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From Adjunct Advocate - March/April 2001

SAWSJ Sponsors Public Hearing in New York City
 
by Jennifer Berkshire

In 1976, New York resident and then private citizen Ed ward Sullivan was faced with a tough decision. He could continue to teach English as a Second Language at New York University, where he'd been an adjunct faculty member for fifteen years--a job he loved--or he could run for the New York State Assembly. In the end, Sullivan's wife made the decision for him; the position of Assemblyman, it seems, came with health insurance.

It has been almost twenty-five years since Sullivan traded in the classroom chalkboard for the chambers of the Capitol building in Albany. But he has never forgotten about his days as an adjunct.

Sullivan recently had an opportunity to catch up on the current state of the university workplace. Joining such academic notables as Columbia University Professor of History Eric Foner, and NYU Professor of Africana Studies, Robin D.G. Kelly, Sullivan participated in a hearing on the workplace rights of college and university workers around the country. The panel heard testimony from graduate students who have been trying to form unions, adjunct faculty who are fighting for improved working conditions and janitors who are trying to make ends meet.

The hearing, held at New York City's Judson Memorial Church, and attended by more than 300 people, was sponsored by a group known as Scholars, Artists and Writers for Social Justice. The group, which goes by the unlikely acronym SAWSJ, was formed in 1997 with the purpose of building academic solidarity on campus for labor struggles nationwide. Increasingly though, SAWSJ has been turning its attentions to issues confronted by university workers, from tenure disputes to subcontracting to union organizing campaigns. The recent hearing was held as part of a national campaign to promote a code of fair labor practices for university workplaces. SAWSJ hopes that by uniting full and part-time faculty, along with students, staff-members, and service and maintenance employees, it can strengthen the rights of campus workers and improve their working conditions.

Barbara Bowen, President of the 17,000 member Professional Staff Congress at the City University of New York, opened the hearing with a warning about the growing sway of corporate values over university life. Universities, she said, are increasingly "mimicking the corporation" in their treatment of employees. She appealed to all sectors of the university workforce to recognize their shared interest in improving campus-working conditions, but singled out university teachers for special mention. "Academics must learn to defend themselves as workers," she concluded.

While the crowd was spirited and the panel of listeners sympathetic, much of the testimony was grim. Graduate students from Yale and the University of Illinois recounted their lengthy battles--both failed to date--to get their universities to recognize unions of teaching assistants on those campuses, despite having won union elections. At NYU, the ballots of teaching and research assistants who voted on union representation last spring have yet to be counted. NYU administrators impounded the ballots soon after the vote, and a legal stalemate has since ensued.

"It is especially distressing when violations of the right to organize occur in university settings," said Lance Compa, a speaker at the event and the author of a new Human Rights Watch report on the state of labor rights in the United States. "Universities depend on freedom of speech and freedom of expression, and should be equally sensitive to the freedom of association among their own employees," said Compa.

Not all of the news was bad. Gary Zabel, the co-chair of the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor and an adjunct professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Boston, reported on successful efforts by adjunct faculty on his campus to win improved pay and benefits, raising the average pay per course from $2,500 to $4,000 and gaining full medical and dental coverage. The victory by the adjuncts, who are represented by an affiliate of the National Education Association, came after more than two years of reaching out to students and full-time faculty on campus. "By forming an alliance between faculty, students, adjuncts and existing campus unions," noted Zabel, "we were able to change the culture of the university workplace."

With 47 percent of all academic positions now held by part-time and non-tenure-track faculty, Zabel believes that this kind of cross-sector organizing holds the key to improving working conditions for part-time faculty. Despite the successes on the UMass Boston campus, though, Zabel recognizes that organizing adjunct faculty on a broader scale won't be easy. "Part-timers are notoriously difficult to organize," he said. "Our employers have created us for that reason."

Other speakers testified about a growing awareness on the part of students and their parents that the working conditions of university employees are inextricably linked to the quality of a university education. Nicole MacLaughlin, a representative of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, and a former graduate student at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, said that support for the union of graduate students there is on the rise among parents and students. "They understand that our working conditions are their learning conditions," she said.

It is precisely this sentiment that SAWSJ hopes will lead to widespread support for its University Code of Conduct regarding the rights of university workers. The code, which SAWSJ plans to introduce for debate on campuses across the country this spring, contains six provisions that the group maintains must be followed by educational institutions to be considered 'fair labor practice employers.' The provisions include the right to participate fully in determining the conditions of work; the right to learn, teach, work and conduct research in an environment that values and protects academic freedom; the right to a living wage that includes benefits; the right to a workplace free from discrimination and harassment; the right to a safe and healthy workplace; and finally, the right to learn, teach and work in an institution that does not depend upon prison labor. "No educational institution can fulfill its mission," reads the preamble to the Code, "unless these rights are protected."

Worthy sentiments no doubt, but does the Code stand a chance of being implemented by colleges and universities? SAWSJ took the idea for the code from another cause that seemed like a long shot just a few years ago--the student-led anti-sweatshop movement that has since fought successfully to ban sweatshop-made products from universities across the country.

Besides, say advocates, the issues are worth raising even if the Code fails to catch on. Rich Moser is a National Field Representative for the American Association of University Professors, a group that has aggressively organized part-time and adjunct faculty in recent years. The Code of Conduct, said Moser, is a response to a deep contradiction between the self-professed mission of our educational institutions and what their labor practices say about them. "The university can't help but be a teacher," he said. "If it evokes corporate values, if it exploits workers and pays them poorly, then that is the hidden but true curriculum of the university. In effect, the university is teaching that it's good to exploit people, and that, I would say, is very bad teaching."

The graduate students, adjunct faculty, full professors and campus construction workers who attended the hearing seemed to agree. At the event's conclusion, a vote was held on whether or not to 'pass' the 'Fair Labor Practices' Code of Conduct. Not surprisingly, it passed unanimously.
 
by Jennifer Berkshire

From Adjunct Advocate - March/April 2001

 

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