Category Archives: Contingent labor

Inside Higher Ed: Unions for Private College Part-Timers

Part-time faculty members at Syracuse University have voted to join the New York State United Teachers union and its national affiliate, the American Federation of Teachers, becoming what one union organizer described as the latest “domino in a growing trend.”

About 650 part-time faculty members will now have union representation at the institution. Before the vote, which occurred in December, Syracuse administrators released a statement, saying, “The university … would prefer to work directly with part-time and adjunct faculty to achieve mutually agreed upon goals, without an outside organization. The statement added, however, that the university “respects the right of employees to choose whether or not they are represented by a union.”

With the union now in place, organizers expect to help part-timers negotiate a new contract with the institution in the coming months.

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The Chronicle: Growth in part-timers slowed in past decade, Education Department finds

The proportion of part-timers in the American professoriate has leveled out, but the proportion of full-time faculty members working off the tenure track is climbing, says a report.

The proportion of part-timers in the American professoriate held steady between 1992 and 2003, according to a recent report, but the proportion of full-time faculty members working off the tenure track climbed continuously during the same period.

The report, put out by the U.S. Department of Education and released in late December, is called “Background Characteristics, Work Activities, and Compensation of Instructional Faculty and Staff: Fall 2003.” The Education Department carried out analogous studies in 1987, 1992, and 1998. Taken together, they are considered a key source of information on labor trends in academe.

According to the report, 43 percent of American faculty members worked as part-time instructors in 2003. That number is within a percentage point of the figures from 1992 and 1998, which suggests that the number of part-timers reached a plateau in the past decade. Before then, in 1987, part-timers made up 33 percent of the professoriate.

The proportion of faculty members working full time but with no hope of tenure, however, has more recently been on the ascent. In 2003, 21 percent of full-time instructors held non-tenure-track positions — up from 18 percent in 1998, 11 percent in 1992, and just 8 percent in 1987. In addition, the percentage of full-timers working as assistant, associate, or full professors — as opposed to lecturers or instructors — at four-year institutions dropped to 82 percent in 2003, down from 84 percent in 1998, 87 percent in 1992, and 89 percent in 1987.

Many professors fear that this trend signals an erosion of tenure and leaves many in academe without the essential protections of academic freedom.

In addition to statistics on labor trends, the report supplies data on demographics in the American professoriate. In 2003, the report says, 81 percent of all full-time faculty members were white, compared with 85 percent in 1998, 86.5 percent in 1992, and 89 percent in 1987. The proportion of women among full-timers rose to 38 percent in 2003, up from 36 percent in 1998 and 27 percent in 1987.

The report also provides data on how professors spend their time on campuses, with the latest study suggesting that they are spending more time in the classroom. In 2003 professors reported spending 62 percent of their time on “teaching activities,” up from about 57 percent in 1998 and 1987

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Inside Higher Ed: More part-time progress

Following in the footsteps of the part-time faculty union at New School University, the independent Adjunct Faculty Association at Nassau Community College has made what organizers call “substantial” progress on pay and labor issues. At the same time, they’re hailing successes by part-time unions as “the wave of the future,” since many colleges have become reliant on adjuncts.

Also see: New AFA Contract

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Las Vegas Sun: Part-time professors becoming prevalent

Struggling to keep pace with rapid growth in student enrollment while living within cash-strapped budgets, local universities increasingly are relying on part-time — lesser paid — instructors.

More than 70 percent of the faculty at the Community College of Southern Nevada and Nevada State College in Henderson are adjunct or part-time instructors, while at UNLV, nearly half of the faculty instructors are part timers.

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Inside Higher Ed: Breakthrough for part-timers

In the wee hours of Monday morning, a part-time faculty strike at the New School was averted when the university reached an agreement with negotiators for Academics Come Together, a United Auto Workers local representing nearly 2,000 part-timers. Both university officials and union members are hailing the pact as significant because it will provide benefits and job security of the sort that adjuncts nationally have not been able to achieve to date.

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