News

Tufts Adjunct Faculty Vote Yes to Union

Adjunct faculty at Tufts University have voted overwhelmingly in favor of a forming a union with Adjunct Action/SEIU.

Ballots were counted today at the National Labor Relations Board, and the victory was announced this afternoon. The win sets the table for contract negotiations at Tufts.

“This victory is exciting and important for the entire Tufts University community. I’m happy that my part-time colleagues and I will have a greater say in making Tufts an even better place to work and to learn,” said Carol Wilkinson, a part-time lecturer who has taught at Tufts since 1986.
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Adjunct professors are the new working poor

Op-ed on the conditions faced by adjuncts: “The dirty little secret is that higher education is staffed with an insufficiently resourced, egregiously exploited, contingent “new faculty majority.” In addition to the 49.3% of faculty in part-time positions (70% in community colleges), another 19% are full-time, nontenure-track. (These numbers do not include graduate assistants or postdocs.)

Adjunct professors, like many hard-working Americans, are the working poor. They are one step away from “We don’t need your services anymore” or one medical emergency away from being destitute, like Vojtko.”

Read more here: http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/24/opinion/rhoades-adjunct-faculty/?hpt=hp_bn7

Tufts Daily: Adjunct Vote Underway

Part-time lecturers of the School of Arts and Sciences will this week cast their ballots in an election determining whether adjunct faculty will form a union under Service Employees International Union’s (SEIU) Adjunct Action campaign, which aims to improve benefits, job security and pay for part-time professors at universities.

Many part-time faculty members lack the benefits that full-time professors receive, according to Andrew Klatt, romance languages lecturer and member of the part-time faculty organizing committee. Benefits include “just cause” protection from arbitrary job termination, security in class reappointment and a transparent evaluation process, he said.

Read more here: http://www.tuftsdaily.com/news/adjunct-faculty-to-vote-on-union-rights

Op-Ed: Tufts should support adjunct professors

Great editorial in The Tufts Daily voicing support for adjunct professors who are set to vote in the next two weeks on forming a union. “As Tufts students, we should support our professors’ struggle for a voice within the university and their push to gain representation, adequate salaries and job security.”

Op-Ed | Adjunct action: Tufts should support adjunct professors - Op-Ed - Tufts Daily - Tufts University.
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What Adjuncts Can Learn from Fast Food Workers

Here’s an article by Brian Haman in Counterpunch about how two growing unionization movements, adjuncts and fast food workers, are similar — and what contingent faculty can learn from the fast food workers.

“It has become a truism in American higher education: seventy-five percent of undergraduate courses at U.S. colleges and universities are taught by contingent faculty¹, most of whom lack health insurance,²carry onerous student debt,³ receive poverty-level compensation, and often rely on public assistance such as food stamps in order to make ends meet.⁴ “

Read more: http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/30/what-contingent-faculty-can-learn-from-fast-food-workers/#sdfootnote5sym

Un-Hired Ed, The Growing Adjunct Crisis

Here’s a striking infographic on the growing adjunct crisis, where “our best and brightest can work tirelessly for 8 years only to receive food stamps, debt, and no career.” Here’s one fact: wages have declined from $53/hour to $8.90/hour.

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Coalition of Academic Labor Call for Participation

American University Contract Highlights, June 2013

Improved Job Security

More timely assignments - Assignments to teach will be made as early as possible

Protections on reappointment - If an adjunct has taught the same course for at least 3 semesters in the past three academic years, will be entitled to “good faith consideration” to reassignment to that course, significantly limiting the circumstances under which reappointment can be denied. Read More