Inside Higher Ed: Adjuncts push for separate union
Is a one-size-fits-all union best for everyone at the bargaining table? Adjuncts and full-time faculty members at two community colleges in southern California — Grossmont and Cuyamaca Colleges, near San Diego — are currently in battle mode over the question, and their contentions are highlighting an issue that is becoming of increasing concern to professors.
“Objectively, any kinks in unity between adjuncts and full-timers in the same union are a perfect setup for administrators to be able to divide and conquer,” says Zoe Close, a full-time faculty member and chair of the humanities and religious studies departments at Grossmont. “The situation with part-timers amounts to exploitive labor. No full-time faculty member I know likes this situation.”
Close is president of the independent United Faculty union, which includes about 300 full-timers and between about 900 part-timers at Grossmont and Cuyamaca Colleges.
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