He Didn’t Really Just Write That, Did He?

Some people have no shame. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not judging. I’m jealous. I wish I could I could be way more shameless. Hell, it’s fun, right? Having the “If-I-write-that-I’m-being-an-incredible-hypocrite” gene is just a big fat pain in the ashcan. I blame my upbringing, but then again I’m of that certain age where you have to suck it up and give your Mamma a break with the blaming for your personality. So, though I wish I could write shamelessly, and without a thought to reality and/or the truth, I can’t do it.

Worse still, I can’t read shameless tripe without becoming somewhat incensed. It’s a curse, my friends, believe me. It’s much better to be able to read shameless tripe, smile about the hypocritical nature of the writing and just move on. Since I probably wouldn’t be able to do that without some serious medication (which I cannot afford since I don’t have prescription coverage at the moment), I blog. By now, no doubt, your curiosity is piqued: “What on earth prompted this entry?” Conversely, maybe you’re feeling impatient: “Can we please get to the point? I have 500 essays to grade, and after that I have some time set aside this afternoon to blame my mother for letting me agree to teach eight sections of intro. comp.”

Craig Smith (yes, him again) posted an entry on the American Federation of Teacher’s FACE Talk blog about the part-timers at Kent State University. It would appear that the administrators at the university had the mendacity to include a clause in the contract which covers the institution’s 635 full-time faculty that calls for merit pay and bonuses for just the full-time faculty. Yes, you all will be shocked, shocked to know that there is gambling going on in that fine establishment, and that 697 part-time faculty were left out of the merit pay and bonus bingo game. Would you be surprised to learn that at AFT affiliates all over the United States, union contracts negotiated on behalf of both full-time and part-time faculty routinely exclude part-time faculty from merit and bonus pay schemes cooked up by union negotiators to boost pay for the full-time faculty union members?

Would it surprise you to learn that the recently negotiated contract at CUNY-PSC (an AFT affiliate) included pay raises averaging $14,000 for the 5,000 full-time faculty members and, on average, $500 for the 5,000 part-time faculty members of the union?

Smith writes, “It is hard to figure out how an incentive system that doesn’t include all stakeholders is supposed to encourage buy-in.”

Indeed.

Evidently, Craig Smith and the American Federation of Teacher’s leadership think no one would think to look at what the AFT’s own affiliates are doing to (not for) its own part-time faculty members. Mr. Smith is shamelessly hypocritical to even think about taking administrators at Kent State University to task for not including part-time faculty members in the merit/bonus pay scheme as long as AFT affiliates all over the United States do it year after year to their own dues-paying members.