A is for Adjunct

Ethan Valerick on the New Faculty Majority blog writes, 

"A little story: one that occurs to me as I wait high above a rather nice golf course, Eagle Crest, waiting for the start of a weekend powwow of those who have signed on with the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education. It regards, my little story, college affordability."

Doesn't this make you want to go out and put on a conference just for adjuncts or throw a workshop of your own? When you do, be sure to let us know about it. Jack Longmate sets the example here by writing letting us know about the feature in the student newspaper and a video on YouTube.

"The April 20 “The Solution to Faculty Apartheid” conference held at Green River Community College in Auburn, WA, which featured Keith Hoeller, Frank Cosco, Kathryn Re, and me, is described in a feature in the college’s student newspaper, The Current. Click on the issue and then advance to page 10 for a nice picture of Frank and Keith."

The main feature is a video of presentations on part time college faculty working conditions that looks at the differences between full and part time faculty pay and other issues and possible solutions to these problems.

What is the story about Jack Longmate, Olympic
College and the Olympic College faculty union? There have been pieces in the acadamic press and limited discussion on lists for over a year but not the coverage one might expect for something this newsworthy. It is not every day - more like not any day - that adjunct defy their unions. Just what did Jack do to earn such onus from his union? 

h/t http://trotacampos.tumblr.com for heads up

Peter Schmidt in Faculty, @Chronicle #HigherEd

Jack Longmate, a part-time English instructor involved in a long-running battle with the faculty union at Olympic College in Washington State, is now challenging that community college's accreditation based on a claim that it failed to protect him from union retaliation for his dissent from union positions.

....

The Northwest Commission faced similar pressure (http://chronicle.com/article/Adjunct-Professor-in/100156) from another prominent advocate for adjuncts, Keith Hoeller, to act against colleges in 1997. Mr. Hoeller had argued that Washington State's community colleges were violating the commission's standards by relying too heavily on part-timers, but the commission did not act on his complaint, and Mr. Hoeller failed in an effort to enlist U.S. Department of Education officials in forcing the commission's hand.  

In recent months, however, the New Faculty Majority (http://newfacultymajority.info) and various other advocates for adjunct faculty members have mounted new efforts (http://chronicle.com/article/Accreditation-Is-Eyed-as-a/131292) to persuade accrediting bodies to make the treatment and working conditions of such faculty members a major concern. Regional accreditors have said they already take the working conditions of adjuncts into account, but they are open to the idea of doing more on that front.

(PS Read the comments too ~ don't skip them)

A giant step forward for #ContingentFaculty everywhere, HB 1144 passed the Senate, now awaits expected signing. The good news story we've been following has the ending we hoped for. In my opinion, it also speaks to future possibilities for Program for Change, authored by Jack Longmate and Frank Fosco.

A more complete account and "Colorado Adjunct Project" update from team member and long time contingent faculty activist, Don Eron of the Colorado AAUP :

"Dear Colleagues, You will be interested to learn that on Tuesday Colorado House Bill 1144, the so-called "Contingent Faculty Bill," was passed by the Democratic-controlled State Senate, 22-12. This followed on the heels of a dramatic, and surprising, 36-29 victory last month in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. House Bill 1144 is now on the desk of the Democratic governor, who is expected to sign it.

The law will give state universities and colleges the option of engaging in binding employment contracts with NTTF for up to three years."

(continue to link to read the complete account)

This is the web site for Don Eron, candidate for Second Vice President of AAUP

All AAUP candidate statements, in pdf format, are available the AAUP website, http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/about/bus/elections/candidates.htm

Read ALL of them for references to adjunct / contingent faculty and positions on contingent faculty

Increment_Discussion_04.pdf Download this file Union affiliation is fine even commendable and should be an uncontested right available to all faculty. That does not preclude casting the occasional cold, critical eye when warranted.

Generally speaking, the term 'casual' has positive connotations - relaxed, informal, easy-going. Applied to the world of labour, though, the reverse is true. It describes a situation of increasingl...

Passing the Buck: Corporate Restructuring and the Casualisation of Employment is the latest volume in the excellent Work Organisation Labour and Globalisation series*. It is reviewed here by Richy Leitch....The book examines the boom in casual employment over the last quarter of a century

April 20, 2012 Teach In: "The Solution to Faculty Apartheid" from original post to the Contingent Academics Mailing List, Sunday, April 22, 2012

Introduction / Frank Cosco / Jack Longmate / Workshop / Conclusion plus links to Power Point presentation, ppsx and swf formats

For decades, colleges have been turning to adjuncts to cut costs -- and it's hurting students and educators alike...

I gave up this blog back in March when it appeared that its readership was only about six people, besides myself, who were already familiar with the events I was trying to chronicle.  I decided th...

UB Faculty Strike (1990-1992), "Recollections of the Longest Strike in Higher Education," is a blog and cautionary tale about the University of Bridgeport 

Today, author Alexander Kulcsar notes, "a whopping 83% of UB’s teaching employees work without the protections of tenure and due process (US Dept of Education numbers). If they’re like most “contingent” faculty in private colleges, they also work for low pay, no benefits, and no say in governance. 'World-class' education, dirt cheap."

.... and then, "The leaders of UB wanted a school run on the cheap, without interference from labor unions, or professional associations, as so many private and public colleges are proposing to do now, across the nation. That is why UB, in my opinion, is still immensely relevant. It’s on the cutting edge. It’s a model for the future, even as it is a shell of its former self."

Excepts from long but excellent article by Ann Larson published March 3, 2012, on her blog, http://annlarson.org: 

When I enrolled in the PhD Program in English at the CUNY Graduate Center to study Composition and Rhetoric, I was idealistic about the future of the discipline and my own place in it. I believed that Comp and Rhet (as I came to call it) was asking crucial questions that were central to the mission of higher education in America. I still believe that.

But, after working in the field in a number of full-time and part-time positions over several years, my idealism has turned to despair at what I now regard as Composition’s great shame. It has left me to doubt that there is a place in the field for me and for many others like me.

As anyone who teaches college writing is probably aware, the majority of such courses are taught by contingent faculty, including adjuncts and graduate students. These workers usually receive low wages and few benefits.

.... 

The Real Problem: In Which It Turns Out that Academic Capitalism is Just Like Regular Capitalism

The previous discussion of disappearing full-time jobs in Composition and Rhetoric allows me to define some terms. What do I mean by the word “system” that I have been using so far?

Viewing contingency as a systemic problem means acknowledging that we can’t make everything better by cutting off the supply of PhDs, by encouraging veterans to retire, or by working harder for table scraps. And we certainly aren’t getting anywhere by waiting patiently for the field’s éminence grise to voluntarily develop an accurate grasp of the facts.

....

But there is a way back to true relevance. Harvey’s theory of capitalism’s road to crisis suggests a new task for those who are in a better position than most to demand change. It is “the task of the educated discontented,” he writes, “to magnify the subaltern voice so that attention can be paid to the circumstances of exploitation and repression.” The well-known voices in our field must magnify the voices of their oppressed colleagues. A real “Contingency Studies” ought to start with the field’s veterans. As prominent members of the profession, it’s their responsibility to speak for and against that profession, and certainly for the next generation of scholars. These emissaries guard the gates of an academic discipline that is disintegrating. It’s time they recognized it.

Email Joe Berry, joeberry@igc.org, to subscribe to his well known email list aggregating news and information about COCAL, labor, organizing NTT faculty labor and other contingent faculty issues.

Joe has been doing the list longer than 10 years, since the first Campus Equity Week (CEW) and the founding of COCAL in Chicago. for a more complete picture of Joe's extensive background in higher ed, labor and academic labor organizing, check out this (somewhat outdated since he's in Berkeley now, not Chicago) bio page for Joe.

http://www.reclaimingtheivorytower.org/author.htm