Advocate Online

It is always preferable for unions to have as much control as possible over jobs and working conditions. Tolerating non-union jobs erodes union strength and results in a general degradation of the profession. Non-union jobs are inevitably lower paid and lacking in security and benefits. Any professors’ union should prefer the unionization of adjunct positions, if only for reasons of self-interest.

Moreover, respect for one’s discipline should lead to empathy for the working conditions of one’s peers: I want my fellow philosophers and fellow professors to be reasonably paid. Unionization is the obvious means to achieve this.

These are clear and compelling reasons for favoring the unionization of adjunct faculty. So why are we even discussing this question? I have heard it said that the unionization of adjuncts should be avoided because it legitimizes these undesirable positions. However, since nearly 50 percent of higher ed faculty are now adjuncts, this approach has been an absolute failure. It seems preferable to attempt to win higher pay and benefits for adjuncts through unionization, making them more expensive so that it is no longer cost effective to replace full-time lines with part-timers.

I suspect, though, that the real stumbling block to the support of adjunct unionization is professional elitism—tenure-stream faculty tend to see their union as an exclusive club that they have merited by winning a national search. But this attitude is inconsistent with the nature of unions, which are inclusive and egalitarian. And the snubbing of part-time faculty plays into the hands of penny pinching administrators, allowing degradation of the faculty and erosion of the union.

* Larry Kaye has a Ph.D. in philosophy from MIT. He has been a lecturer at UMass-Boston since 1990. As vice president of The Faculty Staff Union, he led the recent drive to unionize continuing education faculty and headed the bargaining team that negotiated the first contract.

No, attempts to unionize adjunct faculty weaken the position of unionized full-time faculty.
Alan Kaufman*

The unionization of adjunct faculty is gaining increasing, often sympathetic, attention as the number of adjuncts soars at American colleges and universities. It is an ill-conceived effort, and NEA and its members should not support it.

Adjuncts are, through no fault of their own, a threat to the continued existence of the tenure system in American colleges and universities simply because of the alarming increase in their numbers. In the English Department of Bergen Community College, for instance—and this is no exception—the number of tenured and tenure-track faculty has been steadily eroding. In the fall 2002 semester, only 34 percent of our classes were taught by tenured or tenure-track faculty, a decrease of 5 percent just from the previous fall semester, which showed a decrease from previous years.

In our weak economy, colleges, as we all know, are cutting their budgets. Faculty salaries all come out of one pot-—which we know is surely not getting bigger. A college with a unionized adjunct faculty able to argue for salary increases is going to have less money in its already diminished pot for full-time faculty salaries. Therefore, salary increases for full-time NEA members are imperiled by having organized adjunct colleagues. (This doesn’t apply to graduate assistants working as teaching assistants, who are essentially apprentices and should be unionized.)

The plight of adjuncts, which deserves our sympathy, cannot be divorced from the movement toward the destruction of full-time employment in higher education, which hurts adjuncts as well as full-time faculty. The unionization efforts of adjunct faculty obscure and will only exacerbate this unhealthy development.

* Alan Kaufman teaches English at Bergen Community College (BCC) in New Jersey. He serves as treasurer of the BCC Faculty Association and has served on the Thought & Action Review Panel. Peter Helff, president of the BCCFA and a former NEA director, contributed to this article.