Part-Time Thoughts

• MLA Delegate Assembly Spends Six Hours on Debate Over Ward Churchill and 30 Minutes Discussing Use of Part-time Faculty

  5 Comments
  03 Jan 2010 /  academic associations, part-time faculty, politics
  The MLA is hurting financially. At the Philadelphia conference, the organization’s leadership voted to increase dues for the first time since 1993. I’d say 16 years of holding firm on a dues schedule was a pretty decent track record, and that certainly costs associated with running the organization have increased substantially since 1993. I’m guessing, for instance, staff salaries at the MLA have not been frozen for the past 16 years, and neither has the rent paid on the MLA headquarters, nestled snugly inside the old Standard Oil Building, built by John D. Rockefeller on lower Broadway near the Battery in New York City. 

  This year’s Delegate Assembly, which began at 1 p.m., wasn’t the most raucus gathering, even if the leader of the MLA’s Radical Caucus was there. Grover Furr, like Loretta Lynn, was there ready to stand by his man Ward Churchill, well actually, as Furr put it: “We’re not really standing up for Ward Churchill here, we’re standing up for the First Amendment to the Constitution.” How quaint. The MLA is an association focused on the humanities, not the interpretation of the Constitution or the Constitutional amendments. It’s moments like this when I have to say that the MLA is made to look buffoonish, self-important and silly in the eyes of the general public. A bunch of English professors vigorously debating the First Amendment. Maybe over at the Association of Legal Eagles we could have a rousing debate on the use of Beowulf in the courtroom? The resolution at hand was one condemning the University of Colorado for firing tenured professor Ward Churchill.

  Everyone take out your dead horses and begin beating vigorously.

  You won’t be shocked to learn that the MLA Delegate Assembly then spent a whopping 30 minutes talking about the financial exploitation contingent faculty. By then, so many delegates had slipped out of the room to go to a wine and cheese tasting somewhere, anywhere, the Delegate Assembly was left without a quorum. So the remaining delegates professed their undying love for and support of those of the contingent persuasion, and no resolution was able to be passed. 

  So what is the answer to this insulting six-hour comedy that focuses on the dismissal of one Ward Churchill versus what I believe is the wholesale massacre of thousands of non-tenured faculty thanks to non-continuing appointment clauses in their contracts? First of all, the MLA’s Executive Director was recently quoted in the New York Times as impugning the quality of instruction delivered by thousands of her own association’s members. If you are a faculty member off the tenure-track and have been a member of the MLA for two years, run for office at the next possible opportunity. It’s time that the make-up of the association’s Executive Committee changed drastically to reflect the change within higher education. Next, if you are a non-tenured faculty member, and belong to the MLA, withhold your dues this year in protest of Feal’s patently absurd condemnation of non-tenured faculty. Send a letter to the membership office letting them know exactly why you are choosing to sit it out this year. Feal has no business making such pronouncements, and the Executive Committee has no business letting her do so, or sitting by after the fact and doing nothing Unless, of course, the entire Executive Committee agrees with her, in which case they need to be re-educated and replaced. 

  The MLA relies on thousands of faculty off the tenure-track to butter their bread. Repaying the professional and financial support of thousands of members who hold non-tenured appointments with a public slap in the face is inexcusable and demonstrates incredible hubris on not only Feal’s part, but that of the MLA’s Executive Committee, as well.

  Tags: Delegate Assembly, Grover Furr, MLA, MLA Radical Caucus, Rosemary Feal, Ward Churchill

• Having So Many Contingent Faculty Diminishes the Overall Quality of Teaching and Learning

  3 Comments
  26 Dec 2009 /  AAUP, AFT, FACE, NEA, academic associations, part-time faculty, politics, research
  Before you huff and puff at me, I want to say that it the title of this piece comes from the Executive Director of the Modern Language Association, Rosemary Feal, and not me. She said it to a reporter from the New York Times who wrote a piece on December 18th about the outlook for graduates in the humanities. To paraphrase the article, perhaps those with graduate degrees in foreign languages, literatures, humanities and English would have a better chance of supporting themselves by turning to lives of crime rather than expecting to find a tenure-line job in higher education. Just please remember the old addage: “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.” That being said, identity theft, pick pocketing and taking candy from babies which can later be sold for a profit on eBay should be fields that could interest future Master’s and Ph.D. holders.

  This is from the New York Times piece:

  To make matters worse, the share of tenure-track jobs available has been shrinking. Tenure-track positions for assistant professors made up 53 percent of the English jobs advertised and 48.5 percent of those in foreign languages. From 1997 until recently, the group said, 55 percent to 65 percent of the advertised positions were tenure-track jobs. And since part-time adjunct positions are less likely than those for tenure-track jobs to be listed with the language association, the overall share of faculty members being hired for tenure-track jobs is probably smaller than the survey indicates.

  Ms. Feal said the trend toward hiring adjunct faculty members rather than permanent tenure-track professors had been going for about three decades, but was more pronounced than ever, as a growing number of struggling colleges and universities hired by the course or by the semester — usually paying little, and providing no benefits.

  “Having so many contingent faculty diminishes the overall quality of teaching and learning,” she said. “The individual course might be great, but you can’t expect temporary hires to do the kind of curricular planning it takes to maintain a successful department.” 

  I have just one word for Ms. Rosemary Feal: bollocks. Of course you can expect temporary hires to do curricular planning. Why? Because first of all temporary hires already do course planning. If, in fact, departments don’t require temporary hires to do curricular planning, it’s the administrators in the department, and not the temps in the department who are then responsible for any and all issues with respect to the quality of teaching and learning in said departments. 

  However, here’s the real issue. No study to date has linked the “quality” of teaching and learning to the extensive use of adjunct faculty. Hell, no one can really agree completely on what “quality” teaching is for the heaven’s sake. The AFT started the propaganda campaign when their leaders had to think of something to say to various state legislators to pry loose the millions and millions of dollars the AFT wants to fund its boondoogle FACE. So, starting with Dr. William Scheuerman when he was still the UUP union leader, he went before the New York State legislature and started the rumor that J. Edgar Hoover was a cross-dresser, and part-time faculty were lovely people whose existence within higher education was systematically destroying undergraduate education. 

  If the New Faculty Majority group does not work to dispel this bold-faced lie, it will be a miscarriage of justice of epic proportions. However, as more and more union members move into “advisory” and leadership positions within the New Faculty Majority, such unsubstantiated and damning statements will, most likely, be printed over and over again in newspapers across the United States. The New Faculty Majority will not answer the lies, alas, with the truth about who non-tenured faculty really are.

  The good news is that, really, no one cares that contingent faculty “diminish” the overall quality of teaching and learning, because of the financial benefits associated with the exploitation of temporary faculty. There are just as many administrators quoted in just as many newspapers touting the competency of their respective colleges’ contingent faculty. The AFT, NEA, AAUP and Rosemary Feal can all shout from the highest mountain top, but colleges and universities all over this country will continue to employ large numbers of temporary faculty.

  The job market for graduates in the humanities is in the crapper. Shouldn’t Rosemary Feal be pushing for reductions in the  number of graduate students accepted into Ph.D. programs? Shouldn’t she be pushing for mandatory retirement for tenure-line faculty at age 65? There are so many reasons that the humanities job market is a disaster. For Feal to zero in on the high number of non-tenured faculty as one of the main reasons shows her biases and that the MLA’s leadership has bought into the flawed notion that overall student retention and graduation rates have fallen because of the increased reliance on non-tenured faculty. Student retention is impacted by student preparation more than anything else. 

  Rosemary Feal has had a big glass of the Kool-aid mixed up by AFT leaders to differentiate between tenured and non-tenured faculty. (Tenured faculty are good for student retention and success. Non-tenured faculty are bad for student retention and success.) It’s the plot of a cheap dime store novel. It’s not a plot I would expect the Executive Director of the Modern Language Association to play a part in, much less quote as literary brilliance.

  Tags: AAUP, AFT, Dr. William Scheuerman, FACE, Modern Language Association, NEA, New York Times, Rosemary Feal, UUP

• Ask A Silly Question. Get A Silly Answer.

  2 Comments
  24 Jun 2009 /  part-time faculty, politics, research, teaching, tenure
  Here’s the question: Do full-time faculty members help students finish college? Kevin Carey, a Washington, DC think tank director, posed this question on the Chronicle’s Brainstorm blog. He tells the story of a panel discussion that focused on student success. At that panel, Dr. Cary Nelson, pointed out that colleges with the best student completion (aka graduation) rates are those that employ the fewest part-time faculty. Kevin Carey then points out an inconvenient truth, one which neither Nelson nor any other tenure advocate points out when spouting in public about the impact of non-tenured faculty on student retention and graduation rates.

  Carey writes: “There are some obvious correlation/causation issues to resolve here. Because full-time faculty members are more expensive than contingent faculty members, the colleges that tend to employ a lot of them tend to be wealthier than those that don’t. Wealthy colleges also tend to enroll a disproportionate number of wealthy, academically well-prepared students, who are more likely to complete college. So yes, colleges with stellar college graduation rates are more likely to hire full-time, well-credentialed, tenure-tack professors to teach. But they’re also more likely to have lots and lots of other things that also independently improve graduation rates. Resource advantages in higher education tend to be highly co-linear.”

  Well, yes. Harvard student preparedness is just slightly better than that of students accepted into, say, open enrollment programs at other four-year colleges. Furthermore, Harvard uses non-tenured faculty called preceptors. These non-tenured faculty get five years to teach at Harvard and then they’re out. No exceptions. They earn close to $50K per year, and are supported by the university in many of the same ways full-time faculty are supported. Preceptors make up about 15 percent of the faculty at Harvard, and they teach, primarily, undergraduate courses.

  Then we have another inconvenient fact, student graduation rates are falling at public four-year colleges, where the minority of faculty teach off the tenure-track. P.D. Lesko wrote about this in a blog entry.

  If we want students to graduate, we have to make sure they are prepared to do the coursework, and make sure that we staff courses with the best prepared and most fully supported faculty, whether they be full- and part-time. As I’ve written before, the problem is with the way in which part-time faculty are hired, supervised, compensated and trained—the problem is with the system, not the type of faculty appointment. We don’t need more full-time faculty to guarantee student retention and success. We need a drastic overhaul of the hiring, training, evaluation and supervision methods currently used with the hundreds of thousands of non-tenured faculty who teach tens of millions of students each semester.

  Tags: Cary Nelson, graduation rates, Kevin Carey, student retention

• A Mistreated Majority? Meybbee. Meybbee Not.

  3 Comments
  08 Jun 2009 /  part-time faculty, pay & benefits, politics, teaching
  Over at the OK Corral that is  The Chronicle of Higher Education, they’ve printed a commentary by adjunct Deborah Lewis. Lewis offers several solutions to improve the pay, performance and working conditions for adjunct faculty. I like some of her ideas. Much of what she offers up is insane, mind you, but I like original thinkers. So here’s Lewis’s platform in a nutshell:

  Require college administrators and state legislators to hammer out policies that address the pay inequities and establish fully-funded support programs for adjunct faculty.

  I love the idea of state legislators and college administrators working together to better the professional lives and performance of adjunct faculty. Collaboration—not involving the French and Nazis—leaves most people feeling warm and fuzzy all over. As always, though, I have just a couple of questions: Who’s going to make the first move? And why?

  Let’s look past logistics for a moment and think about what could be achieved by just a pinch of good will mixed with a dose of good old fashioned higher education-government collaboration. Adjuncts could score legislated equal pay raises and money for professional development. Colleges could implement more uniform hiring and evaluation, practices, and work toward more comprehensive faculty development and institutional support.

  Students would benefit tremendously. The research on this is clear.

  Like every deep thinker, Ms. Lewis tosses out some half-baked ideas, as well. She writes, “Endow a statewide fund to support sabbaticals…for adjuncts.”

  Call me a cynic, but I can’t see the taxpayers of  any state paying good money so some faculty member can take a year off with pay and benefits. The legislator who introduced the bill might quickly find him or herself tied to a stake with taxpayers preparing to light the pile of tinder. Ain’t nobody with the name Taxpayer willingly givin’ adjuncts sabbaticals, Ms. Scarlett. Not now. Meybbee not ever.

  Then again, we have a flash of brilliance: Lewis suggests, “Determine the cash value of benefit to the states’ higher-education systems of the labor and financial support that adjuncts contribute each year. Then translate that into eligibility for increased allocation of state and federal funds for higher education and, in turn, for the financing of proportional benefits for adjuncts (similar to the principle of profit-sharing).”

  Politicians speak money fluently. So do college administrators. What better language to use in the argument for funding benefits?

  Lewis, unfortunately, plays the “low pay” card. She’s from North Carolina, and at community colleges in her state, adjunct staff 80 percent of the courses. An adjunct with a Ph.D. at her institution earns $30 per hour. The per capita income in her state is $20,307 per year. The median hourly rate of employees in her state with 10-19 years of experience at their jobs is $17.23. The median average hourly rate paid by colleges and universities in North Carolina is $15.10.

  My point, of course, is that for adjuncts to argue they’re paid poorly to the masses who really are paid poorly is, well, in poor taste and no way to win the pay battle. However, I like Lewis’s stab at original thinking.

  Tags: adjunct faculty, Chronicle of Higher Education, Deborah Lewis, pay, performance, working conditions

• PT Faculty & The Employee Free Choice Act

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  20 May 2009 /  AAUP, AFT, NEA, organizing, part-time faculty, politics, unions
  In 1975, there were about 275,000 part-time faculty employed in the United States. Over the past 30 years, the number of faculty off the tenure-track has mushroomed to over 800,000 individuals, or about 70 percent of the total college faculty employed in the United States. Recent studies suggest that these faculty teach, on average, half of the courses offered at colleges and universities. It is a common misconception that the number of faculty on the tenure-track has stagnated. Quite the opposite is true. Over the past decade, the number of tenure-faculty has increased by over 50,000 individuals nationwide. Of course the number of faculty off the tenure-track has increased more quickly. 

  As the number of faculty off the tenure-track grew, leaders of the the three major education labor unions did little more than fiddle while Rome burned. If it weren’t so tragic, the systemic ineptitude would be comical. In 1992, the AFT represented some 45,000 part-time faculty, most of whom were in the union’s New York, California, Oregon and Washington affiliates. Today, some 17 years later, the AFT represents around 60,000 part-time faculty, most of whom teach in New York, California, Oregon, Washington and Michigan. In 17 years, while higher education saw the number of part-time faculty climb to over 500,000 individuals, the AFT organized 1,100 part-timers per year. AAUP has actually lost part-time faculty members. Today, the group reports some 3,500 part-time faculty members. A decade ago, AAUP represented almost 6,000 part-timers. AAUP recently formed a strategic alliance with AFT in order to jointly organize faculty groups on campuses. 

  On the surface, the Employee Free Choice Act could work to make campus organizing much easier. If a majority of employees signed union cards, the NLRB would be required to certify the union. There would be no need for employees to vote in a secret ballot. With respect to part-time college faculty, in states were the unionization of part-time employees was legal, such a change could lead to sweeping changes in the numbers of part-time faculty represented by collective bargaining units. To me, this is a double-edged sword simply due to the abysmal track records of the current education unions in their efforts to secure equitable pay and working conditions for part-time faculty union members over the course of the past 35 years.

  As a faculty member organized under the auspices of the Employee Free Choice Act, I could find myself represented by a national union whose leaders are hell bent for leather to reduce the numbers of part-time nation-wide. Eradication of exploited workers doesn’t count, in my book, as bettering their working conditions. Worse still, I could find myself in an agency shop. I actually taught at a school whose faculty union had negotiated agency shop dues payments. It was a waste of my money; the union leaders negotiated absolutely nothing for the part-time faculty during the years I taught at the school. Part-time faculty in unified locals all over the country routinely see their union leaders negotiate contracts that, for instance, include “equal percentage raises.” Contracts like this put the locals’ part-time faculty squarely into the category of second-class citizens. The Employee Free Choice Act could help unscrupulous union leaders simply accrete part-time faculty into existing locals, where the part-timers would pay dues for sub-standard or non-existent representation.

  As a part of my January 2009 prognostications, I wrote that “Obama will not be able to get the Employee Free Choice Act passed.” Now that several influential senators have come out against the latest incarnation of the legislation proposed in March 2009, it looks as though part-time faculty may dodge the bullet that is the application of the Employee Free Choice Act within higher education.

  Tags: AAUP, AFT, Employee Free Choice Act, NLRB, part-time faculty

• The Pope and America’s Adjunct Faculty

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  11 May 2009 /  AFT, Canadian part-timers, FACE, part-time faculty, pay & benefits, politics, tenure
  Let’s be honest; Pope Benedict XVI has little charisma. Whereas John Paul II was the Frank Sinatra of the Vatican, Pope Benedict is more the Joey Bishop of the Papal Ratpack. Be that as it may, the faculty and leaders of America’s 200 Catholic universities answer directly to Rome and His Holiness. Ironically, the 1991 document (For those who’d like to read it in Latin, click here to visit the original document on the Vatican web site.) that required Catholic universities in the U.S. to answer to Rome was written by John Paul II. The Ex Corde Ecclesiae (from the Heart of the Church) required American Catholic universities to seek affirmation from the Holy See. As a result of the Ex Corde Ecclesiae, 13 American Catholic colleges and universities ended their affiliation with the Church, or were declared “no longer Catholic.”  

  So, where am I going with all this? Straight over to Jamaica, New York, to a Catholic college called St. John’s University. Then, it’s due west to Marquette University, a Jesuit institution, in Wisconsin. Over the course of the past month, both institutions have made remarkable strides toward part-time faculty equity. At Marquette University, the institution’s faculty senate will, today, discuss a report from the school’s faculty council. That report urges university administrators to give the school’s adjuncts contracts, salary increases or benefits. According to a piece in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “The report asserts that Marquette has a moral obligation as a Jesuit institution to fairly compensate part-time instructors.”

  A moral obligation! Finally. Of course Catholic colleges, heck, every religious institution in our country have a moral obligation to treat all workers fairly and equally. This is how the Marquette report puts it, “We believe that every group of individuals who is part of the larger community that comprises ‘Marquette’ should be treated equally and should have access to the same benefits as any other member.”

  The effort to have the Marquette community take up this discussion was spearheaded by a tenured professor in the theology department, Dr. Daniel Maguire. Faculty in Maguire’s department, last year, passed a resolution urging university officials to look into the way Marquette University treats it adjunct faculty—who teach 41 percent of the courses offered at the institution.

  Meanwhile, in its May 15th issue The Chronicle of Higher Education includes a piece about St. John’s University. St. John’s recently converted 20 non-tenured positions in their writing program into tenure-track slots. The huge news is that university administrators hired the 20 non-tenured faculty teaching in those slots onto the tenure-track.

  Poof…you’re now a tenure-line faculty member. Dorothy clicked her heels together and made it from Oz to Kansas.

  St. John’s administrators not only made a huge commitment to the university’s writing program, administrator’s there showed immense courage and moral leadership in hiring the non-tenured faculty already teaching in those slots. All of the 20 writing instructors had been hired in over a period of two years as full-time temporary faculty on one-year contracts, and most hold terminal degrees. 

  When AFT FACE was on the verge of getting millions for 2,000 new tenure-line faculty slots for SUNY/CUNY, full-time faculty objected to hiring already-employed non-tenured faculty for the newly created slots. According to a piece in the New York Sun, “Many full-time faculty at City University of New York and State University of New York schools said giving preference to the adjunct faculty in their departments would restrict who they could hire and would not necessarily strengthen their departments.” A University of Albany department chair was ever more haughty on the subject of hiring non-tenured faculty into newly created tenure-line slots: ”That’s not the normal way we do it,” the chairman of the physics department at the University at Albany, John Kimball, said. “It’s a nationally advertised search for any new faculty members. Adjuncts are welcome to apply, but they’re not given special preference over anyone else.”

  AFT union officials went right along with this ridiculous slap in the face. I wrote about it here. There are 20,000 non-tenured faculty represented by the AFT at SUNY/CUNY and not a single one of those faculty has a snowball’s chance in hell of line conversion through their union contract. Why? Because the union contracts negotiated year-after-year never include line conversions. At York University, in Toronto, Canada, faculty recently went on strike for several weeks to protect line conversions included in their union contract.

  At Marquette University, faculty there believe the debate over the equitable treatment of adjunct faculty, and the hoped for improvements in pay, benefits and job security, will spur similar movements at the nation’s 27 other Jesuit colleges. One imagines if a movement for the ethical treatment of adjuncts were to take root and flourish, it would, perhaps, find no better place to sprout than within the nation’s 200 Catholic universities. After all, Ex Corde Ecclesiae was based on canon law, and so is Dr. Daniel Maguire’s argument. Within the Catholic Church, canon law is the linguafranca of the land.

  Tags: adjunct faculty, Catholic universities, Chronicle of Higher Education, CUNY, Daniel Maguire, Ex Corde Ecclesiae, Jesuit colleges, John Kimball, line conversion, Marquette University, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, New York Sun, Pope Benedict XVI, Pope John Paul II, St. John's University, SUNY, York University

• Part-Time FacXplotation “Coming to a Boil”

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  24 Mar 2009 /  Canadian part-timers, adjuncts worldwide, part-time faculty, pay & benefits, politics, unions
  There are a mere 40,800 college faculty in Canada, and 50-60 percent of them work off the tenure-track. According to a piece published in the Calgary Herald, the overuse of scads of perma-temp faculty in Canada is “coming to a boil.” Why? The rapid expansion of public employee unions and the fact that “these professors are asking for a bigger piece of the pie.”

  The piece quotes the AFT-Washington funded study by Dr. Dan Jacoby in which he concludes that higher numbers of part-time faculty lead to lower graduation rates. Jacoby was then trotted out in front of the Washington State legislature to convince the politicians to give AFT-Washington money for the union’s FACE program. Jacoby testified that, “This should not be taken to mean that part-time faculty offer less quality, but it would be absurd to believe that working under the deplorable conditions they work under does not have an impact on the system.” 

  Check out the article in the Herald. Part-timers at York University struck for 11 weeks to get a bigger slice of the pie. The unionized part-timers were forced back to work by provincial politicians who caved under pressure from unhappy constituents.

  Tags: AFT-Washington, Canada, Dr. Dan Jacoby, FACE, York University

• President Obama and Me

  1 Comment
  11 Mar 2009 /  AFT, NEA, pay & benefits, politics, unions
  I am floating on a cloud today. Why? Well, for about as long as I can remember, I’ve thought unions that negotiate contracts that call for pay to be based on seniority as opposed to merit are single-handedly dragging down the quality of education in our country. Whether we’re talking about the local elementary school, community college or four-year public university, where there are unions the contracts read the same: pay is calculated on the basis of seniority, and merit increases are given out equally to all. Almost equally, more often than not the full-time faculty get the merit pay, and the part-time faculty get the short end of the stick with a nice red bow wrapped around it. 

  Today, President Obama is being quoted in more news outlets than I can possible keep up with saying that he wants to see merit pay used to (hold on to your bunions) compensate teaching excellence, and to see systems put in place to get rid of poor teachers more quickly. Can you imagine? Make no mistake, the NEA and AFT will fight hard against any move away from seniority toward merit-based pay. If President Obama can actually pull this one off, however, the change will have a profound impact on k-12 education and, I would imagine, eventually work its way up into higher education, as well.

  Tags: AFT, merit pay, NEA, Obama, seniority

• As The Chickens Come Home to, Well, Obfuscate

  1 Comment
  03 Mar 2009 /  contracts, organizing, part-time faculty, politics, teaching, unions
  Out West where the buffalo roam, the antelope play and the Humvees hum down Highway 101, there’s a slaughter going on. Had anyone bothered to ask me, I would have told you that it was going to happen sooner or later. I actually did, when I wrote about it in November 2008 here. I wrote that the rifles were pointed squarely at (who else?) part-time faculty.

  In the February 26th issue of the Daily Aztec—and who doesn’t love a newspaper named for an ancient people who practiced human sacrifice?—Carole Kennedy, Ph.D., the president of the San Diego State University chapter of the California Faculty Association (CFA), is quoted as saying, “The state feels part-time faculty are expendable…and…CSU has laid off lecturers….” 

  The state feels the CSU part-timers are expendable? Of course the state feels part-time faculty employed on the CSU campuses are expendable. The CFA union leaders told them the part-time faculty were expendable. Hell, CFA leaders practically pinned “you’re expendable, bub” signs on the back of every single part-time lecturer employed in the CSU system. How’d they do that, you ask? Why, by bargaining a labor agreement that contains language that encourages state officials to treat part-time faculty as though they were expendable. In times of trouble, the CFA’s contract calls for part-time faculty to be dismissed first, before full-time temporary lecturers and, to be sure, before full-time regular faculty. And now, Carole Kennedy, Ph.D., associate professor and president of the San Diego State University CFA, tells us that the state feels part-time faculty are expendable, and the state is high-handed and haughty to think so. 

  Evidently, when the state treats part-time faculty as though they are expendable, it’s misguided and wrong, but when the union does it, it’s “representation” wrapped up in pretty paper and topped with a frilly bow, and CFA staff and their cheerleaders tell us that lecturers in the CSU system enjoy one of the best union contracts on three legs. AAUP activist Marc Bousquet lauds the CFA contract in a Chronicle of Higher Education piece posted on (I couldn’t make this stuff up if I wanted to) April 1, 2008. In a 2002 interview Bousquet did with AAUP President Cary Nelson, they discuss the CFA contract that “has won greater job security for the non-tenure track lecturers…” Nelson replies, “There is often genuine solidarity there between union activists who are full time and part time. The California Faculty Association has joined the part timers and full timers in cheerful and creative activism.”

  Well, until the budget cuts hit the fan, and then it’s every tenure-line faculty member for him or herself, and the part-time lecturer brothers and sisters in cheerful and creative solidarity are expendable. In California, Oregon, and Washington state, where over 60,000 part-timers are unionized, part-timers are losing their jobs hand over fist, and their union representatives are obfuscating, or worse still, stone-faced and silent in the face of what can only be described as tremendous personal loss. Even if these union leaders are helpless (thanks to decades of what can only be described as shabby representation) to stop the layoffs and firings, they can at least be honest about the fact that in their states, and thanks to their contracts, part-time faculty are being forced to bear the brunt of the budget cuts imposed by state legislators.

  In California, I wish that Lillian Taiz, president of the CFA, would tell the truth. I wish she would acknowledge the slaughter of her part-time lecturers, and come clean and confess that the contract her union negotiated on behalf of 12,000 lecturers has placed part-timers and their jobs in the direct line of fire. I wish she would give interviews and talk about exactly how many of her 12,000 lecturers have lost their jobs, and how the loss of those lecturers has impacted the quality of education on CSU’s campuses, where 10,000 students have been denied admissions and class sizes have ballooned.

  In short, I wish Lillian Taiz, and her counterparts in Washington and Oregon, would stop obfuscating.

  Tags: Carole Kennedy, Cary Nelson, CFA, CSU, Lillian Taiz, Marc Bousquet, San Diego State University

• Throwing Money Here, There & Everywhere (Just Not At PTers)

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  12 Feb 2009 /  AFT, FACE, NEA, SEIU, Uncategorized, politics, unions
  I am thinking about sending a letter to President Obama. In it, I will apply to run any bank of his choosing for $400,000 per year. Since adjuncts are used to having more than one job, I thought I might even apply to head two—maybe even three— banks. If I worked at three banks, that would mean a salary of $1.2 million per year. I’ll tell Mr. Obama to skip the driver and car for me, and that I can fly steerage class to just about anywhere on earth. As I see it, taxpayers will save hundreds of thousands of dollars every year by having me run a few banks. After all, it’s all about getting the right people into the right offices, right? 

  On February 6th, American Federation of Teachers FACE Man Craig Smith wrote in his FACE Talk blog that, “AFT Oregon has worked with legislators in the Oregon House to file a wide-ranging piece of legislation pursuing the goals set forth in our FACE Campaign. House Bill 2557 directs institutions to establish plans for improving their ratios of full-time to part-time faculty at the institutional level ….” Smith goes on to mention that, “Leading the charge is former AFT member, Representative Michael Dembrow, who is now Vice Chair of the Oregon House Education Committee.” Dembrow is able to lead the charge, because last year, he ran for an open seat on the Oregon State Legislature. Before that, he was the president of the Portland Community College faculty union.

  Was Michael Dembrow a friend to Oregon’s part-timers, I wondered? A quick trip over to the Portland Community College faculty union web site and contract answered my questions. After almost four decades of representation (the past 16 of them under Dembrow’s leadership), in 2008, the Portland Community College union negotiated health insurance coverage for the 1,200 part-time faculty (there are 600 full-timers). Well, for those part-timers who average a half-time load over three years. There’s a part-time salary “scale,” as well; ascending the scale resembles a game of Donkey Kong (for those who remember this diabolically difficult video game). To get from level 1 to level 7 entails working 2,000 contact hours (500 classes, or 125 years, at 4 courses per year), and earns that faculty member an eventual raise of about $170 per credit hour taught.

  To move up a step on the full-time faculty schedule, a member must work three years. The full-timer who tops out on the salary schedule can expect to earn an additional $30,000 per year. Is there job security for part-timers, maybe, after three decades of representation? Dream on, Teen Queen. From PCC’s contract: “A temporary appointment may be terminated at the discretion of Management without review under the terms of this Agreement.” There’s not even equality in death: full-time faculty get five days of bereavement leave and part-timers get three days.

  The PCC contract is Michael Dembrow’s legacy and it’s a legacy that oozes inequitable representation. Michael Dembrow, in short, did nothing extraordinary for the 1,200 part-time faculty whom he served all those years. I wish I could tell you how much he paid himself as President of the PCC local, but he never saw to it that his union filed the requisite financial disclosure forms with the U.S. Department of Labor.

  Prior to running for office, in March 2007, Michael Dembrow testified in front of the Oregon Legislature in support of FACE and told the legislators this:

  “Part-timers are generally not paid to be on campus other than to teach their courses, and in many cases they are off running to another job at another college or university (their combined annual teaching load often exceeds those of full-timers)….This practice has consequences. There is a growing body of literature that points to the harmful effects of over-using part-timers in your FACE packet you can find an annotated bibliography of some of them.”

  Then we have the money trail. Michael Dembrow raised $167,748 to run for the open seat he was elected to. The average open seat candidate in Oregon raises $61,876 for a candidacy. So was Michael Dembrow, first-time political candidate, a fundraising savant? Not really. About 75 percent of Dembrow’s money came from just three donors: 

  In 2008, Oregon Federation of Teachers donated $77,941 total to political candiates. ($38,441 to Dembrow, was the single largest contribution the union group made in 2008.) They contributed 22.92 percent of his money.

  In 2008, the Oregon Education Association donated $227,605 total to political candiates. The Oregon Education Associaiton was the 3rd largest overall political contributor in the state. ($27,707 to Dembrow was the third largest contribution the union group made in 2008.) They contributed 16.22 percent of his money.

  In 2008, SEIU Employees Local 503 donated $493,228  total to political candiates, making the organization the single largest political contributor in the entire state of Oregon. (SEIU donated $15,902 to Dembrow. It was the fourth largest contribution the union group made in 2008.)

  Dembrow even scored a donation from his own union. In 2008, Portland Community College Faculty Federation gave $11,000 to political candidates. (The $10,000 to Dembrow was the single largest contribution union group made in 2008). They contributed 5.96 percent of his money.

  It’s no small wonder Michael Dembrow decided to “lead the charge” for FACE in Oregon. The Oregon House Education Committee which Dembrow co-chairs, and which sponsored the current FACE legislation, is populated by six members of the House who received over $151,000 in campaign donations from faculty union groups in Oregon during 2008. 

  Call me crazy, but wouldn’t it be a more effective use of $1,000,000 to just, well, spend it on professional development for part-time faculty in Oregon? Then again, once you get used to throwing around large sums of money here, there and everywhere, it’s probably pretty tough to stop.

  Tags: AFT Oregon, Craig Smith, FACE, Michael Dembrow, NEA Oregon, political donations, Portland Community College, SEIU

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