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

Education International Survey

…of #teachingconditions worldwide from @eduint Connect #education4all

Education InternationaI surveys teachers' working conditions EI is launching a world-wide survey on teaching and learning conditions, with the aim of bridging the gap between policy making and the reality of the classroom. The survey will be accessible online from today until the end of July in more than 10 different languages, and is part of EI's assessment of Education for All. The results will be presented to UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, later this year. EI is making a broad call to teachers and education sector workers across the globe to participate in a survey that will assess teaching and learning conditions. Its objective is to allow education professionals to inform the discussions that are currently taking place at the United Nations and that will set the global development agenda for the next 15 years. The questions focus on topics such as the teachers' working conditions in terms of workload, number of students, or resources available, the qualifications of the educators, their rights as workers, their motivation and the possibility for an active participation within the school system. In the year 2000, the international community promised that by 2015 there would be "quality basic education for all children, youth and adults". At this point, there is broad consensus and ample evidence that this will not be achieved. The Post-2015 global debate on education should, in view of EI, reflect the reality of the classroom and especially take into account the voice of education professionals. Hence, the survey focuses on the main areas that provide for quality education: quality teachers, quality tools and a quality environment, and asks the respondents to reflect their personal experience. This goes in line with the statement of Fred van Leeuwen, EI's general secretary, on the importance of highly qualified, self-starting and motivated teachers in the education system:  "It is after all teachers and their collective voice that define a successful education system. Reaching out to teachers directly, we can better shape policy that will improve conditions in the classroom". To access the survey please click here Read more about: UNESCO's new EFA Global Monitoring Report director  UNESCO has announced that Dr. Aaron Benavot is the new Director of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report (EFA GMR). Dr Benavot brings decades of experience in global education policy and comparative research to the Report team, including four years as a Senior Policy Analyst for the Report. He will take up his new position at UNESCO's headquarters in May 2014. read more OECD report highlights the importance of creative problem-solving skills The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) argues that in modern societies, all of life is problem-solving. Changes in society, the environment, and in technology mean that the content of applicable knowledge evolves rapidly. Adapting, learning, daring to try out new things and always being ready to learn from mistakes are among the keys to resilience and success in an unpredictable world. Education International (EI) firmly supports the idea that students must acquire these skills, as part of a quality education. read more New film from the Council of Europe The Council of Europe has just made an new film explaining its work, promoting and defending human rights, democracy and the rule of law. read more More information? www.ei-ie.org Education International is the voice of the teachers and other education employees across the globe. A global federation of about 400 unions in more than 170 countries and territories, it represents 30 million teachers and education employees in education institutions from early childhood to university. Education International • 5 bd du Roi Albert II • B-1210 Brussels • BL Tel: +32-2-224-0611 • Fax: +32-2-224-0606 • Email: communications@ei-ie.org • Website: www.ei-ie.org

.@NewUnionism March Newsletter

…Democratising Economics from the Workplace

March 2014  Work in Progress This newsletter is produced by the New Unionism Network to promote workplace democracy, organizing, internationalism and creative thinking in the union movement. You are most welcome to pass it on. Better still, find out about joining us here. Putting OCCUPATION back into unionism Industrial unions replaced guilds and friendly societies during the first wave of new unionism - starting towards the end of the 19th century. Perhaps we lost something important along the way? Look at the way people talk about their work: we do jobs; but we are occupations. In our final paper on building global unionism, Guy Standing argues: "what we do and seek to do is more important than who we do it for." In fact, a revived focus on occupation within unionism might help us address some of our most difficult problems: How do we organize and bargain across borders in an age of globalization? How do we organize "the precariat", who come and go from workplaces before we can reach them? How do we rebuilt influence whilst struggling to survive? What's more, an occupational layer might not require any major change to the underlying structure of industrial unions. This is an idea you need to think about!  More

Reflections on 50 Years as an #ADJUNCT

‘I make a difference every day’. That is a slogan of the American Federation of teachers (AFT), and that is my goal every of my life. Who am I? I am an adjunct, a proud a dedicated adjunct, who makes a difference in the lives of students every day. I spent seven years in College becoming educated in my field so I could go out and teach others how to make the world a better place and how to have a successful career. Fortunately I was able to go to College on merit scholarships and did not have to amass a large student loan debt, as most students do today. I studied and worked hard, I read a lot, I took part in student demonstrations, and I kept up on current events. I was very optimistic and felt I was on a crusade to help change the world with a career in academia

That was fifty years ago. Today, I am a realist, and the reality is scary. While in graduate school studying History and Political Science, I taught myself accounting, figuring it would come in handy doing taxes for me and my family and friends. I never thought that I would make a living and raise a family as a controller rather than a professor. For thirty-five years I worked in private industry, while teaching one or two courses at night in a local college. When my sons were grown and married, my wife and I decided that it was now time for me to follow my real goal and go into college teaching full time. Ha! 

#adjunct protest + a call for selfies

 …that would be Mary Faith Cerasoli's one-woman protest in Albany, the one Frank Reiser blogged, got activists (including but not limited to Keith Hoeller, Peter Brown and Anna Spiro), charged up on adj-l and involved getting coverage. That worked:"Without Tenure or a Home" by Cory Kilgannon, appeared in the NY Times. The story took off on social media. Then PBS showed up in Albany, filmed and wants more. So here's TL MackPico's Mary Faith update, with a call for selfies. In TL 's own write:

Mary Faith is on her way back to NYC. I just spoke to the PBS producer and told them how core activists were inspired by MF, live tweeting while she was doing her action and sending similar signs/selfies saying they support MF and where they teach from all over the country 

PBS now wants to pair MF's action/story with all of ours. I need more selfie signs to send them tonight! Can all of you get those? Please get this out everywhere ASAP. Send photos to tmackenglish@gmail.com 

Please reach out everywhere -- get your adjunct networks, groups, colleagues to make selfies and send them to my email As quickly as we can get them from as many as we can muster! This is a tremendous opportunity for the movement. 

Include these 3 pieces of info: I am Prof/Dr ...; I support MF; and location. Please make sure we get locations to stress how far apart we are. For example: "We are all Mary-Faith: exploited professors standing as One: Chicago, Illinois, Dr of English" + selfie (and similar variations) 

The producer is working with both of us. We have signed permissions, so if you can just get them to me that should work. I relayed the story of the movement's outpouring, pitching that folks  from all over countrywere sending signage supporting MF. That got all their interest, and they want to use it with what MF did today to show how widespread adjunct faculty exploitation is