SAWSJ Sponsors Public Hearing in New York City
by Jennifer Berkshire
In 1976, New York resident and then private citizen Ed ward
Sullivan was faced with a tough decision. He could continue
to teach English as a Second Language at New York University,
where he’d been an adjunct faculty member for fifteen years–a
job he loved–or he could run for the New York State Assembly.
In the end, Sullivan’s wife made the decision for him; the
position of Assemblyman, it seems, came with health insurance.
It has been almost twenty-five years since Sullivan traded
in the classroom chalkboard for the chambers of the Capitol
building in Albany. But he has never forgotten about his days
as an adjunct.
Sullivan recently had an opportunity to catch up on the current
state of the university workplace. Joining such academic notables
as Columbia University Professor of History Eric Foner, and
NYU Professor of Africana Studies, Robin D.G. Kelly, Sullivan
participated in a hearing on the workplace rights of college
and university workers around the country. The panel heard
testimony from graduate students who have been trying to form
unions, adjunct faculty who are fighting for improved working
conditions and janitors who are trying to make ends meet.
The hearing, held at New York City’s Judson Memorial Church,
and attended by more than 300 people, was sponsored by a group
known as Scholars, Artists and Writers for Social Justice.
The group, which goes by the unlikely acronym SAWSJ, was formed
in 1997 with the purpose of building academic solidarity on
campus for labor struggles nationwide. Increasingly though,
SAWSJ has been turning its attentions to issues confronted
by university workers, from tenure disputes to subcontracting
to union organizing campaigns. The recent hearing was held
as part of a national campaign to promote a code of fair labor
practices for university workplaces. SAWSJ hopes that by uniting
full and part-time faculty, along with students, staff-members,
and service and maintenance employees, it can strengthen the
rights of campus workers and improve their working conditions.
Barbara Bowen, President of the 17,000 member Professional
Staff Congress at the City University of New York, opened
the hearing with a warning about the growing sway of corporate
values over university life. Universities, she said, are increasingly
“mimicking the corporation” in their treatment of employees.
She appealed to all sectors of the university workforce to
recognize their shared interest in improving campus-working
conditions, but singled out university teachers for special
mention. “Academics must learn to defend themselves as workers,”
she concluded.
While the crowd was spirited and the panel of listeners sympathetic,
much of the testimony was grim. Graduate students from Yale
and the University of Illinois recounted their lengthy battles–both
failed to date–to get their universities to recognize unions
of teaching assistants on those campuses, despite having won
union elections. At NYU, the ballots of teaching and research
assistants who voted on union representation last spring have
yet to be counted. NYU administrators impounded the ballots
soon after the vote, and a legal stalemate has since ensued.
“It is especially distressing when violations of the right
to organize occur in university settings,” said Lance Compa,
a speaker at the event and the author of a new Human Rights
Watch report on the state of labor rights in the United States.
“Universities depend on freedom of speech and freedom of expression,
and should be equally sensitive to the freedom of association
among their own employees,” said Compa.
Not all of the news was bad. Gary Zabel, the co-chair of
the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor and an adjunct
professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts
Boston, reported on successful efforts by adjunct faculty
on his campus to win improved pay and benefits, raising the
average pay per course from $2,500 to $4,000 and gaining full
medical and dental coverage. The victory by the adjuncts,
who are represented by an affiliate of the National Education
Association, came after more than two years of reaching out
to students and full-time faculty on campus. “By forming an
alliance between faculty, students, adjuncts and existing
campus unions,” noted Zabel, “we were able to change the culture
of the university workplace.”
With 47 percent of all academic positions now held by part-time
and non-tenure-track faculty, Zabel believes that this kind
of cross-sector organizing holds the key to improving working
conditions for part-time faculty. Despite the successes on
the UMass Boston campus, though, Zabel recognizes that organizing
adjunct faculty on a broader scale won’t be easy. “Part-timers
are notoriously difficult to organize,” he said. “Our employers
have created us for that reason.”
Other speakers testified about a growing awareness on the
part of students and their parents that the working conditions
of university employees are inextricably linked to the quality
of a university education. Nicole MacLaughlin, a representative
of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, and a former graduate
student at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, said
that support for the union of graduate students there is on
the rise among parents and students. “They understand that
our working conditions are their learning conditions,” she
said.
It is precisely this sentiment that SAWSJ hopes will lead
to widespread support for its University Code of Conduct regarding
the rights of university workers. The code, which SAWSJ plans
to introduce for debate on campuses across the country this
spring, contains six provisions that the group maintains must
be followed by educational institutions to be considered ‘fair
labor practice employers.’ The provisions include the right
to participate fully in determining the conditions of work;
the right to learn, teach, work and conduct research in an
environment that values and protects academic freedom; the
right to a living wage that includes benefits; the right to
a workplace free from discrimination and harassment; the right
to a safe and healthy workplace; and finally, the right to
learn, teach and work in an institution that does not depend
upon prison labor. “No educational institution can fulfill
its mission,” reads the preamble to the Code, “unless these
rights are protected.”
Worthy sentiments no doubt, but does the Code stand a chance
of being implemented by colleges and universities? SAWSJ took
the idea for the code from another cause that seemed like
a long shot just a few years ago–the student-led anti-sweatshop
movement that has since fought successfully to ban sweatshop-made
products from universities across the country.
Besides, say advocates, the issues are worth raising even
if the Code fails to catch on. Rich Moser is a National Field
Representative for the American Association of University
Professors, a group that has aggressively organized part-time
and adjunct faculty in recent years. The Code of Conduct,
said Moser, is a response to a deep contradiction between
the self-professed mission of our educational institutions
and what their labor practices say about them. “The university
can’t help but be a teacher,” he said. “If it evokes corporate
values, if it exploits workers and pays them poorly, then
that is the hidden but true curriculum of the university.
In effect, the university is teaching that it’s good to exploit
people, and that, I would say, is very bad teaching.”
The graduate students, adjunct faculty, full professors and
campus construction workers who attended the hearing seemed
to agree. At the event’s conclusion, a vote was held on whether
or not to ‘pass’ the ‘Fair Labor Practices’ Code of Conduct.
Not surprisingly, it passed unanimously.
