Unionization across all academia, not by institution?: Vox article

[marshwiggle]

Part-time/adjunct faculty members are about evenly split between two groups, those who prefer part-time teaching (50 percent) and those who would like to have full-time teaching jobs (47 percent). Among those under age 50, the percentage preferring full-time teaching work increased to 60 percent. About 46 percent of the respondents have previously sought full-time college teaching employment. Differences surface repeatedly in the survey between those who aspire to full-time teaching jobs and those who do not.

Job satisfaction among part-time/adjunct faculty is fairly high, but there are distinct variations. Sixty-two percent of those surveyed say they are very or mainly satisfied with their jobs. Satisfaction varies considerably between those seeking full- time teaching employment (49 percent of whom are very or mainly satisfied) and those who prefer to work part time (75 percent very or mainly satisfied.) Satisfaction is lower among part-time/adjunct faculty members at four-year public universities. Part-time/adjunct faculty members teaching fewer courses per semester are generally more satisfied than those teaching more courses.

Note: emphasis added
Source: https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/aa_partimefaculty0310.pdf


Sentences from the AACU report that I think need to be on more people's radar for the nuance in distinguishing between various types of contingent faculty:

* The wage gap between the two groups [full-time and part-time] is significant; the median salary of full-time contingent faculty was $47,500 in 2010, and most enjoy full-time employee benefits that are not available to adjuncts.

* <T>he most precipitous drop [in full-time instructors as a percentage of overall number of instructors] actually took place between 1970 and 1977. This drop in the percentage of full-time faculty is usually attributed to the rise of community colleges, which employ relatively high numbers of part-time faculty. ... The observed decline in the percentage of full-time faculty actually derives from the fact that the number of part-time positions has expanded at a faster rate

* The number of job applicants continues to exceed the number of available full-time positions, even as the total number of full-time positions in many fields has more than doubled since 1970.

* <part-time> Adjuncts who lack terminal degrees and who teach at less-prestigious institutions will likely be the most vulnerable—not for want of upward mobility to full-time positions, though that credentialing barrier still exists, but for want of additional adjuncting work at their previously existing levels.

source: https://www.aacu.org/liberaleducation/2016/spring/magness

I seem to recall that the math works out to show that even some of the people without terminal degrees want full-time positions. That would be magical thinking as far as I can see, since full-time hiring is going to have a much higher bar.

[fast_and_bulbous]

At my former university, where I was chair for three years, adjuncts had formed a union. Based upon my talking to some of our temps not everyone was pleased with that fact (time to pay your dues, people!). We had a few long-time adjuncts who, because of the union, now could have 2 or even 3 year contracts based on seniority, giving them some job security, which was the biggest win I saw they achieved. Some didn't need that security because they filled an important role in the department gen ed curriculum and did not want to do anything but show up and teach anyway. And, not everyone likes being part of a union.

I was also a member of a union back when the state I was in was a closed shop (you had to be part of the union in order to accept the job). Before I was chair, our union actually went on strike (for a few hours as it turns out as we were doing it illegally) and the whole situation sucked - up, down, backwards and sideways. Jerks on both sides. Overblown rhetoric on both sides. Just a mess. It started when the university played hardball out of the gate, at least as compared to the previous contract, which was pretty nice (the union was one of the country's oldest and had managed to get pretty good health insurance for tenured faculty - by far the biggest benefit [which if course in the US is everything]). Long story short, lots of marches and chants later, we took to the streets with our shirts and our signs and did our thing. It felt awkward and weird and I was mad but I also felt manipulated by the union in a pretty major way. The situation eventually resolved itself and we got a contract nobody was happy with that probably would have been the same contract had the university just came out of the gate the way they had in the past.

However I left my union a couple years before I left when I was chair. It was primarily due to an experience I had when I, a union member, had to get grilled and treated like a criminal by my own union because, as chair, I had approved not giving a faculty member their umpteenth promotion (a quirk of my former university). The person who treated me like a common criminal was a former high school teacher who was making six figures as a "high ranking" member of the union (salary information was public because I was at a public institution). They tried all sorts of tricks such as pressuring me into recording our conversations, etc... ultimately, the old crusty fart with the insanely high salary lost his case at the final grievance hearing, and a year or so later after much hand wringing and way too much alcohol I finally wrote the letter and was out of the union because my state had changed the law such that we were no longer a closed shop. I now have a new job at a new institution and am not tenured or in a union and I've never been happier.

I still am not anti-union but I sure am anti-some-unions. Some are good, some are bad, just like a lot of things in life and no way will unionization be the "cure" to adjunctification no matter how much we wish it would be. Just because you have a contract doesn't mean you have a *good* contract and just because you are in a union doesn't mean you're in a good one. And union dues are not cheap either.

The way the world is going I think unions are on the way out - with tenure close behind, really. There just doesn't seem to be the stomach for people to truly organize and 'fight the power' in the US anyway, and the media manipulation makes it easy to turn the public against that sort of thing. It's a real race to the bottom "if I can't have it you can't have it" mentality these days, underpinned by a lot of true suffering, and I honestly don't see things getting better. I do wish anyone who does the work to form a union the best of luck because in the right situation they can be an overall positive thing.

[polly_mer]

I seem to recall that the math works out to show that even some of the people without terminal degrees want full-time positions. That would be magical thinking as far as I can see, since full-time hiring is going to have a much higher bar.

From memory of discussions probably 10 years ago now, a then-recent survey showed that most of the people who were part-time and wanted to be full-time lacked terminal degrees.

One big problem is, not that long ago in the US, people could get even tenure track positions at smaller, more remote schools with a humanities master's degree.  It wasn't unreasonable to expect to be able to get a full-time academic job if one were willing to move and were flexible about relative teaching load between major courses and service courses.

Thus, people who do a little research on job prospects look at the backgrounds of people who are associate professors in some of these places, see the master's degree, and expect that they are then qualified to get that kind of job.  What the research doesn't always turn up is how long ago that person with the master's degree was hired and how the number of qualified individuals has exploded to the point that a PhD, a book, and several years of teaching is now so common that even Super Dinky could safely sort the applications with only a master's degree and no full-time experience as composition/writing center/tutoring center director into the reject pile.

A current increasing problem for certain fields is how many recent PhD graduates who previously would have found something full-time for a year or three are now just staying in involuntary part-time work to keep their foot in academia.  While the adjunct distress stories have remained constant for most of the last 25 years, the details have changed to include more PhD holders who are willing to move, but can't get anything full-time so they stay put, put down roots, and then get trapped in finding enough part-time academic work in the local big city to stay afloat for another term instead of hitting bottom and having to take a non-academic, non-desirable job just to pay rent and eat.

A corollary to Mahagonny's advocating for better part-time jobs would be being more humane upfront by only having good enough jobs on offer with mostly long-term contracts so that people would accept reality sooner and move on to other good enough jobs instead of hoping that this term is the term where they make their mark and get hired full-time.

[mahagonny]

But all of this data about job satisfaction is drawn from surveys of peoples' experience to date. Make the part time job pay better and have access to benefits and something to fight against the 'temporary at will employment - can be fired at any time for any reason, or no reason' idiocy, and it begins to provide some portion of the things that people wanted full time jobs for in the first place.

The Screen Actors Guild provides benefits like retirement and insurance rather than the employer. That makes sense since actors have many short-term employers. Would a similar SEIU system be valuable to adjuncts? A by-the-course contract would include a payment to SEIU to cover those costs.

Absolutely. Fine idea. Unions can set up pension accounts. Every course you teach would garner a contribution. First thing to do is get membership levels up, I would suspect. Though I'm not an expert, just a member who pitches in a little here and there.

Daniel von Flanagan used to point out that making part-time faculty more expensive is the best way to get universities to reduce their reliance on the armies of adjuncts and convert back to mostly professional fellows and one year/term replacements. 

I'm not going to channel DvF (I might misquote) and he's deleted his account so it can't be referenced. I might have heard this approach promoted by others. It sounds to me like playing a trick on the part time adjunct faculty. Advocate for them with the intent of eliminating their job. The unintended consequences are now intended. As a scare tactic, it wouldn't have gone far with me and my colleagues, since we needed a union just to try and get cost of living/inflation raises. And I suspect many are in the same boat.

At my former university, where I was chair for three years, adjuncts had formed a union. Based upon my talking to some of our temps not everyone was pleased with that fact (time to pay your dues, people!). We had a few long-time adjuncts who, because of the union, now could have 2 or even 3 year contracts based on seniority, giving them some job security, which was the biggest win I saw they achieved. Some didn't need that security because they filled an important role in the department gen ed curriculum and did not want to do anything but show up and teach anyway. And, not everyone likes being part of a union.

It's possible to work many years at the same place with zero job security. Paradoxically, the fact that you can be dumped easily with no aftermath makes you attractive.

[mahagonny]

The way the world is going I think unions are on the way out - with tenure close behind, really. There just doesn't seem to be the stomach for people to truly organize and 'fight the power' in the US anyway, and the media manipulation makes it easy to turn the public against that sort of thing. It's a real race to the bottom "if I can't have it you can't have it" mentality these days, underpinned by a lot of true suffering, and I honestly don't see things getting better. I do wish anyone who does the work to form a union the best of luck because in the right situation they can be an overall positive thing.

Tenure has the monopoly on truth-telling. After it's gone, no one will tell the truth or understand it. If only people realized.

[marshwiggle]

The way the world is going I think unions are on the way out - with tenure close behind, really. There just doesn't seem to be the stomach for people to truly organize and 'fight the power' in the US anyway, and the media manipulation makes it easy to turn the public against that sort of thing.

How much of this is simply a result of the lifestyle diversity of the workforce? Decades ago, the typical worker was male, married with children, in a single wage earner household. So a union in any industry could basically push for the same kinds of things for all workers, and get lots of buy in. Compare that to now, and the adjunct situation as a particularly stark contrast. Workers can be single, married, any age, with or without family. Some have this as their sole source of income, but others only have it on the side OR are retired and don't rely on it for survival. About the only thing all of the workers have in common is "More money is good." While none may be opposed to things like better benefits, for those who have full-time employment elsewhere, or get benefits in retirement, then it won't make any difference, and they're probably not in favour of a strike to secure benefits which will have no value for them.

Before people are willing to "fight the power", they have to agree on "why?".

[Diogenes]

My state is a "right to work" state (gawd I hate that doublespeak) And...our Regents policy strictly forbids collective bargaining. This would have to happen on a state by state basis.

[mahagonny]

The way the world is going I think unions are on the way out - with tenure close behind, really. There just doesn't seem to be the stomach for people to truly organize and 'fight the power' in the US anyway, and the media manipulation makes it easy to turn the public against that sort of thing.

How much of this is simply a result of the lifestyle diversity of the workforce? Decades ago, the typical worker was male, married with children, in a single wage earner household. So a union in any industry could basically push for the same kinds of things for all workers, and get lots of buy in. Compare that to now, and the adjunct situation as a particularly stark contrast. Workers can be single, married, any age, with or without family. Some have this as their sole source of income, but others only have it on the side OR are retired and don't rely on it for survival. About the only thing all of the workers have in common is "More money is good." While none may be opposed to things like better benefits, for those who have full-time employment elsewhere, or get benefits in retirement, then it won't make any difference, and they're probably not in favour of a strike to secure benefits which will have no value for them.

Before people are willing to "fight the power", they have to agree on "why?".

Not my take at all. OK, I'll put my cards on the table. I am pro union. We can both analyze and speculate about the future. Here's my version:
Despite part time faculty having variegated lifestyles, most of the time, crappy pay and temp worker status are part of that lifestyle. What we know: once a union drive gets under way, the vote is almost always 'yes union' and frequently by an overwhelming margin. The potential for more unions is high because the pay is low and the lack of respect. And not knowing whether your course will run until the very last minute is potentially a big disruption if not a financial hazard.

The way the world is going I think unions are on the way out - with tenure close behind, really. There just doesn't seem to be the stomach for people to truly organize and 'fight the power' in the US anyway, and the media manipulation makes it easy to turn the public against that sort of thing. It's a real race to the bottom "if I can't have it you can't have it" mentality these days, underpinned by a lot of true suffering, and I honestly don't see things getting better. I do wish anyone who does the work to form a union the best of luck because in the right situation they can be an overall positive thing.

1. If there exist both a fight to save tenure and a fight to save unions, they have next to no mutual reinforcement. Tenure doesn't warm the hearts of people who depended on labor unions to get a roof over their heads. A guy with tenure may just as often be the guy who lives in your little town in Ohio who wishes he lived in Harvard Square or Manhattan. People with tenure don't use unions like SEIU or UAW, working stiff unions
2. There can be good jobs in academia without tenure if there are unions, because of the potential for solidarity, even when jobs are classified either part-time or full time.
3. Solidarity in the current system is limited, since tenure track sees adjunctification as a looming threat and adjunct faculty don't get respect from the tenure track.

As for fighting, it makes much more sense to fight for the life of unions than it does to fight for tenure. There are many more allies.

[fast_and_bulbous]

The way the world is going I think unions are on the way out - with tenure close behind, really. There just doesn't seem to be the stomach for people to truly organize and 'fight the power' in the US anyway, and the media manipulation makes it easy to turn the public against that sort of thing.

How much of this is simply a result of the lifestyle diversity of the workforce? Decades ago, the typical worker was male, married with children, in a single wage earner household. So a union in any industry could basically push for the same kinds of things for all workers, and get lots of buy in. Compare that to now, and the adjunct situation as a particularly stark contrast. Workers can be single, married, any age, with or without family. Some have this as their sole source of income, but others only have it on the side OR are retired and don't rely on it for survival. About the only thing all of the workers have in common is "More money is good." While none may be opposed to things like better benefits, for those who have full-time employment elsewhere, or get benefits in retirement, then it won't make any difference, and they're probably not in favour of a strike to secure benefits which will have no value for them.

Before people are willing to "fight the power", they have to agree on "why?".

Very good points. I don't have an answer. I would even say there is little solidarity amongst tenured faculty across many universities - the life of a "teaching faculty" in the liberal arts is quite different than that of a "research faculty" in a STEM field, for instance. This was on display when our union organized and finally went on strike. It really struck me how much I just plain disagreed with all the rhetoric I was hearing from many of the faculty who I swear worked at a different university than me. That right there may be why solidarity is so difficult - there may not be much in common (other than wanting job security and good benefits) amongst faculty in the first place.

[polly_mer]

Despite part time faculty having variegated lifestyles, most of the time, crappy pay and temp worker status are part of that lifestyle.

This is very common in humanities fields, particularly at underresourced institutions.  This is somewhat common in liberal arts and social science fields at underresourced institutions.  This is not at all the case for most people who are in fields where academia is not the primary employer for graduate degreed folks.  This is not at all the case at most elite institutions where people get paid good money for everything.

I again make the distinction between professional fellows (i.e., part-time faculty who are incorporated into a specific major program and are the individual responsible for a specific required class or three) and true adjuncts who are part of a pool of people who are covering the random number of sections of general education courses.  The professional fellows tend to have stability, pay worth their time or true volunteers, and don't have sections cancelled at the last minute because they are valued members of the faculty on a part-time basis.  These are the engineers who teach the one section of unit operations in the fall for the chemical engineering department, the judge who takes one (possibly large) lecture class on the basics of the court system for the criminal justice majors every spring, or the now-professional-consultant in the education department who teaches one what-you-need-to-know-about-IDEA course online each term because the elementary and special ed programs differ in their timing.

As fast_and_bulbous points out, people in the same employment category in different parts of the university may be experiencing very different things.  Ignoring that reality is one reason I am very skeptical of the benefits of unions that are attempting to serve a wide array of needs without actually acknowledging SPADFY.  For example, in grad school, I ended up as a TA for a required 10 h/week for a whopping $50/month because the humanities-controlled grad union had negotiated away the top of the pay scale in favor of supporting a much higher floor on the pay scale.  I understand why the union-leadership did it, but that didn't fix my problem of being required to take on extra duties on top of my engineering research fellowship with essentially no extra pay nor any lessening of my deliverables to the research project.

For the record, I am against being forced to work more with no additional pay and no change in other job duties.  As one of my colleagues pointed out, even being an exempt, salaried professional doesn't make one a slave.  In my present job, I am an at-will employee who can be fired with zero notice.  However, seldom is that done at my employer for non-criminal acts because people in my job category are very hard to replace, unlike the part-time faculty member in certain fields where the number of sections is highly variable and cancelling some gen ed sections to redistribute students into other gen ed sections happens every semester.

[mahagonny]

I again make the distinction between professional fellows (i.e., part-time faculty who are incorporated into a specific major program and are the individual responsible for a specific required class or three) and true adjuncts who are part of a pool of people who are covering the random number of sections of general education courses.  The professional fellows tend to have stability, pay worth their time or true volunteers, and don't have sections cancelled at the last minute because they are valued members of the faculty on a part-time basis.  These are the engineers who teach the one section of unit operations in the fall for the chemical engineering department, the judge who takes one (possibly large) lecture class on the basics of the court system for the criminal justice majors every spring, or the now-professional-consultant in the education department who teaches one what-you-need-to-know-about-IDEA course online each term because the elementary and special ed programs differ in their timing.

It doesn't matter how matter categories of adjunct faculty you can sort us into. It matters how the voting turns out. It's usually union -YES! and frequently by a huge margin.

For the record, I am against being forced to work more with no additional pay and no change in other job duties. 

i doubt that very much.

Moderator note: removed baggage.

[polly_mer]

How long are you going to resist the realities of SPADFY?

Some people are indeed volunteers or otherwise able to work for less money.  Good volunteers will get tasks when employees hold out for more money.  That doesn't negate the situation that people who need to be paid should walk when the tasks greatly exceed the money being offered.

That situation also doesn't change the reality that certain fields pay far more than other fields because teaching one course on the side for the majors is very different than wanting to be full-time in academia while being involuntarily part-time.  That involuntarily part-time situation tends to be very heavily weighted to the humanities and indeed the gen ed requirements.

[mahagonny]

How long are you going to resist the realities of SPADFY?

Some people are indeed volunteers or otherwise able to work for less money.  Good volunteers will get tasks when employees hold out for more money.  That doesn't negate the situation that people who need to be paid should walk when the tasks greatly exceed the money being offered.

That situation also doesn't change the reality that certain fields pay far more than other fields because teaching one course on the side for the majors is very different than wanting to be full-time in academia while being involuntarily part-time.  That involuntarily part-time situation tends to be very heavily weighted to the humanities and indeed the gen ed requirements.

...which are also the departments with greater numbers of adjunct faculty, who then vote for union ratification en masse. The rest of the adjunct population is more mixed in their take on unions, but the vote goes in favor of the union, once it's underway and people get up their nerve by seeing the support around them. And why people who think like you do, without sympathy for the rank and file worker, keep coming back to the discussion for another headache.

[polly_mer]

The question remains: is it better for the part-time people who want to unionize to have the union be across all the institutions in the region or to continue to go one institution at a time?

A related question is whether unionizing the part-timers will result in overall better treatment for a more stable part-time population who get some professional development support or whether making part-timers more expensive will essentially kill part-time positions in certain fields where armies of poorly paid part-timers exist, especially as the number of students entering college with their gen eds completed increase?

I am genuinely interested in the answers because I'm still in a situation where we have jobs standing open through lack of people willing to learn new things and yet there are large enough numbers of people who would rather be poorly paid academics in untenable positions that they can be exploited as a group.

It's like watching an ongoing 117 car pile up as the next set of cars keep driving at 5 mph into the mass instead of getting off the freeway.

[downer]

The question remains: is it better for the part-time people who want to unionize to have the union be across all the institutions in the region or to continue to go one institution at a time?

A related question is whether unionizing the part-timers will result in overall better treatment for a more stable part-time population who get some professional development support or whether making part-timers more expensive will essentially kill part-time positions in certain fields where armies of poorly paid part-timers exist, especially as the number of students entering college with their gen eds completed increase?

I'd view the bolded part as a good consequence, even if it means that some people no longer continue the work they have been doing.

Though it would seem to be an unstable situation: if the positions all go away, then doesn't the union also go away, and then the schools bring back the poorly paid jobs?

I'm also wondering what is the effective difference between unionization across academic versus by institution. Who would do the negotiating for a contract at a particular school? Who would go out on strike if negotiations break down? How would it help adjuncts at school A if adjuncts at schools B, C and D go on strike?