Fairness for Adjuncts

by Dan Frey

In America, we like to pride ourselves on our sense of fairness. We believe in "fair play," and Harry Truman even touted his post-World War II legislative program as a "Fair Deal." In the workplace, the idea revolves around the notion of "equal pay for equal work." That notion does not, however, exist for teaching assistants at the state's universities or for adjunct faculty at Arizona's community colleges.

Adjunct faculty at the community colleges receive less than half the compensation of a full-time faculty member for teaching the same course, yet the administrations and, more importantly, the students expect the same performance. Adding insult to injury, adjunct faculty do not have any of the benefits available to full-time faculty, such as health insurance or state retirement.

Poor working conditions results in high turnover. High turnover results in inexperienced faculty. In addition, the adjunct faculty teach from 40 to 60% of all contact hours on most community college campuses, and the students who pay for a course taught by an adjunct faculty member often cannot reach the adjunct for help, since they have no paid office hours, and no office in which to counsel or assist students. Thus, students are paying for services which they sometimes do not receive, when they are taught by adjunct faculty.

This situation is not unique to Arizona, however. Throughout the country, higher education administrations have sought to balance their budgets on the backs of "contingent" faculty. Although some states, such as California and Washington, have begun to recognize the counterproductive results [poor support for student needs] of such blatant exploitation and have taken steps to improve the working conditions of contingent academic labor, states such as Arizona are not even aware of the problems.

Figuring out how we have come to such a pass is beyond the scope of this brief article, whose purpose is not to fret about the past but to point toward a better future. October 28-November 3 has been designated Campus Equity Week (CEW) throughout the United States and Canada. CEW is sponsored by a number of groups that represent the "working class" in higher education, among them the American Association of University Professors, the American Federation of Teachers and the Communications Workers of America.

The purpose of CEW is to call attention to the various ways in which "contingent" academic labor is exploited throughout the country. On two- and four-year campuses across the country there will be a variety of activities-rallies, petitions, teachins-designed to call attention to the negative impact on the quality of education of such an unfair situation.

While most of the action will be on the West Coast and east of the Mississippi River, colleges in Arizona are also planning activities. The Arizona effort has grown out of two meetings this summer and fall of representatives of three community college districts in the state-Maricopa, Pima and Cochise. Despite a state climate hostile to labor organization, people have been coming together to discuss their common problems and to plan ways to solve those problems. In addition to CEW activities, the group has reached out to Arizona state legislators, who frankly admit they are uninformed about the condition of the community colleges despite last year's Governor's Task Force Report on Higher Education, entitled "Arizona at Risk: An Urgent Call for Action," which recognized the problems and made concrete proposals for beginning to solve them.

We have also tried to reach out to our colleagues at other Arizona community colleges. That has been difficult, however, given the great distances and decentralized structure of the community college system. We hope that this special issue of The Advocate and CEW will let others know that it is not impossible to work for necessary change.

If you would like information about CEW activities or the general organizational effort in Arizona, contact one of the following:

Jack Goodman (Maricopa): mankgoo@aol.com

Lee Shainen (Pima) lshainen@pimacc.pima.edu

Dan Frey (Cochise) freylarson@aol.com

You can also consult the following webpages to find out what is going on around the country during Campus Equity Week:

http://www.aaup.org/cewpage.htm

http://www.cewaction.org

For Arizona, a reasonable set of first steps to achieve equity for adjunct faculty, and better quality instruction for students, would have the elements of

(1) adjunct pay per course raised to 60% of full time pay per course (adjunct faculty do not have the other responsibilities of committee work, curriculum devising, etc., which full time faculty are supposed to undertake)

(2) pro-rata health insurance and retirement benefits need to be part of the job

(3) office space should be provided and office hours paid for adjuncts, so that they can be available to effectively advise and assist students

These elemental changes would reduce the high turnover of adjunct faculty (generating a more experienced teaching cadre), and would thereby benefit the students of the state.