governor Ahhhnold has proposed a state budget that calls for a drastic cut in the funding for higher education, about $1.3 billion dollars, to be precise. The community college system, the largest in the world, with an enrollment of 2.6 million students, would take a $500 million dollar funding hit, and the California State system, which enrolls 450,000 students, would see cuts of over $800 million. According to this article, published in the UC-San Diego Guardian, the student newspaper, CSU spokesman Paul Browning said, "We might need to cut part-time faculty."

You think?

The California Faculty Association represents 22,000 of the faculty who teach in the CSU system, more than half of them are lecturers. Within the union, the Lecturers Council advocates on behalf of the full- and part-time lecturers. Thanks to the efforts of the union, some lecturers in the system teach under multi-year contracts. The contract calls for lay-offs to be handled by seniority and appointment type.

For instance, part-time lecturers are subject to lay-off before full-time lecturers, and within those groups, the lay-offs are done by seniority. I have been thinking about this, and have come to the conclusion that it instills the idea that one temporary faculty member is just as good as another. This may be true at an assembly plant, but it's just not true in the classroom.

Teachers bring a much wider variety of educational qualifications, professional experience, and abilities to their jobs, than do those who work in manufacturing. We are all very well aware that there are good teachers, and bad teachers. So why on earth do faculty unions rely on "seniority" when determining who gets laid off? Because it's fair? On the contrary, it's a system that rewards longevity instead of competency. It's a missed opportunity to improve the overall quality of the classroom faculty. Doesn't it make more sense to use measured competency, education, professional accomplishments and teaching talent as the primary tools for determining who stays and who goes?

Furthermore, the system of "seniority" that is used by the California faculty union (and every other union that uses a similar system) is grossly unfair. It is a two-tiered system that mimics the inequity of the current full-time/part-time faculty system. As per the union's contract, part-time lecturers are always laid off before full-time temporary lecturers. Why? Quite simply, these people are singled out for lay-offs based solely on the type of appointment they hold. Within the part-time lecturer group, then, layoffs and recalls are organized by "seniority."

What this means is that a part-time lecturer with a three-year contract, Ph.D., publications, teaching awards, excellent student evals. and seven years of experience, will be laid off before a full-time temporary lecturer with a three-year contract, a lesser degree and fewer years of teaching experience.

Why are full-time temporary lecturers favored under the auspices of such union contracts? Is it because they're smarter? Sexier? Pay higher union dues? If protecting the full-time job is the goal, why not keep the best teacher of the two and, if need be, move the part-timer into the full-time position?

Job security is important, but isn't giving job security to the best teacher more important? This is, after all, what tenure seeks to do. Ideally, the process rewards those faculty whose work meets the quality standards set by the institution and the department in terms of teaching, scholarship and research. Why not use the same criteria with all faculty when deciding who stays and who goes?

As long as unions push for "seniority" ahead of substance, students will, potentially, continue to lose out, and so will excellent faculty members. In particular, throughout California, during these tough financial times, CSU faculty who happen to be hired on part-time versus full-time temporary contracts will always find themselves out in the cold—because of the "seniority" clauses in their contracts negotiated by their union leaders.

Posted By Part-Time T. at 5:33 PM

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May 1st 2008

Time for Some Political Muscle from NYSUT for Pace's Part-Timers

John Pawlowski heads the 1,000 member part-time faculty union at Pace University in New York, the Union of Adjunct Faculty at Pace (UAFP). Four years ago, the faculty organized and agreed to form a bargaining unit affiliated with New York State United Teachers NYSUT, which is in turn affiliated with the AFT. The president of NYSUT is Richard C. Iannuzzi. According to this FAQ page on the Pace University web site, Pace University officials and union officials have met 60 times. Sixty times. There are people who marry each other after having had fewer dates than that. The last bargaining session, according to university officials, was February 27, 2008.

I have written about Pace's faculty union before here and here.

At Wayne State University in Detroit, 900 part-time faculty organized, administration quickly recognized the unit, and then the two groups hammered out a first contract. All in the space of about 24 months. At Pace, administration fought having to recognize the union through legal challenges, then when that battle was lost, university officials have dragged out negotiating a new contract for, literally, years.

Ask unionists, and they will tell you that Pace officials are to blame. Officials are offering a per credit hour rate of $750 minimum, or $2,250 per course, a 2 percent "salary" increase this year, and in future years to match salary increases given to full-time faculty. We all know this is an offer of just so much horse manure. Ten percent of $65,000 and ten percent of $2,250 are much different raises in terms of dollars. Of course, when NYSUT bargained a contract recently that included the same "equal" percentage increases for full-time and part-time members, it was touted as a great deal for everyone. Yeah, so is a sharp stick in the eye as opposed to a knife in the back.

So, if Big Daddy NYSUT bargains these same kind of "raises" for 8,000 members who are part-time faculty at SUNY, Pace leaders should suck it up and accept the deal, right?

No, I don't so, either. So, what's happening at Pace? As I mentioned above, unionists will tell you that it's a union-busting administration. Alright, from what I've read, Dr. David Caputo, the past president of Pace, was not the moonlight and magnolia type. He fought the union through the courts. In 2007, he retired, and was replaced by interim President Stephen J. Friedman, J.D., former dean of Pace's Law School. Thus far, no contract, and I'm sure Freidman knows how to write one.

NYSUT leaders have "urged" Pace officials to bargain in good faith. That's nice. Did they send some candy and flowers? Let me tell you a little about NYSUT: in New York, the union is perceived as an 800 pound political gorilla. Read this piece about the union's clout. Know why NYSUT has New York Assemblymen quaking in their loafers? Well, the union is the second largest political donor in New York State, and NYSUT gives to both Democratic and Republican candidates. In fact almost all of the union's donations go directly to candidates, as opposed to supporting or defeating ballot initiatives. When NYSUT talks, people in New York listen, all except, it appears, the administrators at Pace University. As a result, there sit the 1,000 members of Pace's faculty union, no contract after four years.

If John Pawlowski can't inspire his members to action (he missed a prime opportunity at the end of the semester), he should step down. If NYSUT leaders continue to refuse to bring the union's considerable political muscle to bear on behalf of the part-timers at Pace, the adjuncts should get a clue and decertify their group. NYSUT will be out the money it spent to organize the group. Maybe the best thing that could happen to the part-timers at Pace would be to not be affiliated with NYSUT. It would be a messy divorce, but it's clear that after four years neither Pace's nor NYSUT's leadership has delivered what was promised to those 1,000 people agreed to join the union: better working conditions.

Yeah, Pace officials are playing hardball, but Lord Almighty, Johnny P., get yourself a wooden bat and get up to the plate.

Posted By Part-Time T. at 3:11 PM