Are adjunct professors the new fast food workers?

This morning, February 21, 2015, a report on NPR that Wisconsin
legislature is prepared to pass a "Right to Work" bill. Governor
Scott Wallace has consented to sign it if it comes across his desk.
How long will it take for Working Class Wisconsans to realize that
they have been bamboozled by the Brothers Koch? Wisconsin should be
held up as the Poster Child for the outcome of "Divide and Conquer",
tactics of the Ruling Class.
This article focuses on the exploitation of adjunct professors, but in
fact, their working conditions are fast becoming the Norm for many
Working Class Americans. I've talked in the past about my own
contractual agreement with the University of Washington. adjunct
professors are dealt with as are all Working Class people. But it has
taken the adjunct professors and many other white collar workers a
long time to understand that the Ruling Class sees them as no better
than the garbage collector or the hotel maid. And what makes it even
more difficult in the case of the adjunct professors to deal with is
the fact that tenured professors also fear their jobs. Remember, the
Ruling Class is skilled at playing one against the other. "You have
yours, so if you want to keep it, you'll make certain those on the
outside never get in".
Contracting is a form of enslavement. Your group is isolated and
threatened and bullied. Most contracts are totally slanted toward the
needs of the employer. Either you accept their terms and sign on the
dotted line, or someone else will step up and take the job. Another
problem with contract labor is that professional standards begin to be
ignored, both by the contractor as well as the employer. One of the
benefits of contracting is that it saves the employer money. Control
is usually through the job description and penalties for compliance
failure, thus saving added supervisors.
We are rushing backward in time. Back in the 1920's, my uncle Bill,
desperate for a job and possessing low morals, would see a
construction site, hunt up the construction boss and point out some
fellow hard at work. "What do you pay him?" he would ask. When the
boss told him, he would assure the boss that he could work twice as
hard at a lower wage. Very often the boss would put him to the job
and fire the other fellow. And Bill was a worker. But he never
stayed long past the first couple of paychecks. I often wonder how
many families went without dinner or were put out by the Landlord
because Bill had taken the bread winner's job.
But as I keep hammering, we Working Class folk have been programmed
for many years to turn on one another. We have been taught to believe
that if we have more education, earn more money and support the
"right" candidates, we believe we are better than other Working Class
folk. But the Ruling Class sees no difference between a white collar
and a blue collar. Capitalism is a system of exploitation.
Carl Jarvis



On 2/21/15, joe harcz Comcast <joeharcz@comcast.net> wrote:
> And they are still trying to unionizez Chuck.
>
> U of M has become an elite snobby, farm, sad to say.
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Charles Krugman" <ckrugman@sbcglobal.net>
> To: "Blind Democracy Discussion List" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
> Sent: Monday, February 16, 2015 11:40 PM
> Subject: Re: Are adjunct professors the new fast food workers?
>
>
>> This was an issue when I was at Michigan in the seventies. The graduate
>> teaching assistants were trying to organize and went out on strike at one
>>
>> point for a few days and I know of several nontenured professors that
>> didn't get their tenure because the University used the excuse that they
>> didn't publish enough research to prove they warranted it.
>> Chuck
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Miriam Vieni
>> Sent: Monday, February 16, 2015 7:39 PM
>> To: 'Charles Krugman' ; 'Blind Democracy Discussion List'
>> Subject: RE: Are adjunct professors the new fast food workers?
>>
>> I've seen articles like this for several years now. The universities pay
>> high salaries to administrators and they charge high tuition. It's
>> incredible.
>>
>> Miriam
>>
>> ________________________________
>>
>> From: Blind-Democracy [mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On
>> Behalf Of Charles Krugman
>> Sent: Monday, February 16, 2015 10:18 PM
>> To: Blind Democracy
>> Subject: Are adjunct professors the new fast food workers?
>>
>>
>>
>> Are Adjunct Professors the New Fast-Food Workers?
>>
>> By Ana Beatriz Cholo
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Adjunct Professors Patti Donze is a California State University,
>> Dominguez
>> Hills sociology lecturer doing everything right to become a tenured
>> college
>> professor. She has advanced degrees from well-respected universities and
>> is
>> teaching a full load of five classes this semester. But her net income is
>> $2,500 a month, just barely enough to buy food and pay rent on a studio
>> apartment in Culver City.
>>
>> She has $50,000 in school loan debt - not an extreme amount considering
>> the
>> Juris Doctorate and Ph.D. that she has under her belt, but she said it's
>> not
>> feasible to pay even the minimum monthly payment and is researching loan
>> forgiveness programs.
>>
>> Besides fast-food workers, there is another face of low-wage workers
>> across
>> the country. For many universities and colleges, both public and private,
>> it's their most embarrassing secret - paying educated professionals
>> minimum
>> wage salaries with no benefits. Adjuncts are paid much less than tenured
>> and
>> full-time faculty and typically do not have union representation.
>>
>> For many adjuncts, banding together to speak up is one approach to
>> winning
>> better pay, benefits and some job security, such as longer and more
>> stable
>> contracts. These are the aims of academic unions and the New Faculty
>> Majority, an advocacy organization committed to bringing about income
>> equality for all college faculty in areas where unions are weak.
>>
>> Adrianna Kezar, a professor at the University of Southern California's
>> Rossier School of Education and co-director of the Delphi Project on the
>> Changing Faculty and Student Success, is an expert on change and
>> leadership
>> in higher education. She believes the unionization movement has been the
>> big
>> catalyst for the recent focus on unfair working conditions for these
>> highly
>> qualified educators.
>>
>> "Fifty percent of the faculty in our country make what somebody at
>> McDonald's makes," she said, adding that more and more adjuncts are going
>>
>> on
>> public assistance and needing food stamps to survive.
>>
>> Last year in California, Local 1021 of the Service Employees
>> International
>> Union (SEIU) began an intense campaign to organize adjunct faculty
>> members
>> in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, part of a national Adjunct Action
>> campaign
>> that is taking place in American cities.
>>
>> Recently unionized schools in the Bay Area include St. Mary's College,
>> Dominican University, Mills College, San Francisco Art Institute and the
>> California College of the Arts are all in various stages of unionizing.
>> In
>> the Los Angeles region, Whittier College, Laguna College of Art + Design
>> and
>> Otis College of Art and Design have voted to unionize, with the faculty
>> at
>> the California Institute of the Arts voting on the matter in March.
>>
>> Chris Johnson has been a part of the adjunct faculty at Dominican
>> University
>> in San Rafael since 2009. She teaches English there, specifically
>> developmental and business writing, and holds two master's degrees - one
>> in
>> journalism and the other in library science. Like other adjuncts across
>> the
>> nation, she finds out only a couple of weeks ahead of time whether she
>> will
>> be teaching any classes during the upcoming semester. She must leave her
>> schedule open and simply cross her fingers.
>>
>> "We earn $4,305 to teach one class at Dominican," she said in an
>> interview.
>> "That is considered high for the nation but we are in the Bay Area, which
>>
>> is
>> considered one of the most expensive places in the world. The secretaries
>> make more than we do. We have no benefits, no health care, but now that
>> we
>> have a union that is going to change."
>>
>> A study released last year by the Institute for Policy Studies noted that
>> colleges with millionaire presidents are the same ones whose students are
>> more indebted and where adjuncts are more heavily relied upon.
>>
>> Cal State adjunct faculty are represented by California Faculty
>> Association
>> (another SEIU local), which represents more than 23,000 employees ranging
>> from professors and lecturers, to counselors and coaches.
>>
>> The CFA president, Lillian Taiz, said there are members who have been
>> teaching for 30 years but are still considered temporary workers.
>>
>> Taiz said there is no difference between lecturers and tenure track
>> professors, and remembers when all educators had a good shot at getting a
>> tenure track job and enjoying a middle-class life.
>>
>> "Universities across the country," she said, "instead of investing in
>> long-term faculty who will build and grow the curriculum and students,
>> are
>> hiring temporary workers. It's not any different than [in] corporate
>> America. The disinvestment in education made universities turn to this
>> haphazard temporary workforce."
>>
>> Taiz added that the only way for things to get better is if adjuncts come
>> together and demand it.
>>
>> "The connection to the fast-food workers is very similar," said Taiz.
>> "Corporations are not going to pay them $15 an hour out of the goodness
>> of
>> their hearts. It's no different for faculty."
>>
>> Last year, a tentative agreement was reached between the faculty union
>> and
>> Cal State Los Angeles that slightly improved wages for holders of
>> doctorates. Donze said that translated into a $300 per month salary
>> increase
>> - a nice raise but nothing life-changing.
>>
>> She wishes adjunct faculty could be given the same benefits as
>> tenure-track
>> faculty. Her hope is to land such a job in the future, but those types of
>> positions are few in number.
>>
>>
>>
>> "I am teaching a class and I'm getting paid a third of what a tenured
>> professor would get to teach the same exact class."
>>
>> "I am teaching a class and I'm getting paid a third of what a tenured
>> professor would get to teach the same exact class," Donze said. "I was a
>> merit scholar at my law school. I look good on paper, but here I am
>> getting
>> paid less than $20,000 a year. I mean, it was minimum wage on my W-2s. I
>> had
>> no idea that I would graduate with a Ph.D. and be making as little as I
>> do.
>> Starbucks would probably pay more."
>>
>> In a way, Donze is lucky because she has the advantage of teaching all of
>> her classes in one location and, because she works for the Cal State
>> system,
>> health insurance. She's also lucky because she is teaching a full load,
>> but
>> that is always contingent on her department. In 2012, she was bringing
>> home
>> $1,300 per month.
>>
>> "All of my income went towards rent. I didn't have money for food," she
>> said.
>>
>> Despite the financial challenges, Donze said she loves her job.
>>
>> "Basically I want to do exactly what I'm doing," she said. "I have my
>> dream
>> job. I want to teach the people who are going to go out and make the
>> changes
>> that we want to see. They want to make a world that is more equal and
>> just.
>> Students tell me that I have changed their lives."
>>
>> Congressman George Miller (D-CA) highlighted the issue of adjunct pay
>> last
>> year, prior to his retirement, via a reportfrom the House Education and
>> the
>> Workforce Committee. The study, titled, "The Just-In-Time Professor," may
>> pave the way for more interest from state legislatures into how
>> state-funded
>> universities are spending their money, which would help fuel the
>> movement,
>> according to Kezar.
>>
>> As for what is fair pay for adjunct professors, that number depends on
>> the
>> institution, Kezar said. A new union contract at Tufts University, a
>> relatively wealthy institution, will pay all part-time faculty $7,300 per
>> course by September 2016 and those with eight or more years of service
>> will
>> get $8,760 a class. And work done outside of the classroom mentoring
>> students, grading, advising, etc. will also be compensated - something
>> that
>> many adjuncts currently end up doing for students without pay.
>>
>> Although Kezar considers that a reasonable salary, it is not realistic
>> for
>> all institutions, especially those that are not research-based or are
>> state-funded. For instance, a good ballpark salary range for adjuncts in
>> the
>> Cal State system might be in the $5,000 to $6,000 range.
>>
>> ana-beatriz-choloExamining priorities is key, said Kezar, who admitted
>> she
>> would be open to taking a pay cut herself in order to help equalize the
>> pay
>> system for adjuncts.
>>
>> "What's important is student learning and things that don't align with
>> that
>> should not get priority," she said. "We need an across-the-board
>> examination
>> of budgets."
>>
>> Ana Beatriz Cholo
>> Capital & Main
>>
>> Patti Donze photo by Ana Beatriz Cholo
>>
>> http://www.laprogressive.com/adjunct-professors/?utm_source=Progressive%20Ca
>> ucus&utm_campaign=969771ae70-LAP_News_17April12&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_
>> 22a738cce7-969771ae70-268138817
>>
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