Introducing #PrecariousFaculty Network Links (weekly)

… initiates a regular series, this week's links collection opens with a 2009 article that benchmarks where we were then and still holds important observations. Despite significant advances and increased public awareness, not as much has changed as we'd like to think. There's a lot of déja vu all over again to be read in:

• The Adjuncts' Mandate | Inside Higher Ed
  In January, 2009 Gregory Zobel wrote in Inside Higher Ed, "Adjuncts must lead their own labor reform movement. We need our own national movement separate from the AAUP, AFT, and NEA."
  Tags: IHE, Jan5.2009, Zobel, adjunct-labor. Notes:
• recent reports on academic labor by the American Federation of Teachers and Modern Language Association.…Exploitation of contingent academic laborers is growing in scale.…Most essential – the larger picture – is that more adjuncts are being hired, exploited, and abused at more community colleges and universities around the United States than ever before

a global artistic collaboration

…file under ideas for #adjunct action…public art with cause applications…do we have causes? You betcha…where to start? #FAIR_PAY! #dueprocess #ACA fallout, #RTW & organizing, UI & "reasonable assurance," mutual support networks (expect to hear more from the Homeless Adjunct and #newfac social on this one)...more. What are your actions, ideas, suggestions? Please share

The vintage Photo-Automat Booth has transcended into a social networking artistry of global proportions. Upload your portrait and state your personal story or social cause, if you’re caring and inclined towards humanity.

Receive your photo as a black and white poster. Paste it anywhere for the world to see. It is then documented throughout their website, Facebook, and your own community to see. INSIDE OUT is turning into a global artistic phenomena, which has already covered seven continents.

Monday morning

…musing or media musings…banal, too much alliteration…TW3 recap + notes toward a do list that probably won't get done is more like it. TW3 = TWTWTW or That Was The Week That Was. This round is mostly about social media media ventures but won't always be. So here's  more about how the New Faculty Majority spends its Web 20 electrons. More about that page and the NFM Foundation another time.

Facebook analytics are by day by day overlapping 7 day chunks. The New Faculty Majority Facebook page shows 2,869 "reached" between 11/18 and 11/24. Although comments and discussion threads are more active, many visitors still choose to remain anonymous. No one really needs an explanation for why, do they?

Ana M. Fores Tamayo of  better pay petition renown has joined NewFac page admin as a content editor. Having such an active contributor is a huge boost for the page and even more help to me. I'm sure it comes as a relief to board members tired of my nagging. Is Ana aware that FB is just the gateway: micro and other blogging sure to follow? In the meantime, we're making plans to coordinates posts and issues to address. Input and suggestions, please. We'd sure like to see your posts and shared links too and plan to highlight those more.

Disposable Teachers

 = adjuncts and other precarious academic knowledge workers, also Dissident Voice article, "Cutting to the Bone on College Campuses through Reducing, Reusing, Repurposing" by Paul Haeder / April 28th, 2012

It’s the equal pay for equal work thing, stupid. Union strong and proud. (Bumper sticker on 1972 VW Rabbit, Vancouver, Canada).

Sure, that might be the mantra for the "new faculty majority"  [increasingly organizing into faculty unions. Actually New Faculty Majority's is "Faculty working conditions are student learning  conditions" but close enough], but in a large sense, the fight to normalize the work, pay and benefits of part-time/ contingent/ temporary/migratory/ irregular/ at-will/ auxiliary faculty, AKA “freeway fliers,” is one centered on dismantling the two-tiered system of inequitable pay and punitive treatment between tenure track faculty and non-tenure track faculty.

Summit Up #NewFac12!

Summit Program - Final.doc Download this file

  

Yes, today is the day. Can't be there? Got it covered: Twitter, Facebook, live blogging, social media team at the ready and other attendees armed with mobiles. Follow #newfac12 on Twitter. Lee Bessette will be liveblogging the Summit at College Ready Writing. Check out her pre-Summit post with resource links and listing the team so I don't have to again here. 

Check @NewFacMajority and NFM's Facebook wall for introductions and links. We'll add others as they come up. I'll be here and there, dropping in on Twitter and Facebook, checking mail and rss feeds. All from New Mexico...

Alas, no livestreaming video. Who knows, maybe there will be mobiles with web cams in the crowd. Never discount serendipity. Audio will be available after the event.    

 

Talking Points: plus a great late add from Gary Rhoades, visibility