Oct. 28—When adjunct teacher Marty Slobin died three years ago, he had so little money that fellow faculty members took up a collection to pay for his funeral. Slobin—who couldn’t afford a car and so shuttled by bus among the three Detroit campuses where he taught—died of a heart attack at age 55. The political science lecturer hadn’t undergone the heart surgery his doctors recommended because he feared losing too much income while taking time off to recover, making it impossible to keep up with his health insurance premium payments.
Slobin’s story, recounted in AFT On Campus, the magazine for AFT higher education activists, illustrates the injustices faced by adjunct and other part-time faculty across the United States. Although they teach an ever-growing number of courses at community colleges and universities, these workers struggle to provide students with a quality education while facing low wages, meager benefits, no job security and little respect on the job—what some faculty activists describe as academic sweatshops.
To promote fairness for these workers, AFT kicked off its second annual Campus Equity Week (CEW) Oct. 27, featuring concerts, art shows, organizing drives, political action, informational pickets and other events.
As part of CEW, AFT leaders are distributing Standards of Good Practice in the Employment of Part-Time/Adjunct Faculty, a recent report recommending such measures as salaries proportionate to full-time tenured faculty, fair reappointment procedures and a voice in academic decisions to ensure quality instruction for students and fair working conditions for adjuncts.
“Institutions increasingly rely on adjuncts to teach, but they pay adjuncts extremely low wages and they deny them such basic benefits as health care and pensions,” says AFT Vice President William Scheuerman. “The trend is more than troubling, it is unacceptable.”
In addition to shifting more classes to part-time teachers, colleges and universities also are increasing their reliance on full-time professors who are not on a tenure track. These workers get lower salaries, fewer benefits and less professional support than their tenure-track counterparts, according to an AFT report released this week, The Growth of Full-Time, Nontenure-Track Faculty.
Academic Sweatshops on the Rise
In 1987, 33 percent of college educators worked part-time. By 1998, that figure grew to 43 percent, according to the most recent statistics from the U.S. Department of Education. Adjunct faculty is routinely denied health insurance and other benefits, AFT leaders say. They generally are excluded from department meetings, lack job security and rarely are provided with offices, paid office hours, telephones or e-mail accounts to communicate with students.
This week, AFT activists across the country are drawing attention to the unprofessional treatment endured by part-time faculty.
- The San Mateo (Calif.) Community College Federation of Teachers will host an on-campus quiz show on adjunct faculty issues and display white balloon “ghosts” throughout campus to honor more than 100 part-time faculty whose positions were not renewed this academic year.
- The Professional Staff Congress (PSC) in New York City plans to rally outside a meeting of the City University of New York’s (CUNY’s) board of trustees to highlight the inequitable working conditions of adjunct professors. The union also will conduct workshops informing adjuncts of new full-time job openings at CUNY, provide tips on preparing for the application process and host a screening of films on contingent faculty issues.
- In Ohio, the University of Cincinnati’s Adjunct Faculty Association will mobilize activists as part of a campaign in which 1,400 adjunct faculty are seeking a voice on the job. The campaign includes working for legislation to grant adjuncts and graduate employees collective bargaining rights.
To help local activists with their events, AFT leaders are providing downloadable materials such as fliers, data sheets and posters.
“Campus Equity Week helps raise local and national awareness about these crucial issues,” says Scheuerman. “It also allows local unions to show the public that there are concrete solutions to the challenges faced by their members.”
Tribute to a Colleague
Marty Slobin was one of 1,400 full- and part-time temporary lecturers at the University of Michigan’s campuses in Ann Arbor, Flint and Dearborn. This April, the academic workers there formed a union with AFT, the Lecturers’ Employee Organization (LEO). As CEW begins, LEO activists are in the midst of negotiating a first contract with the university. They are demanding raises, health benefits and job security—improvements they hope will prevent other educators from facing the same hardships that befell their colleague.
“The fact that our members are not paid enough to have the things you need in this society is an issue of respect,” says Bonnie Halloran, LEO president and a part-time anthropology lecturer at the University of Michigan–Dearborn. “We are paid about half of what public high school teachers are paid,” she says. “The difference is that public school teachers have had unions for a long time and we haven’t.”
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