Ab actu ad posse valet illation

Hello Future College X Union Members:

Changing Tide

We are a small but active group of adjuncts and contingents working on X’s campus to determine if we have the collective chutzpah and will to come together and work on improving pay, hiring and firing rules and general work conditions for all 180 to 200 of us.

The tide is changing for low paid professionals – at-will workers  -- across this country and other countries. It’s an undertow of force coming from the ranks of a new majority in higher education, these faculty many call contingents, or adjuncts;  for others like Ulrich Beck, we are now seen as part of the ranks of  perma-temps and precariates. Hands down, private non-profit colleges and universities are finding the new faculty majority – part-timers and full-timers not on the tenure track – coalescing and forcing a discussion around our futures, our economic viability and on the future of education.

The rising tsunami of hope and resolve is reverberating in other sectors of the high-stakes business of private education – the for-profits. Think about translators, language teachers, and the army of educators working for University of Phoenix, Kaplan and hundreds of for-profit schools that depend on one common thing – student debt racked up through mostly federal loans . . . . And adjunct faculty, to the tune of 95 percent of all U of Phoenix faculty.

The good news is in 2012, we can see teachers, both higher ed and K-12, make up the largest group participants in collective bargaining. It wasn’t always so, though. Many faculty to this day believe somehow that making $10,000 a year at one school, or $22,000 teaching at multiple schools does not qualify as working class. Now, however, graduate students and teaching assistants are organizing with auto and steel workers as well as communications workers and newspaper guilds.

A Union is the “Power of Us and We” 

What is a union? Well, simply it’s an “organization of workers who have banded together to achieve common goals such as protecting the integrity of its trade, achieving higher pay, increasing the number of employees an employer hires, and better working conditions.”

We can flip back in history and see what one Republican president had to say about the world’s largest union – AFL-CIO: " . . . The ultimate values of mankind are spiritual; these values include liberty, human dignity, opportunity and equal rights and justice." Eisenhower in 1955 via an address to the nation said that every American deserves a job with fair compensation, workable hours, and good workplace conditions “that leaves them feeling fulfilled.” He also argued for the economic interests of the employer and employee to become mutually agreed upon. Finding that “greatest amount of wealth for all” is a tag to this principle. Finally, Dwight Eisenhower said that "labor relations will be managed best when worked out in honest negotiation between employers and unions, without Government’s unwarranted interference."

Caste System or a Foot in the Door

Now, come back to 2012, and absorb to the words of Pablo Eisenberg, Senior Fellow, Georgetown Public Policy Institute. He’s been in solidarity for several years with fellow adjuncts at Georgetown University, which is in the process of creating an adjunct faculty union:

The Untouchables’ of American Higher Education, Huffington Post, 06/29/10 (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pablo-eisenberg/the-untouchables-of-ameri_b_629815.html)

Adjunct teachers have learned a sad but important lesson. If they don't organize to change a dysfunctional college system, no one else will. With this realization in mind, a number of adjuncts recently have banded together to establish a national association, The New Faculty Majority, to educate and pressure educators, legislators and the general public about the need for serious reform

The Caste System of Higher Education, Huffington Post, 09/04/12 (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pablo-eisenberg/caste-system-higher-education_b_1853917.html)

American universities and colleges are riddled with a caste system that violates our societal sense of fairness, justice, and decency. Neither the general public, nor parents, nor the large majority of students are even aware of its existence. College administrators and tenured faculty, who are acutely aware of the system, have done little or nothing to remedy the problem. It is a festering sore that threatens not only the quality of higher education but the system's ability to recruit and retain good teachers.

Democracy Takes Work, Participants

We have to say that the easiest way to grapple with adjuncts at X University gaining a seat at the table – the contractual table, or in our case, to be part of how adjuncts and contingents codify our present needs and our future wants –  is through organizing as part of a democratic process. Some of us will do much work to talk to fellow faculty to explain the needs to have an election on campus – secret, anonymous of course – to see if a majority of us (there are many of us, around 200 at any given time, more of us on the adjunct rolls)  – want to unionize. Others will have to vote with their hearts and minds and sign a card to call for a union election.

This is happening throughout the country, unionizing of adjuncts-contingents at non-profit colleges like X University. Unionizing is taking place on both religious-affiliated and non-religious-affiliated schools. The reason why adjunct-contingents are working without the collective force of full-time tenure line and tenured faculty as part of the unionization effort is because of a 5-4 1980 Supreme Court decision that states tenured faculty have much more power, more scope as supervisors, and have powerful say in campus governance and curriculum issues. Many full-time faculty dispute the power of tenure, but that legal decision is their current Achilles heel in terms of collective bargaining.

We as part of the organizing group at X University have heard lots back from faculty we’ve talked to informally. Both FT and PT faculty  tell us they support unionizing but have no gripes with their division leads or department chairs. That is a good sign, since most decisions about where money goes ( we can do better than $2631 for a 3-credit composition class at X U)  are not the purview of tenured faculty. Good working relationships between adjuncts and other campus stakeholders bodes well for a union effort. We want a contract that extends beyond a last-minute appointment or one that is based on a select group’s idea of what is fair wages and fair treatment.

The Others Have Bargaining Groups, so Why Not Adjuncts/Contingents?

We understand that change – a union effort at X U is new, with no precedent – is scary. We also know that some at X U say they despise unions, or at least believe unions have no place here. But we must respectively disagree.  If adjunct-contingents really look at the lay of the “university land,” it becomes clear that we are controlled by an army of alphabet soup organizations, steering groups, oversight committees, associations, think tanks, and lobbying collectives that hold sway over specific workers on campus. Some may call these groups “associations,” but many have great influence on the power dynamics, funding planning and narrative of their respective groups in higher education. De facto, the way education is going in all of its negatively portrayed ways can be partially attributed to these special interest groups, some of which are large in number.

Adjunct-contingents are the majority in the USA – some researchers put adjuncts-contingents at 70 percent of all faculty at all campuses. At X U, we are 50 percent of the professorial workforce. Below we are listing just a small chunk of the iceberg of groups calling themselves communities of interest – call them advocacy groups, or lobbies, and, to be truthful, quasi-union groups that advocate for themselves:

New America Foundation and Education Sector (NAFES) ; Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (CFAT) ; Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities (APSCU) ; Presidents of Council of Independent Colleges; (PCIC)  American Association of School Administrators (AASA) ;Association of College & University Policy Administrators (ACUPA) ; American Association of SchoolAdministrators (AASA) ; American College Personnel Association (ACPA) ; American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO); National Association of Presidential Assistants in Higher Education (NAPAHE); College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR); Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU) ; American Association of Presidents of Independent Colleges and Universities (AAPICU); National Association of College & University Food Services (NACUFS).

Marketing Private Schools but not Part-time Faculty

X U’s direct marketing group is another example of how powerful organizations are when they come together as collectives. They also leave out us, adjuncts-contingents, in their marketing and research arms.  If you were to go to, say, the ICW web site – Independent Colleges of Washington (http://www.icwashington.org/ )  -- you will not see the words “professor” and “adjunct” (or “contingent”) put together. Not even one mention of adjunct on its own. But, you will see these headlines –

                "Private colleges are affordable and diverse"

                "College Is Still Our Best Hope"

                "Slashing financial aid imperils higher education and economic growth"

                "Private college: Still a bargain for some"

                "Don't Backslide on Higher Education"

Please note that ICW is another one of those quasi-lobbying groups, union-like in its collective will and community of interests. Yet, in many ways, not so democratic. ICW is a business and marketing tool to grow the 10 private colleges in the state of Washington. Of course, there is a mother ship tied to ICW – “The Voice of America's Private Nonprofit Colleges and Universities”: National Association of  Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU). Mark those interested communities as X University and nine other schools. Note that ICW is proud of the following:

•  40,000 students educated each year at these 10 colleges
• 13:1 student to faculty ratio, averaged
•  90 percent of all students receive financial aid
• average cost of attendance averaged for the 10 colleges -- $39,300; some go higher, in the mid-$45K to $50 K
•  those that graduate from ICW schools – 30 percent are education majors w/ certificates
• the 10 ICW’s contribute $2.5 billion to state and local economies
•  ICWs employ over 7,000 residents

But, missing, are the adjunct numbers

• all 10 collectively utilize more than 2,000 adjuncts and/or contingent
• more than 50 percent of classes are taught by adjunct
• part-time pay is  $1900 a class in composition at St. Martin’s University
• $3100 for a language class at Seattle University
•  $2631 for a composition class at Gonzaga taught by MA; $2925 taught by a PhD-holder
• For Walla Walla -- $1925 
• Whitworth, $4000

Now, adjuncts have to teach elsewhere to make ends meet so if you go the crowd-sourced spreadsheet at the Adjunct Project, you can see other college teaching opportunities and pay scales  in our state:

• Whatcom pays $3108 and ITT pays $1500 (via http://www.adjunctproject.com/us/)

We Believe in Open Exchange of Dialogue

We believe that all X U  faculty, students, and the community at large will benefit from an active conversation (workshops, press releases, teach-ins) around wage justice and economic disparities. We know that a democratic bargaining unit of contingent faculty is our best change to quash the thinking of incremental change and disarm those who believe we have to have an economic system that says adjuncts get what they deserve . . . and inevitably the market makes people rich and some people poor.

X U’s reputation will soar with a stronger commitment to changing the work conditions and increasing the pay and professional development opportunities around adjunct-contingent work. Others on campus can benefit from this sort of collective empowerment. This is a democratic movement, not a dictatorial one. We want to have a measure of shared oversight and management in our destinies. We may not have an alphabet soup group overseeing our plight or advocating for our needs, but we do have the power of what Dwight Eisenhower said was the ultimate value of a union --  bringing liberty, human dignity, opportunity and equal rights and justice to all workplaces.

We want to talk to you, and that’s why we have reached out. A union effort is done in the open and with aplomb and pride and craft. For now, though, we are hoping for a private conversation, either one-on-one or within a larger group. Can we count on you meeting one or all of us soon?

Thanks, sincerely from:

Name ____________________________, contact information ______________

Department________________________, years teaching  __________