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Advocate Online
Speaking Out
The Klingons Aren’t Winning Now!
As Campus Equity week unfolds, adjunct
faculty union members savor improvements in working conditions gained
through organizing in recent years—but it has been a struggle and
until recently, the Klingons have been winning.
At the College of DuPage (COD), a large
community college in an affluent Chicago suburb, efforts at unionizing
the 1,200 adjuncts have been slow, but sure. But with substantial help
from the Illinois Education Association, we have gone from “necessary,
but disposable” to “rights and respect.” The Enterprise,
crewed by adjuncts who’ve had enough, has arrived.
The steps CODAA (College of DuPage Adjuncts
Association) took to organize seem rock solid in hindsight, but were
scary and tenuous as they unfolded over four years. A core of determined
adjuncts, with a combined service to COD of 200 years, heralded change.
The history:
- A 15-month discussion to form an adjunct association
went nowhere—the college’s slick lawyers won, undoubtedly
coached by the Klingons.
- A petition with the Illinois Educational Labor
Relations Board to form a union for adjuncts met with difficulty.
- Negotiations set a stringent threshold for
union eligibility.
- A consent election resulted in an 85 percent
vote for our union
- Contract negotiations took six months, but
CODAA obtained a 24.5 percent pay raise over four years, kill fees,
grievance rights, academic freedom, and seniority in class assignments.
Captain Kirk would be proud.
- Labor laws in Illinois were changed, following
an intense statewide effort by IEA and local unions.
- CODAA was awarded a $10,000 NEA grant to expand
union membership
- CODAA filed with the IELRB to expand the
membership base and the college filed to stop it—mediation
resulted in compromise.
- The consent election scheduled for October
30, 2003, is expected to succeed in doubling CODAA’s size.
- A new labor law signed in September will
enable CODAA to seek further membership expansion in 2004.
Much remains to be done. Though many adjuncts
are unionized in Illinois, the majority of schools still treat their
part timers as expendable. Campus equity is closer, but not here yet.
As we pool our collective strength, the Klingons will have to go find
another universe to inhabit, because this one belongs to the crew of
the Enterprise.
 Diane
Rzeszewski, veteran speech adjunct at the College of DuPage, is past
president of the COD Adjunct Association and has received an Outstanding
Faculty award at National Louis University.
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I'd like to say!
Sharon Kimble
and Jeff Dorman make
important points in their responses to
the June Dialogue debate
on customizing assignments for students
who work.
But there is one variable
that goes unmentioned, as usual: Many of us “professors” are
adjunct instructors! We don't have the time
to customize assignments. We are so severely
underpaid that we have to take on extra jobs
to pay the bills.
I am bothered that the
adjunct issue is so often absent from many
of the articles in your publication. We are
invisible on campus and mostly invisible in
the Advocate.
— Leslie Chalmers
Holyoke (MA) Community College
On the question
of whether professors should
customize assignments for working students,
I stand smack in the middle of the views presented
by Kimble and Dorman.
For me, an adjunct business
faculty member of the only inner-city community
college in our metro area, customizing assignments
for students who work is virtually a moot point
because at least 90 percent of my students
work.
The real question is:
How do we construct a curriculum for working
adults that is consistent with regard to quantity
and quality of assignments and fairness in
grading?
— Danny Eitingon
Minneapolis Community College
Share your opinion
Write to the editor
at: Clehane@nea.org
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