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Loss of benefits provokes strikes at colleges

Published Apr 27, 2005 4:32 PM

Teachers in the higher education industry in the United States are in turmoil. This is reflected in week-long strikes by graduate student-teachers at two elite universities, Yale and Columbia, as well as organizing drives at 60 public universities among teaching adjuncts and a number of strikes at community colleges.

Before World War II, higher education in the U.S. was generally restricted to elite schools serving children of the ruling class or the wealthier professionals and small businesspeople. The demands for a workforce capable of mastering and creating advances in science and technology were slight and easily satisfied.

Professors had tenure, which basically meant they were guaranteed their jobs and could be fired only under the most unusual circumstances. They had long vacations, long holidays, generally interesting work and academic freedom that let them study and publish pretty much what they wanted. They could use their free time for research, writing or consulting, which often brought in substantial outside income.

All this has changed.

Currently only 30 percent of the 1.3 million people engaged in post-secondary instruction are full-time employees with tenure or were hired with the possibility of obtaining tenure. Full-time teachers with no possibility of tenure make up 15 percent. Part-time faculty, called adjuncts, and graduate students make up the other 55 percent of all higher-education instructors in the United States. In the City Uni versity system of New York (CUNY), over half the courses are taught by adjuncts.

The industrialization of higher education is plunging ahead with full force.

The American Federation of Teachers says it has 60 organizing drives going on among adjuncts in publicly funded universities. Most adjuncts are poorly paid. Wages run from $390 for a three-credit course in North Carolina to about $3,500 a course at CUNY, where the adjuncts are part of a union, to $4,800 a course in California community colleges. (aaupaz. org /salaries.htm)

Since adjuncts often work at more than one institution, it is hard to find estimates of their average yearly income. It would be a very lucky full-time adjunct who made more than $45,000 a year, and most make less than $30,000. These are relatively low wages for skilled workers with substantial training who may very well be in debt for their own education.

Working conditions for adjuncts, even ones in a union, are bad. They are lucky if they get a drawer in a shared desk; getting access to e-mail and voice mail, which would let their students contact them, is rare.

The most common benefit an adjunct gets is a library card. Very few are covered by pensions. At CUNY, depending on how many hours they work, they do get some health-care coverage, but no sick leave.

Twenty-five years ago, the Supreme Court denied faculty in private colleges and universities the right to unionize since, it said, they were part of management. This is called the Yeshiva decision. The professorate were represented by the American Association of University Professors, which became almost entirely a professional organization. The AAUP has acted like a union only sporadically, where it has some strength in public higher education institutions. At Rutgers, in New Jersey, it called for a strike in the late 1980s.

Some private colleges do have unions. The union is well established at Emerson College in Boston. College President Jacqueline Liebergott has made it clear she wants the union to disband or stop being so active. Its competitors are not unionized and Emerson wants to be like them. It doesn’t want to bargain over class size or staffing issues, or even to accept mediation. (Boston Globe, April 14)

Private elite colleges tend to rely on graduate students, who are lower paid and have fewer benefits than adjuncts.

Public universities are covered by different laws and often have unions. At CUNY, a public university system whose 200,000 students are almost entirely the daughters, sons or members of the working class, with over half born outside the U.S., the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), AFT Local 2334, represents the faculty, including adjuncts, and staff members with college degrees.

Under New York State’s Taylor Law, strikes are illegal and contracts remain in force until a new one is signed. The PSC, which has been working under an expired contract for over two years, is conducting a militant pressure campaign. It has held a few large demonstrations—the latest on April 19 and presences at the monthly Board of Trustees meetings, mass telephone calls one day a week, and leafleting students.

Management has raised its offer of a wage increase from 1.5 percent over four years to 6 percent, but this is still well below inflation. It still hasn’t budged on equity for adjuncts and some other key issues.

It is not clear whether the PSC’s pressure campaign is going to achieve an acceptable contract, or whether its members are willing to go further. But it is clear that if teachers in higher education don’t take more militant, vigorous action, their positions and benefits are going to continue to erode.

The writer is a delegate to the PSC from AFT Local 2334.