By Professor Doom
Leftism, in its
current representation, is nothing without hypocrisy, and today I want to focus on one aspect of this system of
belief, namely socialism. Socialism is all about “power to the workers.” The
most common worker on our campuses used to be, and should be, the
professoriate, the people who actually do the teaching and research.
Our campuses are
to a considerable extent taken over by believers in Leftism.
How’s that working
out for the workers? Terribly. Time and again I’ve covered how the average
professor in higher ed is a sub-minimum wage adjunct, barely able to get by
only if he teaches quadruple the class load that was typical of faculty before
the takeover.
Now, professors
tend to be free thinkers, so we’ve been slow to join a group, a union, to
organize to resist this treatment. After years of being squeezed, it’s starting
to happen:
The above was
only a one day walkout from the English faculty. I certainly decry what’s
happened in mathematics, but I feel great sympathy for English faculty: grading
papers is grueling, time consuming work, but there’s no other way to help
students improve their writing skills. For this reason, class sizes in English
courses are supposed to be smaller than in other disciplines. Trouble is
“smaller than” used to mean their classes were around 20 while everyone else’s
were around 25. But now the typical class size is 50 to 100, and admin are
using the “well, English classes should be 5 students fewer” idea for the
writing courses…English faculty find the increased workload impossible, so they
have no choice but to strike for better conditions.
They joined the
Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and so now take their marching
orders from the SEIU in hopes of a better life. SEIU has a good track record:
SEIU won a commitment from Tufts University in
2014 to bring the pay for part-time faculty members up to at least $7,300 per
course by 2016. To non-tenure-track faculty members in much of higher
education, such levels are two or even three times what they earn per course.
Yes, the SEIU basically tripled adjunct
pay. As I’ve said many times, the money is already there in higher ed, it was
just being sucked into administrative pockets.
Loyola Chicago has been slow to
negotiate:
Union officials say there has been progress in
negotiations over issues of pay per course, typically around $4,500 for those
with terminal degrees, but with a limit of four courses per year for
part-timers.
Allow me to do the math here, to really
emphasize how little Loyola Chicago thinks of faculty. They want to cap the
total amount of yearly income for their adjuncts, their typical college
professor, to $18,000, and this princely sum only for those with “terminal
degrees,” for example a Ph.D.
Think of how ridiculous this is. Imagine
spending 4 years to get a college degree, another 4 to 6 years getting a Ph.D.,
paying outrageous tuition all the while, as the university tells you how
valuable your education is.
Then, you get your degree, and the same
university will tell you all they will offer for that precious education is a
no-benefits, no-security job paying $18,000 a year…this income puts you below
the poverty line once interest on those student loans comes into the
calculation.
Oh, wait. I’m getting ahead of myself,
the union is negotiating to raise
faculty pay to the poverty level, and Loyola Chicago isn’t interested.
How better to represent the miserable
conditions of the faculty there that they have to negotiate to get enough pay to reach the poverty level? Isn’t
socialism supposed to help the workers at least a little?
SEIU contracts at Tufts
and elsewhere have included provisions that, while short of tenure, have given
some job security to adjuncts.
Pay isn’t everything, and one of the main
perks of teaching in higher ed is supposed to be some level of job security.
Tenure is scarce in higher ed today, and most faculty not only do not have it,
they will never get it. I totally understand people don’t like the idea of
tenure, and I share some of the common concerns…but the bottom line is many of
our campuses have degenerated into the moral and academic abyss because tenure is
gone. Every time a non-tenured faculty tries to bring standards back, he just
gets eliminated.
Added to this issue is that adjuncts are
“temporary” workers who work for a decade or more at the same job. Admin
justify the low pay and lack of benefits to these “temp workers,” even as they
know the adjuncts will be at the school long after the administrator doing the
hiring has retired with a golden parachute.
Like I said, they’re nothing without
hypocrisy.
So, the union called a 1 day walkout just
to show the university that it’s time for them to show a little respect to the
faculty. I hope it helps.
These types of actions aren’t just
restricted to Chicago, however:
“…the American Federation of Teachers, which
represents lecturers at all three University of Michigan campuses, said it
would strike for two days next week if a new contract is not negotiated…”
Many faculty members in Kentucky are angry
over a provision in the state's budget bill, expected to soon become law, that
would roll back tenure
protections in
cases where colleges are changing or eliminating programs.
There’s been a real pattern of “roll back
tenure protections,” claiming such a roll back doesn’t mean anything beyond
bureaucratic formalities…and then immediately destroying the newly-vulnerable
faculty. After years of this sort of behavior, faculty are starting to catch
on: professors can do nothing about administrators summarily changing contracts
after they’ve signed them. That said, if they simply refuse to be abused further,
perhaps admin will listen?
I have my doubts these short strikes will
make a difference; there’s a huge Ph.D. glut and so I suspect it’s not yet too
inconvenient to just fire every teacher in the school and then hire a new crop
(and, again, I’ve seen the like). Eventually, these strikes will get longer,
and hopefully will work—Ontario had a 5 week professor strike last year, and they
made real progress.
The fact remains: our most educated
workers have been backed into a corner for so long that many of them are seeing
no choice but, at long last, to fight back. Is it too little, too late?
Perhaps, but at least they’re fighting back.
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