The following statement was released today by three members of the NYU Graduate Student Organizing Committee local of UAW, calling for accountability, transparency, and representation in their union’s contract bargaining with NYU. We’re inspired by their example and stand in solidarity with them. All unions must function democratically, not just pay lip service to such.

Earlier this week the open letter to the CUNY union leadership was posted to the AAUP’s Academe blog, which spurred two additional posts (here and here) as well as many comments (and I encourage you to read them all, as they helpfully illuminate the deep fissures between full-timer-dominated unions and academic associations on the one hand and contingent academic laborers on the other).

Unfortunately, though predictably, a slavery comparison cropped up in one of the comments in relation to the open letter, and as the author of the open letter, I wanted to make clear that I disagree with any such comparison. I posted the following comment to the Academe blog post that contains the comment in question.

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I thank everyone for their support of the open letter and the related campaign for the representation of contingent academic laborers in full-timer-dominated unions—a national effort as the comments show.

I want to comment on the “slave-labor conditions” comparison in the second comment above. I’ve critiqued such comparisons on Twitter—and many more knowledgeable folks than I have written powerful critiques of it (for one particularly good example, see here)—but because this comparison is now cropping up in relation to the open letter, I need to say that I disagree with any and all comparisons between contingent academic labor and racialized social and economic control of any kind, whether slavery, segregation, apartheid, or any other form. Such comparisons, unfortunately, are a consistent trend in rhetoric on contingent academic labor.

I disagree with such comparisons both because, to me, they’re inaccurate—contingent academic laborers aren’t chattel, or property, or legally separated or denied civil equality, or racialized in any way qua their contingent labor—and because such comparisons are highly offensive to many people who are racialized, especially African-Americans who still deal with the multifarious legacies of slavery and Jim Crow today. Such comparisons are also offensive to many people who aren’t racialized by dint of their white privilege, including me.

The comparisons are also unnecessary to make the case that contingent academic labor and the two-tier academic labor system are unfair: both are patently unfair on their face. Even with the question of reform vs. “abolition”—and, for what it’s worth, I think we need to reform the unfair academic-labor system at the same time as we work to abolish it—it’s unnecessary to refer to the abolition of slavery (as I’ve seen elsewhere) to make the case for the abolition of the academic-labor system. The present system should be abolished for the very straightforward reasons that it’s deeply unfair and keeps people impoverished. (This is also, by the way, why I support the abolition of capitalism.)

Furthermore, the abolition of slavery was a highly complicated process that can’t be reduced to a metaphor (much like slavery/apartheid/segregation can’t): it had as much to do with U.S. westward expansion, for instance, and the question of whether new territories should allow slavery, as anything else—which is to say that the abolition of slavery was predicated in part on the further dispossession and genocide of indigenous communities. That dreadful connection comes with any reference to the abolition of slavery—and, again, we deal with the legacies of both slavery and indigenous dispossession and genocide today.

Finally, these comparisons to racialized social and economic control betray the fact that both the students and faculty of higher education remain largely white, and that higher education actually works as a form of racialized social and economic control, as does public education at all levels given the gross inequities of educational resources, on top of the gross inequities of economic and social resources at large. Indeed, because racial discrimination, in both overt and covert ways, remains a potent force in U.S. society, racialized students and faculty, including contingents, experience greater challenges, inside and outside academia, than their white counterparts. And though higher education staff tend to be appreciably more racially diverse than students or faculty (for a variety of reasons), that doesn’t diminish the challenges racialized staff members face.

All of these aforementioned issues are apparent to me in my academic research and, especially, in my teaching and organizing at CUNY, a highly stratified public university that not only reflects its highly stratified city but contributes to the city’s stratification, as I note in the open letter.

Just wanted to make my thoughts known since I’m responsible for the open letter, even as it continues to take on a life of its own.

Warmly,

Sean M. Kennedy

When the Adjunct Project joined with CUNY Contingents Unite and other groups and individuals in May to initiate the $5k petition, we were reminded of the “Adjunct Rebellion at CUNY” vis-a-vis contract negotiations between the New Caucus-led Professional Staff Congress and the CUNY administration from 2006 to 2008. The following piece from the CUNY Internationalist Clubs’ paper Revolution (which doesn’t post every article online, hence the below scan) details this rebellion and shows, once again, that the PSC leadership—the same leadership as today—hasn’t ever represented contingent academic workers properly. To wit:

“The contract the PSC settled with CUNY in June 2006 left the abysmal conditions of contingent faculty in place. An adjunct activist who is a CUNY Internationalist Clubs member spoke at the union’s Delegate Assembly calling for a ‘no’ vote on the contract. However, while many ‘part-timers’ were deeply dissatisfied, by and large they tended to buy the promises of the union leadership (organized in the social-democratic ‘New Caucus’ of union president Barbara Bowen) that ‘adjunct issues’ would be a priority in future rounds. Some also wanted to avoid criticizing the union officers at a time when the New Caucus was running for reelection, facing a right-wing opposition called CUNY Alliance.

“That contract expired in September 2007. The next month, the union launched its new contract campaign at a mass meeting in Cooper Union, where hundreds chanted ‘Fight, fight, fight!’ and cheered adjunct activists’ calls for a militant mobilization. At the rally, Bowen put forward key priorities for this ‘phase’ of the union’s ‘multi-contract strategy.’ […] When adjunct activists asked the union’s negotiating committee to make a commitment to not sign a contract that would increase the gap between full- and part-time faculty, they were told that ‘the strategy’ had already been decided…by the negotiating committee and Executive Council. In other words, forget it. […]

“On June 20, the PSC leaders and CUNY management reached a ‘settlement’ that did nothing to move towards job security for adjuncts and other contingent faculty, left their wages at poverty levels (providing below-inflation raises for full-time faculty, while widening the gap with part-timers’ pay), and left the issue of health insurance for grad students to future negotiations with the city and state.

“CUNY contingent activists reacted with outrage. Adjuncts long active in the union joined with grad students from the Adjunct Project to launch an unprecedented campaign for a ‘no’ vote. […]”

Click the images below to read the whole article from the September 2008 issue of Revolution.

Tuesday, May 13th, at 3:40 p.m. I sent an open letter to Barbara Bowen, president of the Professional Staff Congress, CUNY’s union, with the subject line “Open letter re your De Blasio statement & your exclusion of adjuncts and graduate student workers.” I copied the union’s first vice-president, treasurer, vice-president for part-time personnel, and executive director on the email, all people we Adjunct Project coordinators have worked with, or attempted to work with, this academic year. I also copied 11 of the 12 members of the newly reconstituted (and elected) Graduate Center chapter slate, omitting one member because I couldn’t find an email for that person. Finally, I copied two higher education officers (HEOs) at the Graduate Center, one of whom is a cross-campus officer on the executive council of the union, both of whom, working together, put together the Graduate Center slate (with no input solicited from the Adjunct Project).

There have been three responses from these 18 people to date, the most recent of which came from a member of the Graduate Center chapter slate, Michelle Fine, who emailed Saturday, May 17, that she was speaking with graduate students, adjuncts, and other members of the slate about the issues raised in the open letter. We welcomed this info. (See a previous update for details of the two earlier responses.)

Additionally, another member of the Graduate Center chapter slate, Michelle Chen, who was not among the original recipients of the letter because I couldn’t find her email address, has signed the letter.

I am now sending the letter again to the aforementioned recipients, plus Chen (as I now have her email address), along with the names and affiliations of the 176 signers.

The union leaders and chapter leaders are supposed to represent us. It’s not the other way around.

Read and sign the letter here, or leave a comment here with your name and affiliation (if you have one—it’s not necessary).

There are now 176 of us, from across CUNY and the U.S., inside and outside of higher ed.

Every day the union leadership doesn’t respond to us only emphasizes our lack of representation.

In response to Keith Hoeller’s recent post, I might pose an alternate perspective to the position that FT and PT faculty have irreconcilable differences and an all-faculty solidarity is impossible.

First, though, let me say that I am an adjunct also in Washington State; I understand that faculty unions here have never squarely confronted the problem of a divided faculty and in particular the exploitation of adjuncts, our union’s weakest links. The case that Jack Longmate mentions where a measure of job security for adjuncts was signed away by an all-FTer bargaining team is certainly disappointing and a cautionary tale, but the truth is that it must have been a mostly FT union bargaining team that won that job security in the first place.

It is inaccurate to say that AFT/NEA have done nothing for adjuncts in WA, especially considering that we are the only state in the nation to have won the right to unemployment for adjuncts in all breaks via union political action (see details here).

There are historical and contemporary reasons to be frustrated that public faculty unions are not doing all they can, but we should understand that taking a categorical and polemical stand against united faculty unions is at best, one side of the story. If anyone knows of the Vancouver Model of Vancouver Community College in British Columbia, adjuncts there in the ’80s built coalition with egalitarian FTers, overcame reactionaries, took over the union, and now virtually 100% of faculty are FTers and everyone is on the same pay scale.

The only problem with Keith’s thesis is that what the coalition that VCC adjuncts and egalitarian FTers built has never seriously been tried in Washington State. By this I mean not a gadfly phenomenon, but systematically organizing adjuncts to take power in our union and building a coalition with those egalitarian FTers. This means using time-tested union organizing techniques like systematic faculty to faculty communication and organizing conversation. In fact, we are working on just such an alliance at my community college in preparation for our 2015 contract.

Perhaps we will succeed in building a united and progressive coalition (well on our way)…and maybe we won’t. Perhaps we will build enough power among a united faculty to create more secure and better working conditions for the weakest faculty, and maybe we won’t. But I know this: The boss knows that divided, faculty are weaker, and embracing that division doesn’t change that fact. Also, it is better to try to accomplish what we know VCC did some years ago, than to throw in the towel before a real effort to build PT faculty power within a democratic organization has truly been attempted. Not saying it’s not hard work organizing and often frustrating work or that some local unions might have more propitious conditions than others. At Pierce College, we are perhaps currently luckier than at Olympic just now….

As far as Yeshiva, the NLRB said it was perfectly appropriate for all private sector faculty to be in the same unit. The NLRB was overruled by a Reagan-era Supreme Court that has not been particularly friendly towards labor-friendly law. As we know from the Citizens United ruling, the LEAST democratic part of our system of government does not shy away from tilting the power schema toward corporations and away from unions every chance it gets. Calling ALL private sector FT faculty as management is nothing more than another chisel tap, and citing it as a legitimate decision is unfortunate.

Perhaps this is just the other side of the polemic, but there is value in having both on the table so that folks have the spectrum. I certainly learn a lot from Keith and Jack’s perspectives and I am sure I will have much more to learn, but I also hope that we will demonstrate by our contract campaign at Pierce College that a united faculty is not only possible, but gets the goods we all want and deserve as faculty.

Tom McCarthy, Pierce College Federation of Teachers Membership Coordinator

Tuesday, May 13th, at 3:40 p.m. I sent an open letter to Barbara Bowen, president of the Professional Staff Congress, CUNY’s union, with the subject line “Open letter re your De Blasio statement & your exclusion of adjuncts and graduate student workers.” I copied the union’s first vice-president, treasurer, vice-president for part-time personnel, and executive director on the email, all people we Adjunct Project coordinators have worked with, or attempted to work with, this academic year. I also copied 11 of the 12 members of the newly reconstituted (and elected) Graduate Center chapter slate, omitting one member because I couldn’t find an email for that person. Finally, I copied two higher education officers (HEOs) at the Graduate Center, one of whom is a cross-campus officer on the executive council of the union, both of whom, working together, put together the Graduate Center slate (with no input solicited from the Adjunct Project).

There have been three responses from these 18 people to date, the most recent of which came from a member of the Graduate Center chapter slate, Michelle Fine, who emailed Saturday that she was speaking with graduate students, adjuncts, and other members of the slate about the issues raised in the open letter. We welcomed this info. (See a previous update for details of the two earlier responses.)

Additionally, another member of the Graduate Center chapter slate, Michelle Chen, who was not among the original recipients of the letter because I couldn’t find her email address, has signed the letter.

Today we posted an additional statement of support for the letter campaign, from Borough of Manhattan Community College assistant professor and Graduate Center alum Arto Artinian, who notes the “profound break” in democracy at the union.

I am now sending the letter again to the aforementioned recipients, plus Chen (as I now have her email address), along with the names and affiliations of the 173 signers.

The union leaders and chapter leaders are supposed to represent us. It’s not the other way around.

Read and sign the letter here, or leave a comment here with your name and affiliation (if you have one).

There are now 173 of us, from across CUNY and the U.S., inside and outside of higher ed.

Every day the union leadership doesn’t respond to us only emphasizes our lack of representation.