New York
Adjunct faculty members can form unions, but they will feel pressure to speak softly at the bargaining table as long as their contingent employment status leaves them vulnerable to retaliation, several labor experts said at a panel discussion here on Monday.
Staged at the annual conference of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions, the panel discussion was titled "Challenges for Adjuncts Who Negotiate Contracts." Fairly quickly, it emerged that one of the biggest such challenges is simply hanging on to one's job.
As things stand now, adjunct faculty members who take part in contract talks with administrators at Clark College, in Washington, do so with the knowledge that "they can just not rehire you," said Kimberly Sullivan, president of the faculty union there.
Making clear just how real such a risk is, Curtis M. Keyes Jr., a leader of the United Adjunct Faculty Association at East-West University, a private institution in Chicago, recounted having to appeal for help from the National Labor Relations Board three times after being denied new contracts to teach there.
Although the NLRB has previously ruled in favor of Mr. Keyes and several other adjuncts at East-West, he felt obliged to file his third such complaint in December after again losing work.
"Currently," he said, "I am sitting at the contract-negotiating table, and I have not been offered classes all last year."
The NLRB reached a settlement with East-West University in December on behalf of another adjunct-union representative who had similarly complained of such retaliation. Last month the board ordered Columbia College Chicago to offer compensation for denied work to the president of a union representing that institution's part-time instructors.
Ms. Sullivan, of the Clark College Association of Higher Education, an affiliate of the National Education Association that represents both tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty members, said she had asked her college's administration to create an employment protection specifically for the representative of adjunct faculty members on the union's negotiating team.
Her proposal, put forth this year, is for the college to guarantee the adjunct representative no decline in teaching load, and due process if threatened with termination, for two years. The college has not yet acted on her proposal, she said.
One audience member—Vijay Nair, president of the Connecticut State University system's faculty union—said adjunct-union leaders there are offered substantial protection from retaliation by having their workloads determined by academic-department chairs who belong to the same union.
"The management really has no control over whether you get to teach a course the next semester," said Mr. Nair, whose union is affiliated with the American Association of University Professors.
Nicholas DiGiovanni, a lawyer in the Boston firm Morgan, Brown & Joy who represents college administrations in labor talks, also attended the discussion. In an interview, Mr. DiGiovanni said that "adjunct unionization is still so new" that he is unaware of any standard contract provision offering employment protections to adjunct-union representatives.
Maria Maisto, president of New Faculty Majority, an organization that represents contingent academic workers, argued in an interview after the panel discussion that "the unions need to do more to protect their adjunct negotiators."
Currently, Ms. Maisto said, adjunct representatives get little guidance from state or national unions on how to get protection against retaliation inserted into contracts, and many adjunct faculty members are afraid to be active in unions as a result. "The nature of the position is precarious," she said.
