URI, RIC Part-Time Faculty Vote to Join Teaching Union

Part-time instructors at the University of Rhode Island and Rhode Island College have voted to unionize, seeking better pay and recognition for their contribution to the two state colleges.The votes mirror a national trend as more part-time faculty — which make up about half of college instructors nationwide — demand more control over their working conditions. Without part-time faculty, the state’s three public colleges could not serve its growing student populations or keep costs under control, say state higher education officials.

With only about 10 percent of its members voting, part-time faculty at URI voted 59 to 4 last week to join the American Association of University Professors, the union which also represents full-time professors and graduate students who teach at the university. URI has 600 part-time instructors, and 700 full-time faculty members. Full-time professors teach about 80 percent of undergraduate courses.

Last spring, RIC’s 305 part-time faculty members voted to unionize by a vote of 156 to 3, joining the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals. College officials say RIC has about 350 full-time, tenure-track faculty who teach 61 percent of undergraduate classes.

Part-time faculty at RIC and URI have not yet begun negotiating with administrators, but said they expect to enter into talks later this semester. The unions are surveying members about their priorities. At both schools, part-time instructors, sometimes called adjuncts, receive no benefits, are limited to teaching two courses per semester and earn about $3,200 per course. They teach a large proportion of freshman and general education courses, while full-time faculty tend to teach upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses.
The starting annual salary of a full-time faculty member at RIC is about $35,000 to $40,000, plus benefits. At URI, new professors earn about $50,000 to $70,000 a year, depending on their discipline, plus benefits.

Part-time instructors hope that by unionizing, they will not only receive more pay, but also gain a higher profile on campus and more control over their work conditions.

“A number of them were concerned they were like invisible people, and that no one really seemed to know them,” said Frank R. Annunziato, executive director of URI’s chapter of the AAUP. “We hope that unionization will mean a boost in pay and that we’ll be able to offer them more rights than they have now. Right now, they are hired and fired at will, seniority means nothing and they get no fringe benefits.”

Jim Kittredge has served as a part-time instructor in RIC’s English department for 19 years, in addition to his day job at the Brown University library.

Kittredge says the department is considerate of its 40 part-time instructors, all of whom have master’s or doctoral degrees. Unlike some other departments, the English department includes part-time instructors in e-mails and meetings.
Even so, Kittredge said, the 40 instructors share one tattered office with six desks, two computers and a leaky roof, and often learn what courses they will teach just days before the semester begins.

“We make a legitimate contribution to the college and often we are the first teachers [first-year] students meet,” Kittredge said. “But we have no protections and there is always the strain of job insecurity.”

The decision to unionize mirrors a national trend. Part-time faculty at Emerson College and Suffolk University in Boston unionized in the past couple of years, as have adjuncts at New York University and several other colleges throughout the country. Part-time instructors at Massachusetts’ 15 community colleges unionized in 1991, and successfully negotiated for higher pay and a greater say over their class schedule, said Steven Ozug, vice president of student enrollment at Bristol Community College. Part-time faculty at the Rhode Island School of Design unionized in 1981 — the only private college in the state to do so — and are paid an average of $6,000 per course.

Public and private colleges throughout the country rely on part-time faculty more than ever. In 2005, nearly half of all faculty were part-time instructors — an increase of 152 percent since 1981, according to the American Council on Education.
Locally, the Community College of Rhode Island relies on adjunct faculty most heavily, with 506 part-time instructors and 316 full-time faculty, and about 18 visiting lecturers, according to a CCRI spokeswoman.

So far, CCRI’s part-time instructors have not unionized. But CCRI President Ray Di Pasquale says he expects they will, particularly if part-time faculty at the other two public colleges are successful in securing higher pay.

“We have almost 500 more students than last year, for a total of 16,811 this fall,” Di Pasquale said. “If we didn’t bring in extra instructors to teach English and psychology classes, we wouldn’t have been able to offer all the courses students need.”
State higher education officials said the three public colleges would not be able to function — or balance their budgets — without part-time instructors. When lawmakers asked officials last year what it would take to ensure that 75 percent of courses at the three public colleges were taught by full-time, tenure-track faculty, the Office of Higher Education said scores of professors would have to be hired at a cost of $11 million a year, said Jack Warner, Rhode Island’s commissioner of higher education. The matter was dropped.

“On the plus side, adjuncts are often people who are professionals in their own disciplines, and they bring that real-world experience into the classroom,” Warner said. “On the downside, adjuncts are less engaged in the life of the college. And if someone is teaching a couple of sections of a class, they are not serving on committees and doing other kinds of work the institutions benefits from.”