Adjunct Action/SEIU wants to help Members of Congress to get a picture of what’s really going on on campus and how it affects higher education. Over the next month, Adjunct Action is collecting stories from contingent faculty, and the stories will be personally delivered to Representative Miller by contingent faculty in a show of strength of the adjunct community. Stories must be submitted by December 20th.
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Here’s a compilation of papers, presentations, and power points from the SEIU Local 500 Coalition of Academic Labor Conference, held from November 15 to 17 in Washington, DC. More research will be added as it is submitted.
Check here for updates from SEIU Local 500′s “Action on the Academy: Integrated Strategies, Imaginative Agitation, and Creative Solutions to the Crisis in Higher Education” Coalition of Academic Labor conference. We will post as many of the power points and papers referenced during the conference as we can.
http://storify.com/SEIU/coalition-of-academic-labor-conference
SEIU Local 500′s Coalition of Academic Labor’s conference, “Action on the Academy: Integrated Strategies, Imaginative Agitation, and Creative Solutions to the Crisis in Higher Education,” will be held this Friday through Sunday at SEIU Headquarters in Washington, DC. For more information, visit www.local500calconference.org. Follow #CALConference on Twitter for updates throughout the weekend.
LOS ANGELES – Adjunct faculty teaching at the University of La Verne (ULV) and Whittier College have filed petitions with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to form a union with Adjunct Action/SEIU and join a growing movement working to improve the future of higher education.
“There has been a real need to address the inequities that adjunct faculty face for a long time,” said Fatima Suarez, an adjunct professor in Anthropology and Sociology at ULV. “We are excited for the opportunity to form a union and win a real voice and a better future for ourselves and our students.”
We’ll be providing live updates from the Los Angeles Adjunct Symposium tomorrow, as adjuncts gather to plan organizing efforts in LA. Featured speakers include Lilian Taiz, PhD, president of the California Faculty Association and Gary Rhoades, PhD, director of the Center for the Study of Higher Education, Educational Policy Studies & Practice at University of Arizona in Tucson.
Visit: http://storify.com/SEIU/live-updates-from-the-la-adjunct-symposium
Throughout the day will be providing live updates of the Boston Adjunct Symposium. Follow the hashtag #AdjunctSymposium on Twitter.
Quickly rising tuition has resulted in record levels of student debt, putting higher education out of reach for more and more working families.
At the same time, universities are shifting resources away from instruction. Today, more than two-thirds of all faculty work on a contingent basis, facing low pay and no benefits or job security. Many do not even have access to basic facilities such as office space, making it increasingly difficult for adjuncts to do their best for their students.
Being a university professor, once the quintessential middle-class job, has become a low-wage one. Boston is no exception.
Click the link to read The High Cost of Adjunct Living: Boston
Next week will be a big week for the Adjunct Action campaign, as adjuncts on both coasts gather to strategize about organizing efforts occurring at colleges and universities in Boston and Los Angeles. On Friday, November 1, contingent faculty from across Boston will gather at at the Boston Central Library to discuss the next steps for the organizing efforts there. In September, Tufts adjunct faculty voted to form a union, and this week, adjuncts at Lesley University filed for a union election. Ellen Schrecker, from Yeshiva University and NYU, is scheduled to speak, as is Anne Johnson, the director of Generation Progress at the Center for American Progress.
“Students mostly just call them professors. But there are some critical differences between the traditional tenure-line professor’s position and that of the adjunct who works for a college part-time.
It is these differences – relevant to issues such as pay, benefits, job security and recognition – that have spurred a movement at Northeastern mirroring that of other colleges across the country. As The News reported last week, adjunct professors are seeking to unionize through the Service Employees International Union’s (SEIU) Adjunct Action campaign for the power to negotiate with the administration on their terms of employment. Part-time faculty are currently in the process of gathering signatures in support of collectivization, and will be able to hold a union election when they receive at least 30 percent of eligible faculty members’ signatures. Shimer said he believes they have already met this threshold, but organizers are still seeking signatures before submission to the National Labor Relations Board for a more decisive win.”
Read the full article by Madelyn Stone in The Huntington News here: http://huntnewsnu.com/2013/10/with-uncertain-futures-adjuncts-seek-to-unionize/
