Letters to the Editor
“Big Tent” Organizing in Canada
I was pleased to see the article on Canadian organizing and the “big tent” strategy in the latest issue of the magazine (“In Canada, the Success of the Higher-Education Labor Movement Lies in ‘Big Tent’ Organizing,” Adjunct Advocate November-December 2004). However, I must correct a couple of important errors in quotations attributed to me. First, I did not say that the law put graduate employees in the same units as other teachers. I said that California labor law has generally been applied to include both contingents and tenure-track folks in the same bargaining units in the community colleges. In fact, the graduates in both the University of California (UC) system and California State University (CSU) system are organized separately. In CSU, as in most of the community colleges, the contingent lecturers are in the same unit as the tenure-track faculty.
The article further quotes me as stating that this legal endorsement “helped him negotiate some of the best contracts in the country….” It is true that some of the best contingent contracts in the United States are to be found in California, and usually in combined tenure-track/contingent (not including graduate students) units. However, I would never assert that I alone have ever negotiated a contract, good or otherwise. While I have advised many bargainers in California and elsewhere, I would never take such credit, nor should any single person.
The article identifies me as a member of the new union (Chicago City Colleges Contingent Labor Organizing Committee/CCCLOC). While I was a founder of the union, I am no longer a member, since I lost my job in the City Colleges during the time we were organizing. I am currently the Chair of the regional coalition with a similar name, Chicago Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor (COCAL), which recently hosted the sixth COCAL conference last August in Chicago, drawing over 200 folks from the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Thank you for allowing me to make these necessary corrections.
Joe Berry,
Chicago COCAL
California Part-Time Equity Fund Boondoggle
As Chair of the California Part-time Faculty Association, CPFA, I was pleased to find your article in the May/June 2004 issue of Adjunct Advocate, (“A Tale of Greed and Gluttony: The California Part-Time Faculty Equity Fund Boondoggle”) by Chris Cumo and P.D. Lesko. This is a topic which deserves the full attention of all faculty associations.
As a part-time teacher at Grossmont College, I was shocked to see that the independent union, United Faculty, had not only defined parity at 80 percent, but that they had defined parity at 80 percent of the difference in the hourly rates between full- and part-time teachers. Normally, part-time faculty are paid off the calculated hourly rate based on the first two columns of the full-time seven column salary schedule. What they have done with the Parity Money is add five more columns to make it look the same as the full-time schedule and are now paying 80 percent of the difference between the two rates.
Part-timers at the college face four major problems!
1. Parity should be and is usually defined as the difference between a full-time faculty’s income for teaching a class (5 hours/units per week is paid at $10,000-$15,000 or more per semester) and a part-time teacher (paid about $3,000-$4,000 per semester). The difference being that full-time faculty are paid for an hour of class time, an hour of preparation time and 15 minutes of office hours for every hour they teach. Part-time faculty are only paid for the hour they are in class. Until part-time faculty are making around $100 to $200 per hour, we will never reach parity. If it is wrongly defined as being the same hourly rate, then it is hopeless.
2. At Grossmont College, the majority of the part-time faculty are on salary steps one and two, which is the case in most colleges. People stay there for many reasons (recent hires, failure to hand in documentation for advancements, bureaucratic mistakes). Unfortunately, since the Union defined parity as the same hourly pay, these people receive no Equity funds because they are assumed to be at parity already! I found this out when I accidentally received a letter stating that my share of the Equity Fund was “zero,” because Human Resources had misplaced my Master’s degree documentation. After teaching 14 years, I had no right to any of the Equity funds? I knew something was wrong!
3. The worst part of this is that the other five salary steps, which were added to the part-time/over-load pay schedule using the Part-time Equity funding, are predominantly paid out to full-time faculty who teach over their full-time load. The hourly rates in the 7th step at the highest steps is more than double the hourly rate back on steps one and two, where most of the true part-time faculty are languishing. The lion’s share of the Part-time Faculty Equity Fund was redirected to become the Full-time Faculty Over-load Equity Fund, a definite distortion of the original purpose for this funding.
4. Finally, as per the Part-time Equity fund language, after parity is reached, then any excess Equity funding may be used for other educational purposes. Since our college has reached parity according to the horrendous definitions negotiated by our union and the District, it appears that they have begun spending our Equity funds elsewhere. The truth is that we are still at under 50 percent parity and that none of this money should be considered to be “excess funding.”
As a part-time Academic Senate representative at Grossmont College, I am working outside the faculty union to try to find a solution to this travesty. The Chancellor’s Office said there was little to be done, and that I should ask the union to help. Union officials are the same people who wrote the damaging language in the first place! There seems to be, as your article pointed out, no controls or guidelines on how parity should be defined, and how this money should be used to fulfill its title of “Part-time Faculty Parity Fund.”
Thank you for your continuing insightful coverage of part-time issues and I look forward to future communications with your fine organization. I am most interested in CPFA and Adjunct Advocate working together to promote part-time faculty concerns, and finally to find some solutions to the problems which have plagued part-time faculty for over thirty years!
David Milroy, Chair,
California Part-time Faculty Association,
San Diego, California
Italian Lettori Cross the Rubicon
In the extensive international press coverage of discrimination in Italian universities, Henry Rodgers’s “Italian Lecturers Cross the Rubicon” (Adjunct Advocate November-December 2004) ranks as the best legal article posted to our on-line listserv archive to date.
That listserv, set up by our colleague Anthony Green and rightly highly commended by Henry Rodgers, is an example of how private altruistic initiative has advanced our collective interests. Subscription-free and open to all lecturers, the listserv sets standards of transparency and debate which the well-funded representative groups have unfortunately never followed. There is evidence, however, that the vigilance of the listserv has made these bodies more accountable to their members.
While the European Commission’s potentially historic infringement proceedings against Italy are now enthusiastically approved by all sides, 466 of my colleagues once lent their names to a petition condemning the very proceedings they now endorse. At the time, the Commission was also subjected to gratuitous and unwarranted public abuse for its conduct of our case. If this embarrasses and would not be repeated now, it is largely because the subsequent legal education on the proceedings posted to the archive has acted as a corrective.
In conclusion, while I am uncertain as to the example value of the lettori case for adjunct faculty world-wide, a well-managed listserv and on-line archive like ours can be a valuable and unifying resource and can educate in labor law and procedures.
Kurt Rollin, University of Rome “La Sapienza,”
Rome, Italy
Henry Rodgers modestly understates his own role in his fine account of our battle against discrimination in the last issue of the Adjunct Advocate.
Over the course of the European Commission’s infringement proceedings against Italy, he has kept the just conduct of the case a live issue in influential publications with his convincing arguments on the need for consistency between remedies for redress before Italian courts, and articles 226 and 228 of the European Union Treaty.
The information he supplied through our listservs greatly improved understanding of the infringement proceedings and also our relations with the Commission, whose explanation for refusing to restore the status question to the proceedings had not been made public.
Henry Rodgers can take credit for the fact that there is now general confidence in the Commission’s case before the Court of Justice against Italy, and that the lettori demand greater transparency from their representatives.
Elizabeth MacDonald, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
Teaching English in Hungary
When I began reading “Teaching in Hungary Revitalizes One Adjunct’s Love for the Classroom” (Adjunct Advocate November-December 2004), I thought, “Oh here we go again. Some adjunct wants to once again bemoan all the horrors of the classroom, while he doesn’t even know how good he has it.” As a part-time adjunct professor and full-time teacher in the New York City public school system, working in the South Bronx, I personally take nothing for granted and am very happy with my adjunct position.
But as I read on, I was glad to see how Mr. Akers had a change of heart. What still saddens me, though, is that he did have to go to another country to have that change of heart; a point which he recognized. I have been tempted many a time to go and teach abroad, particularly in Morocco, where above the front entrance to every school, early education up to university level, reads the inscription: “Educators are the prophets of our time.”
Yet, somehow I never gave in to my temptation to leave my country where classroom management is not an issue, and where learning is highly valued. Yes, we live in a nation of spoiled, consumeristic, and largely ignorant folk. Yes, our students are hopelessly uneducated. Yes, our students pose challenges to us that, by and large, have more to do with politics and classroom management than “quality” educating. And finally, yes, we are sorely overworked and underpaid and get very little respect overall.
However, what I hope to impress upon Mr. Akers, and others who feel like they have to go somewhere else to become inspired to teach in the United States again, is that you don’t need a classroom full of silent, manageable, gift-giving students who thank you at the end of a lesson. What we need to do as educators is find the two or three minutes a week to think about our students’ potential rather than appearance, and the process rather than the product.
Facing the challenges of teaching with severely under- served populations has definitely shown me the political games this country plays with education, and it’s frankly unconscionable. But I refuse to let the politics of teaching prevent me from doing the actual work of educating. Moreover, working with this population has also caused me to constantly assess my pedagogical approach; in other words, I let the needs of my students teach me how to give them some knowledge they didn’t have before. I have to constantly engage in the self-referential dialogue that adds up to classroom dynamics. Of course I have many, many days where I want nothing more than to walk out of the building and never come back. However, it’s a matter of principle (to myself) and responsibility (to others) that I stay.
I must say that working in the New York City Board of Education has greatly impacted the instruction I give at my university, and as a matter of fact, the majority of my college students actually do give me gifts and thank me profusely at the end of the semesters.
Basically, there is no easy answer to the frustrations adjuncts experience. On the other hand, as Mr. Akers learned, a dose of humility and some perspective on what we do as opposed what is done to us never hurt.
Catherine Hourmati,New York, New York
