A Pyrrhic Victory? A Practical Look at the New School Adjunct Contract
by Elizabeth J. Carter
The unveiling this past November of the first-ever collective-bargaining agreement between 2,000 part-time faculty and administration at the New School was met with widespread public attention and considerable self-congratulation by both sides. Indeed, the agreement is being described in superlatives usually reserved for the likes of pro athletes and hit television shows. In a statement to Inside Higher Education, for example, Richard Boris, Director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions of Hunter College at the City University of New York, called the contract “amazing”—one that will “serve as a template for contingent faculty throughout the country.” With similar effusion, New School President Robert Kerrey told The Chronicle of Higher Education that the agreement’s purported advances in guaranteeing job security amount to a “win-win situation.”
Many aspects of the contract are indeed impressive in their apparent commitment to improving the lot of part-time faculty, especially in the areas of health insurance and salary increases. Further, there is no arguing that the contract symbolizes how essential part-time faculty have become to the education of university students in this country. Nevertheless, a close look at the memorandum of the contract (which may be downloaded at http://www.newschooluaw.org/memorandum-of-agreement.html), reveals gaping holes in its potential application. These holes could result in a nullification of nearly every crucial benefit conferred by the contract, and leave part-time faculty once again on the street, tin cups in hand.
The first and most obvious problem with the contract is its time line, which forces adjuncts to wait more than three years (or ten semesters) before becoming eligible for the much-touted annual and multi-year appointments of one and three years, respectively. Until the end of ten semesters, however, part-timers are on probation and “post probation,” during which there is no presumption of reappointment, no guaranteed course load, and no remedy for pre-appointment course load reductions.
As “Andrew,” an astute reader of InsideHigherEd.com noted in the Comments section of the Web site’s November 1, 2005 article, “Breakthrough for Part-Timers,” part-timers could, in fact, be fired at the end of nine semesters and replaced by new part-time faculty, who would then have to negotiate another agreement, or wait five years to become eligible for the much-touted multi-year appointments.
Supporters of the agreement might argue the implausibility of the above-described scenario, which, if it occurred, would certainly reflect a lack of good-faith bargaining by the New School administration. Those same supporters should remember, however, that the negotiations leading to the contract were protracted and contentious, suggesting that university officials are as much pressured as they are enlightened.
The contract’s provisions for salary raises are encouraging; they promise an immediate, across-the-board increase of $10 an hour. For an adjunct teaching one three-credit course per 16-week semester at $25 an hour, this translates into a (pre-tax) rise in salary from $1200 to $1680 per semester. Even when union dues of 1.15 percent (which would reduce the post-raise salary of $1680 by $19.32) and benefit contributions are factored in, this rise in earned income is respectable. However, the acclaimed “longevity” increases are shockingly low. For example, adjuncts who have taught at the New School for 10 years are to receive, as of Fall, 2005, a longevity increase of $2 an hour; 15 years, $3 an hour; 20 years, $4 an hour. Contrast these increases with the far more generous increases set forth in the collective-bargaining agreement just hammered out between the Adjunct Faculty Association and administration at Nassau Community College. There, adjuncts with 20 or more years of service receive a “Professional Excellence Pay” raise of $30 per contact hour, beginning in the third year of the contract. (A summary of that agreement’s key provisions may be reviewed at http://www.collegeadjuncts.org/contract/contractsummary.html).
The New School contract also demonstrates a lack of regard for some of adjuncts’ practical needs as faculty, such as office space and storage. Although the agreement provides that “[f]aculty shall have access to e-mail, computers…and…printing and photocopying,” it equivocates on the issue of office space, stating merely that “[i]f a faculty member is required to have an office to fulfill responsibilities (e.g., advising) access to an office…will be provided.” But how is “required” to be determined? (The example of advising is useless, since very few universities require adjuncts to advise students, although many, out of a sense of commitment to their students’ progress, do so voluntarily.)
It’s not hard to imagine that, when applied, this provision will most likely result in adjuncts continuing to lug teaching materials across campus day after day and using their 1979 Gremlins as meeting places. As for storage space (a major problem for long-term adjuncts with years’ worth of accumulated teaching materials), the agreement merely says that “As the University expands or renovates space…[it] will make its best effort to provide Faculty resource and storage space.” Not surprisingly, the agreement fails to define what constitutes “best effort,” which could conceivably mean anything from clearing the brooms out of an unused porter closet to converting part of a building.
A comparison of the New School agreement to its counterparts at other universities also shows deficits in its requirements for grievance and arbitration, as well as benefit eligibility. Under the New School contract, adjuncts do not become eligible for health benefits until after a full year of employment. In contrast, under the first LEO-UM agreement at the University of Michigan, 1,100 adjuncts (known as “lecturers”) become eligible for group health insurance, including dental and vision coverage, after only four months of employment with a fifty-percent appointment. And whereas the New School retirement benefit begins with a five-percent contribution, the LEO-UM contract provides for a ten-percent contribution.
Although the grievance-and-arbitration procedures in the New School agreement substantially resemble those set forth in other schools’ adjunct contracts, they are different in one important way: at the New School, adjuncts are not entitled to union representation at the first, informal level of dispute resolution (“Step 1”)—only beginning at Step 2, when grievances are reduced to writing. (The sole exception to this policy is when faculty members are subject to investigation that they reasonably believe might result in disciplinary action.)
In contrast, lecturers at the University of Michigan may bring union representatives with them to any level of the grievance process, even to the first, informal stage of resolution. This is significant, because the presence of a union representative at the beginning of dispute resolution encourages university officials to take the adjunct’s grievance seriously and respond to it in good faith. It also helps the union document exactly what was said and done at the first level of contact, and thereby prepare a more credible written response, if the grievant later decides one is needed.
None of the above criticisms is meant to suggest that the New School contract is not, at least symbolically, a step forward in the fight for adjuncts’ rights. However, the practical application of the agreement may render it a Pyrrhic victory. As with so many other matters in academe, much will depend on the good faith of the New School administration, which did not demonstrate overflowing good faith during negotiation of the contract, or while adjuncts organized their union.
