The disembodied “Professor Staff” who fills course registration options every semester is not the first worker to face erasure from workplaces, coworkers, and his or her work’s worthy ends. While today’s self-identified “migrant” academic may represent the pinnacle of “hired” education’s corporatized university, adjuncts are only part of a long line of victims employers have successfully marginalized through the designation of contingency. Connecting the new majority pauper professoriate and other workers may be one key to our successful long-term fight for adjunct justice.

Although labor’s latest Goliath has an impressive and diffuse array of assets, as well as a list of powerful allies, Goliath’s modus operandi is not really novel. The process that employers have used to ease their responsibilities to workers under labor and employment laws for decades—contingency—is hardly different from what today’s “hired” education Goliath has accomplished through adjunctification.

Indeed, the seasonal, part-time, intern, temporary, contracted, and freelance worker is just another migrant, another occasional, another contingent laborer who will often work for next to nothing, take any hours the boss gives him or her, and merge into the nameless, voiceless numbers on some long list of other workers—much like Professor Staff.

The series of articles we present from adjuncts across the nation through Democracy Chronicles seeks to expose “hired” education’s dirty little secret and investigate new ways of looking at both labor’s latest Goliath, the conglomerate of university and college administrators, boards of trustees, business affiliates, “experts” and political allies that make up what we are calling “hired” education, and the conglomerate’s tactics as they apply to a broader spectrum of workers.

Refocusing our lenses on the battle ahead, we contend that extant problems open up new ways to see and offer solutions to the difficulties—engaging fellow low-wage and contingent workers around issues of common concern; activating adjuncts not just to organize, but to create innovative contracts; and working with full-time tenured faculty as allies for adjunct equity, as well as moving beyond to larger goals of taking back tenure and the shared governance; and resolving the parallel issues of rising tuition and student loan (new and refinanced) debt.

We suggest that the ongoing fight for adjunct justice requires a two-pronged approach if we are to achieve lasting success. First, adjuncts  and their allies must remain vigilant, speaking out strategically about the challenges “hired” education poses for union organizers and adjunct professors trying to improve their working conditions through unionization. Second, we must commit collectively with union staff and fellow adjuncts across the nation to aggressively innovate diverse strategies for overcoming our shared challenges.

Taking our cue from the recent, high-profile victories by Adjunct Action, a nationwide alliance between the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and activist adjunct professors —at George Washington, American, and Georgetown Universities in Washington D.C., Tufts and Lesley in Boston, Laverne, Loyola Marymount in the Los Angeles area, Pacific Lutheran and Seattle Universities in the northwest, as well as public campaigns at the University of DC, Northeastern and Whittier— our series of articles by current adjuncts, post-academic activists, and adjunct-turned labor organizer represents the broad spectrum of “inside” and “outside” forces necessary to build not just strong adjunct unions, but coalitions within university and public communities whose shared concerns for improving higher education will ensure long-term attention to the problems associated with the corporatized university. Contingency is one issue we believe ties the adjunct cause to many other marginalized and threatened workers in our nation, and thus offers both challenges and potentials in terms of broadening our network of allies among labor and beyond. Our goal is to invigorate such discussions and hopefully stimulate deeper conversations to continue moving forward.

Taking on Hired Education: The Ivory Tower’s Dirty Little Secret

Who are “adjuncts”?  Adjuncts faculty make up a startling 75% of today’s higher education teaching staff.  Unlike their “tenured” or “tenure-track” counterparts who enjoy pay commensurate with their expertise, health and retirement compensation, an equal voice in the governance of their universities, the protection of due process that requires higher education employers to show just cause before imposing arbitrary discipline or outright termination, and the rights to express academic freedom in their classrooms, writing, and research, adjunct professors are more than likely forced to work at several different campuses just to cobble together a subsistence living. In fact, over the past decades colleges and universities have increasingly worked to keep adjunct instructors just below full-time to avoid providing any healthcare and retirement benefits.

More recently, the “hired” education BOSS has used the same perverse tactics as Walmart and similar retailers, as well as the multi- billion dollar fast food industry giants like McDonalds to get around requirements in the Affordable Care Act meant to force the country’s wealthiest employers to finally do the right thing and share in the cost of healthcare coverage for their most vulnerable workers. But the inability to even go to a doctor is often not the most pressing day-to-day concern for adjuncts.

Despite multiple teaching jobs at different campuses—sometimes totaling 5-6 courses in one semester (4 is considered the recommended “full-time” load for college instructors)–the average salary for these self-named “road scholars” tops about $24,000 per year. In other words, adjuncts juggle multiple “jobs” for welfare wages, and besides their total lack of health insurance, retirement options, and indeed, rights or protections of any kind in their deplorable working conditions, these masters and experts in their disciplinary fields often have no office space, access to necessary equipment such as copiers/fax machines/computers, rights to library and/or scholarly databases, or even faculty parking permits.  In short, adjunct professors literally make up the bulk of all core curriculum instructors in the American university system, while suffering within a scholarly sharecropping system which continues to profit the 1% of “hired” education’s employers.

At the same time, student tuition rates and student loan debts rise exponentially, leaving one to wonder where these Goliaths are spending their teacher / student exploitation and non-profit/no tax benefits. The bottom line is that adjunct working conditions directly affect student learning conditions: the only answer to such blatant and deplorable misuse of adjunct professors and their students is to join adjuncts and their allies across the United States who are standing together to unionize for a voice in how they are treated.

Latest News and Updates from the Adjunct Action Front Lines

Adjuncts are standing together to kick off 2014 with fights for equity in higher education at a college or university near you! The 2014 school year will find adjuncts organizing for a voice in their working conditions in San Francisco, Connecticut, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Missouri, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota, Baltimore, and right here in New York State. Keep an eye on our progress at www.adjunctaction.org and across the adjunct blogosphere at AdjunctJustice, www.newfacultymajority.info/equity, https://thenewfacultymajority.blogspot.com, www.insidehighered.com/blogs/college-ready-writing and www.adjunctnation.com.