Advocate Online

The faculty union calls it "retrenchment by attrition"—the continuing loss of full-time faculty positions following retirements or resignations. Some administrators at Southern Illinois University Carbondale call these vacancies "targets of opportunity" and fill them with part-time instructors.

By whatever name, this practice has become a hot bargaining issue between the SIUC Faculty Association and the administration in talks that began last January and remain stalemated in November.

What is happening in Carbondale is occurring on the campuses of four-year institutions across the country.

This suggests that bargaining efforts to "stop the bleeding" of full-time positions may well be the next great challenge for faculty unions—and one that will be vigorously resisted by academic managers.

At SIUC, the number of full-time faculty decreased by 12 percent between 1995 and 1999, a loss of one of every eight positions. Administrators replaced these full time professors with part-time instructors, whose numbers increased by 15 percent during this period.

U.S. Department of Education figures show that nearly one-third of teaching positions at four-year institutions in 1997 were occupied by part-timers. In 1970, only 22 percent of faculty at four-year institutions worked part-time. By 1997, that proportion had nearly doubled to 42.5 percent.

To managers of the corporatized university, part-timers are a resource to be exploited. They are cheaper to hire, easier to fire, receive limited or no benefits, and can be shifted flexibly around the campus while chasing student demand.

But faculty unions don't have to accept this erosion of the professoriate. Contracts in the Pennsylvania state university system, for instance, limit the proportion of part-timers to 20 percent of total faculty. Recently, the union won contract language that will convert long-term part-timers to full-timers.

The faculty union at Eastern Michigan University union, meanwhile, went on strike to win language that limits the university's right to permanently replace regular faculty members with part-time lecturers.

But most contracts have too little to say on this topic. It's time for the preservation of the full-time faculty to become a crucial "target of opportunity" for all faculty negotiators.

Walter Jaehnig teaches journalism at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. He is a member of the SIUC Faculty Association and serves on the Thought & Action Review Panel.




I'd like to say!

I've just finished reading the October Advocate and noticed, to my dismay, that the handsome illustrations for articles on the cover and pages six, seven, and eight have no accompanying credit line for the artists who created them.

All photos are credited, perhaps with deference to the perception of much more stringently enforced photo copyright laws.

Surely the editorial staff of the Advocate does not think that the work of the photographers represented in these issues is a creative product worthy of more or different recognition than the work of the professional artists and illustrators who contribute.

I am sending this note in the hope that this oversight can be corrected, and perhaps acknowledged, in future issues.

—Tom Briggs
Massachusetts College of Art

Editor's Note: Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Beginning with the January 2001 NEA Advocate, illustrator credits will accompany the illustrations.

In this issue, the credits are as follows: page one, Frank Renlie/Artville; page 6, Roxana Villa/Stock Illustration Source; page seven, Jane Marinsky/Stock Illustration Source; page eight, Dave Cutler/Stock Illustration Source.