#Adjunct singalong—#EqualPay4EqualWork

…HT @Coloradolark aka Caprice Lawless of #ColoradoAdjuncts of Front Range CC AAUP

Reflections on AAUP's Contingent Faculty & Governance Report

I just feel I need to comment on the AAUP report regarding Contingent Faculty governance.

CAW Survey redux

…and as often as necessary until you read it, stop preaching to the choir and find ways to share it with non-academic stakeholders... and maybe academic ones in denial.

You've seen the first round of the articles in higher ed media. You've read, added trenchant or glowing comments to articles and blogs. Guess what? Just reading articles, pro or/and con, is no different than getting by with the Cliff Notes version.


(The graphic to the left is from the Inside HigherEd article by Kaustuv Basu ~ shout out to NH Adjuncts United for reminding me about it ) 


If you haven't seen actual results, this report from the CAW website will be of interest, if depressing and hardly surprising, and comes highly recommended as a research documentation of contingent faculty conditions of employment.

Joe Berry's COCAL Updates, June20

...news & links about #ContingentFaculty & #organizing in #highered. To subscribe to regular Updates, email joeberry@igc.org.  More about Joe Berry.  Updates are also archived at chicagococal.org. Follow COCAL International on Facebook. 

 Special Notice: Register for COCAL X before July 2nd for Early Registration Discount!  David Milroy writes, 

"We wanted to remind you that the COCAL X Mexico (English) is taking place on 8/9/2012 - 8/12/2012 at Avenida Universidad 3000, Ciudad Universitaria, 04510 Delegación Coyoacán, Ciudad de México, DF. We expect the available registrations to fill up quickly. So, we would like to offer you the opportunity to reserve your spot at a reduced early bird rate! To RSVP, click here . We look forward to hearing from you!  Thank you,  David Milroy." 

New study on adjunct assessment practices seeks interviewees. Survey overview, pdf. Emily Lopez-Padilla, UN-L, writes, 

Joe Berry's COCAL Updates, late May

To subscribe to regular Updates, email joeberry@igc.org.  More about Joe Berry.  Updates are also archived at chicagococal.org. Follow COCAL International on Facebook 

Updates in brief and links

Around the Adjunctiverse

'Junct Tour is home again! Catch up with road trip posts on 2255 Films, Chris LaBree's blog, the Homeless Adjunct and 'Junct Tour Event page.

Josh Boldt has a post about media aggregation on the Adjunct Project plus new Forum and Job Board 

Carol Leitner, former Westchester CC adjunct sues, says she was fired for expressing opinions (which included support for Arizona's controversial 2010 immigration law, and student complaints.)

Rowan AFT adjunct union endorses no-merger with Rutgers-Camden resolution

Joe Berry's COCAL Updates, 29April12

.. More this time because it's a twofer plus, e.g. two updates in one plus extra petitions for new Petitions Feature. Are you shopping an adjunct or higher ed petition? Email petition link to vanessa.vaile@newfacultymajority.info to add to petitions in Updates. To subscribe to regular Updates, email joeberry@igc.org.  More about Joe Berry.  Updates are also archived at chicagococal.org. FollowCOCAL International on Facebook 

Updates in brief and links

Petitions

• Ana’s Adjunct Pay Petition
• Petition OR State U admin to recognize grad employees' bargaining unit 
• Support forgiveness of student loans
• Tell Vice President Biden: Don't Blame Faculty for the High Cost of College; Most Are "Working Poor!"

AAUP

Joe Berry's COCAL Updates 16April12

Email joeberry@igc.org, to subscribe to regular updates in brief and links by email.  More about Joe Berry.  Updates are also archived at chicagococal.org. Follow COCAL International on Facebook 

Updates in brief and with links: emailed Apr16; reformatted, edited for web Apr19

Breaking... 

AAUP Election Results Reflect Backlash Against Recent Leadership Decisions: Election results (including released late Wednesday showed that all seven members of a slate calling itself "AAUP Organizing for Change" easily won races for the association's top posts, by Peter Schmidt, Chronicle. Incoming AAUP President, Rudy H. Fichtenbaum, Chronicle photo by Leonardo Carrizo  

. 

Taking Action...

Bill Barry (shown here with Mother Jones) has come out with a new book, Union Strategies for Hard Times,  to address every situation an organizer, or an organizing program would confront trying to rebuild the union movement. (PS, love the Labor Studies program tees: "Danger! Educated Union Member")

 The book, 130 pages long, is based on the experiences of many organizers and covers in every topic three different areas—private sector unions, public sector unions and building trades—and includes materials that have been developed both for real campaigns and for organizers' training sessions that Barry has run. The book is $17.00 and can be ordered from me (4204 Elsrode Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21214) or from Union Communications, Inc. in Annapolis. Discounts for orders of more than 10 copies.

CO Governor signs Contingent Faculty legislation

Just in from Don Eron, news too good & too important not to share immediately with as many #adjuncts/#contingent faculty as possible. Pass it on ...dance on tables...

Don writes, 

Colorado HB 12-1144, the Contingent Faculty Bill, was signed into law this afternoon.

The photograph was taken after our post-signing wind-down strategy session. On my right is long-time contingent activist Suzanne Hudson, my partner in all things; on my left is Representative Randy Fischer of Ft. Collins, who wrote the legislation; on Representative Fischer's left is Sue Doe. In my left breast pocket, undetected by the camera, is the Governor's pen, one of several  used in signing this historic legislation. 

More information and pictures, including of the signing on the Colorado AAUP website

We did it

Posted via email from Academentia

Legislative Triumph in Colorado!

A giant step forward for #ContingentFaculty everywhere, HB 1144 passed the Senate, now awaits expected signing. The good news story we've been following has the ending we hoped for. In my opinion, it also speaks to future possibilities for Program for Change, authored by Jack Longmate and Frank Fosco. "Colorado Adjunct Project" team member and long time contingent faculty activist, Don Eron of the Colorado AAUP writes [emphasis and links added], 

Dear Colleagues,

You will be interested to learn that on Tuesday Colorado House Bill 1144, the so-called "Contingent Faculty Bill," was passed by the Democratic-controlled State Senate, 22-12. This followed on the heels of a dramatic, and surprising, 36-29 victory last month in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. House Bill 1144 is now on the desk of the Democratic governor, who is expected to sign it.

The law will give state universities and colleges the option of engaging in binding employment contracts with NTTF for up to three years. Previously, all faculty not on a tenure track had been declared by Colorado law to be at-will employees.

Reading Room: about reading highered + links of my own

Yes indeed, Joe Berry's COCAL Updates, Omnivore and Michael Meranze's "In case you missed it..." (Remaking the University) links are fine and dandy, but I have a feed reader too and links of my own, collected here for a change. This might also explain why I might miss articles in IHE and CHE and run short of time to pore over comments. News Flash! Not everyone in the universe checks them or even the Grey Lady first thing.

So much more is written about higher education, contingent workplace conditions, education and the economy than on just those august pages. Depending on either or even both for all your higher and other education news is just another way to stay trapped in the Ivory Silo©. Think too of the great adjunct writing online that doesn't make it into those pages. Why let commercial, advertising soliciting gatekeepers dictate what you read? Look for the Adjunct Label...

  

AAUP National Elections

If you are an adjunct / contingent faculty and AAUP member, whether Bargaining Unit or Chapter, please think of yourself as potential candidate for the National Council. It's been a tough year. The previous was no picnic either. Yet waves of resistance to an unbearable status and recent statements favoring a greater voice for us give hope. Maybe I am wrong about a change in the climate. Retired and not a member, what would I know? Call it a hunch (but an educated one). Jeanette Jeneault, certainly more informed than I, agrees and writes, 

Greetings,

If you are an AAUP Collective Bargaining or Advocacy chapter would like to run for National Council or one of the other positions of the AAUP, please let me know. I am on the nominations committee, and would like to see more contingent faculty representation. If interested, please read the information on the Nominations Invited page, and if you have any questions let me know.

Thanks for considering this. You will need to attend two meetings per year. All expenses are paid. I am on the nomination committee and on council.

JJ

In case we are not wrong, then surely this is the time for as many adjuncts, contingent faculty and other non-tenurable academic knowledge workers to stand for the council, Then with a slate worth supporting, join and vote it in. There is an advantage to being in the majority, even an exploited one, but not unless we seize it. Now.

Campus Equity Week in New Jersey, #CEW2011

Great day today at Union County College in Cranford New Jersey. Our AFT Local's Executive Board hosted a 5 hour marathon for Campus Equity Week in the main hallway of the main building.

Within the first 2 hours we gave away over 100 AFT "I Make a Difference Every Day" T-shirts while the Board wore our Scarlet Letter 'A' is for \Adjunct t-shirts. By the end of the day we went through several large urns of coffee, about 300 cookies and pastries, and a lot of explanation to students about how the adjuncts add to the success of the students.

Yours truly, Bill Lipkin, far left

We harvested over 500 signatures on our petition for proportional compensation for adjunct faculty. The President of the College and several of the VPs actually joined us for a short time and shared cups of coffee. The chapter Executive Board of AAUP (our full time faculty) actually sat at our tables for most of the day to show support for us.

If nothing else, with all of our signs and posters, we did make a statement, and hopefully we can build off of the start we made today for equity for adjuncts.

Upcoming Conferences on #Highered Issues

Some upcoming events posted on the Academe blog, with the request that you email at academeblog@aaup.org if you have events to recommend. Please share them with us too. We're trying to develop a national event calendar and plan to add a calendar feature to the newsletter. Post questions and event recommendations in comments. The following list does not include contingent faculty issue panels or sessions at professional and discipline specific association meetings. We welcome adding those to our list too.

• “The Higher Education Crisis in Texas: An AAUP Advocacy Workshop,” October 29, 2011, Austin, Texas.
  
• The Second National Gathering of The Campaign for the Future of Higher Education, Friday, November 4th, 5:00 p.m. to Sunday, November 6th, 2011, 12:00 p.m., University of Massachusetts, Boston.
• AAUP Shared Governance Conference and Workshops, November 11–13, 2011, Omni Shoreham Hotel, Washington, DC.
  
• SEIU L500 Coalition of Academic Labor Conference 2011, 3rd annual conference on part-time faculty unions, Saturday November 19th, 2011, 9am to 1pm, Washington, DC. Contact Anne McLeer <McLeerA@seiu500.org>
  
• National Summit on January 28: “Reclaiming Academic Democracy: Facing the Consequences of Contingent Employment in Higher Education”—sponsored by the New Faculty Majority Foundation
  
• 39th Annual National Conference A Joint Labor/Management Meeting Academic Collective Bargaining Under Siege: Implications for a Public Good, April 1, 2, 3, 2012, National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions, Hunter College, NYC
  
• “How Class Works” Conference, June 7-9, 2012, Stony Brook, NY, SUNY
  
• AAUP Annual Conference on the State of Higher Education, June 13 –17, 2012, Mayflower Renaissance, Washington, DC.
  

Posted via email from Academentia

Guest Post: Alan Trevithick responds to faculty trends

A shortened and tamer version of this appears, retitled, in this month’s Anthropology News (AN), which is a monthly publication of the American Anthropological Association (AAA). Although the NFM web address, the article still gets NFM in front of the AAA, an important academic professional organization representing anthropology, a major discipline.

Canary, Eagle, Phoenix: How to Respond to Faculty’s Fall

A mournful trend: the steady replacement of full-time tenure or tenure track faculty - call them  “traditionals" - with part-time and/or limited contract instructors, “adjuncts” or “contingents.” Call them adcons.  First most evident at community colleges, this trend is now everywhere. For instance, see Nichols and Nichols' Money over Mind, Inside Higher Education, about Vassar College. 

All disciplines are blighted, as Marshall Sahlins noted in a 2008 AN issue, that in the country at large, “70 percent of all faculty are adjuncts,” and this “academic demi-monde” has been “noticeable enough” more recently even at University of Chicago.

First the canaries die. Then the eagles start keeling over.  

AAUP Joins Week of Action for Higher Education

Yesterday, November 17, was a Global Day of Action, which may seem to have come too close to Oct 7th for some. Maybe it's a generational thing, whether attention span, age thing or tiring more easily than the students. You can still follow the action at Defend Education, Global Wave, on Twitter and at various blogs. 


The university is conflicted: nor is anyone ~ students, staff, faculty, techs. researchers, managers ~ in it immune. Does it have to be an either/or when it comes to aligning ourselves with either the suits at conferences or bullhorns in the streets. Wherever individual sympathies lie, we must ~ in my personal opinion ~ listen to / work with both (however long a spoon that may call for), cannot ignore either. 


The 2nd Annual SEIU Forum on Part-Time Faculty Unions is this coming Saturday, Nov 19,  ~ D.C. in case you're in the neighborhood. AAUP Shared Governance Conference (with workshops) was last weekend, Nov 12-14. Reports in my RSS reader await an ever dwindling attention span.  In today's mail, a reminder from the "National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions"  about its 38th annual conference, April 10-12, 2011. If there is a more ungainly acronym than NCSCBHEP, I don't want to know about it.

AAUP Report on October 1-7 week of action... 

AAUP Conference Shared Governance

Registration is now open for the AAUP Shared Governance Conference and Workshops. This special event will take place November 12–14, 2010, at Washington's stylish Liaison Capitol Hill Hotel, home to Art and Soul, one of DC's best new restaurants. The conference will feature three days of presentations exploring important aspects of college and university governance, an opportunity to network with governance leaders from across the country, plus expert-led training workshops for governance leaders and those aspiring to positions of leadership. Professor Judith Areen, interim dean and Paul Regis Dean Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, will deliver the keynote Neil Rapport Lecture. This will be a unique opportunity to learn about best practices in faculty governance. Hear experts' advice about empowering faculty and developing an effective faculty voice on your campus on matters of concern to you.

Multiple Ways to Salvation: Tenure and Teaching-Intensive Appointments

.... an article reposted verbatim from the AAUP Newsletter but with selected passages highlighted for emphasis. Comments invited, may be posted anonymously or under pseudonym. Trolls must stay under the bridge and will not be fed. 

Personally, I can't help being curious about the identity and specific affiliations of these unnamed administrators supporting tenure. What is the distribution of opinion across kinds of higher ed institutions as well as public/ private and non-profit / for-profit divides? Will all adjuncts get some kind of tenure? Will only the tenured teach? If not across the board, then where? What will happen to the rest? If institutions are unwilling to come on board, what means are available to "persuade" them to reconsider?  

How do you think think AAUP's take on tenure conundrum compare's to our own Program for Change? Is there a middle way? Ways? And then there is implementation. So far, no group advocating this level of change (whether similar or antithetical) has the authority to "make it so."

But most important ~ we now have a discussion. Let's keep it going and as open as possible. May the disgruntled speak out instead of whispering behind the scenes. If everyone, in the name of delicacy or whatever, waits for each stake holding group to reach a consensus, I may already have expired from age related infirmities and impatience.... and probably won't be the only one. 

---

 The AAUP's latest report discusses a growing consensus: Institutions that employ teaching-intensive faculty should hire them and evaluate their teaching through the rigorous system of peer review known as the tenure system. As E. Gordon Gee, the United States's highest-paid university president puts it, campus employers must preserve "multiple ways to salvation" inside the tenure system—even at research-intensive institutions.


As the report notes, tenure was designed as a "big tent" to unite faculty of diverse interests and workplace priorities. It was not designed as a merit badge for research-intensive faculty or as a fence to exclude those with teaching-intensive commitments.
 
Before 1970, as today, most full-time faculty appointments were teaching-intensive. Nearly all full-time teaching-intensive positions were on the tenure track. Most faculty who spent most of their time teaching were also campus and professional citizens—with clear roles in shared governance and access to support for research or professional activity.


Today, campus employers have shunted the majority of teaching-intensive positions outside of the tenure system. This has in most cases meant a dramatic shift from "teaching-intensive" appointments to "teaching-only" appointments, featuring a faculty with attenuated relationships to campus and disciplinary peers.


This seismic shift from "teaching-intensive" faculty within the big tent of tenure to "teaching-only" faculty outside of it has a direct impact on student retention and achievement, as a growing body of evidence clearly demonstrates.


The central question we have to face in connection with this historic change is clear: Should more classroom teaching be done by faculty supported by the rigorous peer scrutiny of the tenure system? Most of the evidence says yes, and a host of diverse voices agree. This view brings together students, faculty, and legislators; the AAUP; and even many administrators.


In opposition to this trend, campuses across the country have taken bold steps to stabilize the crumbling faculty infrastructure. Concerned legislators and some academic administrators have joined faculty associations in calling for dramatic reductions in the reliance on contingent appointments, commonly urging a maximum of 25 percent. 


Read the report, Tenure and Teaching-Intensive Appointments, which was approved by the Committee on Contingency and the Profession. Or visit the AAUP Web site to learn more about our work on contingent faculty appointments.


Report prepared by Mayra Besosa (Spanish), California State University, San Marcos, co-chair, and Marc Bousquet (English), Santa Clara University, co-chair AAUP Committee on Contingency and the Profession

The AAUP Online is an electronic newsletter of the American Association of University Professors.  Learn more about the AAUP. Visit us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.

EWU Notes & Updates

EWU's United Adjuncts will demonstrate again by the Michigan Avenue entrance and want to get a big crowd. We'll keep you posted. If you would like to support United Adjuncts by attending this demonstration, please contact ewuadjuncts@gmail.com.     In the meantime, UAFA (United Adjunct Faculty Association) urges all adjuncts with abrogated summer contracts to apply for unemployment compensation as soon as possible.  Bring the letter informing you that the University considered you no longer employed by the University to the unemployment office as proof that you have been laid off. More unemployment information is available on the NFM Unemployment Initiative web page United Adjuncts are organizing with the Illinois NEA. Nevertheless, those concerned adjunct issues nationally have suggested that the AFT Convention now in session issue a statement censuring EWU for its labor practices ~ and discussed at length. Indeed, where is it written in stone that one higher ed union cannot go on public record disapproving of how an institution being organized by another higher ed union? If cross-union support is not S.O.P., it should be. The AAUP issued a statement (although I have not heard of further action such as official AAUP censure).

AAUP urges adjuncts to attend COCAL IX

Mayra Besosa, Co-Chair, AAUP Committee on Contingent Faculty and the Profession writes (AAUP Newsletter, Monday, June 28),

Are you a full- or part-time non-tenure-track faculty member who is tired of being marginalized by the institutions you serve?  Are you dismayed by the working conditions and lack of academic freedom protections that come with being hired on a contingent status? Are you concerned about what the corporatization of the university is doing to the teaching profession and to students' learning conditions?

I am. That's why I'll be joining hundreds of my colleagues from the United States, Canada, and Mexico at the ninth conference of the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor (COCAL), in Quebec City, August 13–15, 2010.

The conference is run by contingent faculty activists and will feature practical workshops and sessions on topics including the following.

*  Academic freedom for contingent faculty
*  Bargaining for fair compensation
*  Communicating to the public about contingent faculty issues
*  Building alliances on campus and mobilizing faculty
*  Developing solidarity on all levels
*  Progress and prospects for unionization
*  Sustainable development and the environment
*  Recognition of adjunct faculty and the quality of education
*  Stabilizing jobs
*  Social programs such as unemployment benefits

You Talk, They Listen
Leaders of major higher education unions will participate in the conference, both to discuss their views on prospects for improving conditions for contingent faculty, and to hear your views on the subject. Plenary speakers will include Cary Nelson, president of the AAUP, as well as leaders of the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and major Canadian and Mexican faculty unions.

Social and Recreational Events
Included in the price of registration are a cocktail hour and supper, a bus tour of Old Quebec City, an outdoor multimedia show, and a dinner cruise on the Saint Lawrence River. Take advantage of the down time to enjoy beautiful Quebec and continue the day's discussions with your fellow activists.

Old Quebec City

More Info

• Register for the conference or learn more. Early registration rates end July 2.
• Learn about the AAUP's work on issues affecting contingent faculty.
• COCAL Conferences are held every other year, usually alternating between the United States and Canada. Conferences feature simultaneous translation into English, French, and Spanish. Accommodations will be available in student residences or nearby hotels.

Be part of an international movement to save higher education and the academic profession.  Join us at the Université Laval in Quebec City for COCAL IX, August 13–15.