Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves

"Professional Development for Adjuncts", yesterday in IHE. Hey, maybe after actually teaching classes for twenty fucking years I know more about it than some buzzword-slinging rainmaker. But gee, on the other hand, look how well this strategy has worked in the public schools!

Here's a rant by me from shortly after I was derailed from TT (1997?). Nobody seems ever to've read it but me. Shrink the window to the size of a column if you want to be the first. The e-mail there is way out of date (so comment here or find the real one in Vlorblog if you want to get in touch).

Tirelli on CUNY

Vinny Tirelli founded adj-l in 1998 (& posted this history there yesterday).

Prior to 2000, when the current PSC leadership (the New Caucus) won their positions, the old leadership (since the 1970s) had not enforced the agency shop fee for part-time faculty. This discouraged part-time faculty from joining the union and paying dues, thereby becoming voting members. The dues were a flat rate -- for part-timers I think it was about $240 per year when last implemented. There was never more than about 600-800 part-timers who joined the union (out of about 7000-9000). The part-time activists themselves campaigned forcefully and over a long period of time for the union to enforce the agency fee so that it would be easier for us to get part-timers to join the union and vote (i.e., if they were already paying agency fee, then it wouldn't be onerous to join the union and translate that into union dues instead -- we'd been trying since the 8 0's to get the union to implement this). The old leadership wouldn't implement it, but when the new leaders came in (2000) they agreed with the part-time activists, instituted the agency fee, and restructured the dues so that we were not paying a flat rate, but a percentage (1.0% -- which is much better for those teaching only a couple of classes per year, whereas for those teaching a larger "part-time" load, it's not much different. Senior full time faculty pay a little more - 1.05%). Today there are about 4500 part-time faculty in the union as dues paying voting members (out of 9000-10,000 in any given semester). As you all know, there is a frequent turnover, and that is part of the problem with regard to continuity and mobilization. The union has paid (part-time) organizers on the various campuses who work to keep these numbers up. The disparity in salaries remain, though in the first contract negotiated by the new leadership (200 2?) part-time faculty who are teaching two or more classes on one campus get paid for an office hour (equivalent to another credit-hour -- e.g., 6 hours of credits gets paid as 7 with the extra one for an office or professional hour). We've got a ways to go, but let's not discount the gains -- in terms of political voice, we have a seat at the table as voting members. That is no small accomplishment. Now we have to turn that into more significant contractual gains - not an easy task when budget cuts are looming and inequality is thriving.

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"The bane of part-time faculty: satisfying work, lousy benefits"; Bridget Murray; APA Monitor December 1998.

"Surely ... A Mistake"

"Academic Life vs Personal Life", by Dr. Crazy (yesterday in Reassigned Time).

Clueless About HTML

I quit reading University Diaries for a while there; I can't tell why. Anyhow, this update on U Toledo is a good place to jump (back) in: just follow the links for the story of a train-wreck even worse than the one you probably work in. The inexplicably huge type can be made to shrink; her stuff in IHE, on the other hand, has to be enlarged—but is very hard to read even then since it won't shrink to fit in the appropriate window.

Teaching Isn't Work: NLRB

This book review tells the story of The University Against Itself: the (failed) 2005 NYU strike.

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"It's Not Just Academic: Union Rights On Campus"; Jason Kosnoski; City Limits; May 27, 2008.

Brown Versus Getting An Education

The AFL-CIO and the United Auto Workers (UAW) today filed a complaint against the United States government with the International Labor Organization (ILO), an agency of the United Nations, alleging that a 2004 decision by the Bush-dominated National Labor Relations Board in the Brown University case violates workers’ rights to the freedom of association. The complaint alleges that by denying teaching assistants and research assistants at private universities the right to join unions and engage in collective bargaining, the NLRB has violated workers’ rights under internationally recognized core labor standards ...

—from this post at the AFL-CIO "mediacenter". OK--people always seem to want to talk about big national issues instead of the local stuff they might actually be able to do something about (like organizing). Why not go international?

Also covered in Academe and mentioned in this AFT On Campus piece.

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"AFL-CIO and UAW File Complaint With UN Protesting Bush Labor Board Denying Teaching and Research Assistants' Freedom to Form Union"; February 26, 2007

In The Truth There Is No News

This undated piece in Labor Notes was evidently reprinted in the Monthly Review. Somebody on the list sez

This is the best press on PT issues I've seen in a long time,
unsubordinated as they are here to tenure or budgetary or "quality of education" concerns.

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"Part-Time Professors: Little Pay. No Pensions. No Health Care. No Seniority. Now Organizing Unions."; by Paul Abowd; Monthly Review February 29, 2008.