Jack Longmate Wants Equal Representation From His Union. The President of the NEA Isn’t So Sure.
By P.D. Lesko
Jack Longmate is a renegade in the best sense of the word. He is saying out loud a long-hidden truth: in most locals, education unions have consistently neglected their legal duty to represent part-time and full-time faculty members equally. I have written before that this is a class-action suit waiting to happen. Our Part-Time Thoughts writer posted “UUP Yours—Some Part-Timers Unhappy With Tentative Union Contract.” I have spoken to numerous adjunct activists about this issue, including Keith Hoeller, who has been advocating on behalf of part-time faculty in Washington State and nationally for the past decade, or longer. Keith has written about this issue in op-eds published by the mainstream media in the Pacific Northwest.
Jack Longmate, as an individual, not representing his union, in February 2o11 testified in front of the House Education Committee of the Washington State House of Representatives against a piece of legislation favored by the leadership of his union. He was quickly confronted and his own supervisor, a member of the same union executive board as Longmate, called for Jack (the only part-time on his affiliate’s executive board), to be tossed off the board. In short, Jack Longmate was retaliated against by the members
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[...] reading AdjunctNation, you’ll remember Jack as the part-time faculty union member who was forced out of his Washington State faculty union local leadership position after he spoke (as an individual) before legislators about ways in which his unified local was [...]