Good news, wired/weird news, bad news

East Michigan success, Minnesota frustration, California dreaming and serious speed bumps on Chicago's South Loop. 

Apropos the last, here is the latest from EWU (presumably Chicago, not to be confused with the Bangladesh for-profit, not yet anyway), forwarded by Joe Berry for posting to the public and blogged at the Adjunct Voice. 

The United Adjunct Faculty Association (UAFA) at

East-West University (EWU) withdrew its petition to vote for a union. 

In a letter addressed one day before EWU administration received the National Labor Relations Board collective bargaining petition notice for adjuncts, Chancellor M. Wasiullah Khan informed all department chairs, full-time faculty, part-time faculty and staff that "no contract will be renewed this year effective the forthcoming summer session and the academic year beginning with Fall quarter 2010." The letter went on to point out that no department chair, full-time faculty, part-time faculty or staff member would be hired back "without first meeting with the Chancellor." 

As an adjunct at EWU, I have never ever witnessed such blatant disrespect and disregard for the many hard working people who care deeply about their job. The primary reason for the petition withdrawal is based on the administration's attorney argument that no adjunct would be an employee at East-West during the summer so the petition for collective bargaining was no valid. UAFA members are not deterred. It will regroup and re-file the petition at the start of fall 2010. For more information and words of support, please send to

EWUadjuncts@gmail.com. 

In Solidarity, EWU Adjuncts

Please write the EWU adjuncts and let them know you support them. If you are also of a mind to write administration as well, here's the East West University contact page. With only 18 full time faculty listed, the university must be even more ad/con dependent than the now standard 70-73%

Since, as far as I know, EWU Adjuncts don't have a home of their own on the web. there are welcome to camp out right here ~  and I bet with Raye too.  

Article on EMU Campaign

A 'Nice Experience' or a Job? Lecturers at Michigan School Say Part-Timers Need a Union, Too,
by Ken Wachsberger in Labor Notes, 02/24/2010. via Jon Curtis, AFT Michigan  

The university, whose specialty is educating future teachers and whose slogan is "Education First," has hired a team of high-priced lawyers to break the back of the drive, in part by creating divisions between full-time and part-time lecturers.

The Adjunct Lecturers' Organizing Committee (ALOC) has gathered signatures from a super-majority of part-timers who are teaching this semester, according to AFT organizer Greg Pratt. They've filed a petition with the Michigan Employment Relations Commission for an election to be held before the winter semester ends May 4. Three out of four part-time lecturers approached by ALOC organizers have signed. According to ALOC data, EMU employs about 450 part-time adjunct lecturers every semester, who teach more than one-third of classes.

The demands of EMU part-timers for equality are being echoed at the national level: a coalition of academic associations, including the AFT, released a report February 10 calling on universities to treat all their teachers as "one faculty"—which means extending health and retirement benefits and making pay equitable for those not on the tenure track. The joint paper notes that nationally, one-third of teachers not on the tenure track have been in their jobs at least five years, but schools insist on "outdated personnel and compensation policies that assume non-tenure-track faculty members are short-term employees who will make up only a small proportion of the faculty." Union organizing efforts across the country are challenging this unequal set-up.

WHO BELONGS?
At EMU, the administration has refused to recognize part-timers as worthwhile members of the university community.