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AB 1690 Has Passed Appropriations. Help it Get to the Governor’s Desk.

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Good Adjuncts:

AB 1690, the bill which calls for setting a minimum standard for  job security for California Adjunct Community College instructors has made it out of the California Senate Appropriations Committee, and now moves on the floor of the House, the Senate, and then the governor’s desk.

It is highly expected that it will clear the House and Senate, but then nothing is ever certain.

That’s where you come in.

Please sign this petition to Senate Pro Tem Kevin de Leon asking him to help AB 1690 pass off the Senate floor and go to the Governor’s desk… We don’t know if we will ever get this chance again, and the Non-Tenured faculty at community colleges can’t wait any longer for these basic job rights!

http://www.upte.org/local/support-of-ab-1690-lara/

Again, if you’re not familiar with the language in AB 1690, here it is:

http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160AB1690

Let’s make this happen.

Geoff Johnson

A “Good” Adjunct

P.S.:  I’m now in the process of preparing a letter to the governor, which I’ll be putting out here, among other places.  Look for it.

Here is a link to a sample governor’s letter: AB%201690%20Letter%20To%20The%20Governor%20Template

JRH

 

 

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Making an Inclusive Campus Equity Week

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Good Adjuncts:

The following powerpoint has been loosely adopted as the CFT’s Campus Equity Week Organizing Strategy.

My belief is that if we want to create a lasting campaign for adjunct activism which is effective and builds the partnerships we need for success, this is it.

Geoff Johnson

A “Good” Adjunct

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My AB 1690 Advocacy Letter to the California Senate Education Committee Members

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Good Adjuncts:

For those of you outside the state of California, a big adjunct issue playing itself out in the chambers of the California Legislature is the push for adjunct job security via AB 1690.  The bill made it past the Senate Education Committee, and now awaits a more uncertain battle in the great legislative graveyard–the Senate Appropriations Committee, where its forerunner AB 1010, died last year. I choose to be optimistic.  if it makes it out of appropriations, it is almost certain to get approved by the floor of the senate, then sit before Governor Jerry Brown.  What will he do? No one is certain, but I’d like to think he’ll sign it,and I’m doing everything I can, along with so many others, to see he has that chance.

This the letter I wrote to the legislative aides of particular senators on the Ed. Committee.  They are often the better people to contact than the senators themselves because they actually have the time to read and process what you say, and communicate this to the senators, who do listen to them.

I put this letter out here to show you good adjuncts what constructive steps you can truly take to get the change we all need.  See the letter below the sign out

Geoff Johnson

A “Good” Adjunct

 

To Whom it May Concern:

My name is Geoffery Johnson, and I am writing to you in support of AB 1690, which addresses job security for part-time, temporary instructors (adjuncts) at California Community Colleges.

I am a member of the California Federation of Teachers Part-Time Committee. In addition, I am the direct representative for adjunct instructors at San Diego Mesa College and Southwestern College in Chula Vista, directly representing some 1300, adjuncts, and, as a part of the San Diego Community College District’s AFT Guild, involved in representing some 2,800 to 3,000 adjuncts.  I also sit on the evaluations Committee at Southwestern College and have been a five-time academic senator at San Diego Mesa College, having sat briefly on its Student learning outcomes Committee.

I emphasize this only to make it clear that beyond simply being an adjunct, I have a larger awareness of the impact of working conditions on adjuncts, and its impact on student learning and success.

As you may be aware, 70% of California Community College instructors are classified as “temporary” employees, or more commonly known as “adjuncts” who are employed from term-to-term on a contingency basis, or simply as need demands.   The term “adjunct” itself implies that such instructors are “ancillary,” or “non-essential,” when in truth these instructors are often responsible for the majority of instruction at given community college.  They may be “adjunct” in name, but clearly essential to the community college system.

One of the greatest challenges to such instructors is that most of these instructors, even when classes are available, have no sense that, even if they do exemplary work in the classroom, they can reasonably expect to be rehired.  At many colleges, instructor can simply be fired without cause, or as it is politely put, not offered a class assignment for the following term.

On a personal level, for these instructors, many of whom teach at multiple campuses working as self-called “full-time part-timers,” it means a life lived where one can rarely plan out beyond six months in advance.  With regard to the California community college system, it has meant high faculty turnover, stressed faculty, and significantly impacted instruction, particularly as the system aspires to the notion of ‘student equity.”  In some colleges, the annual turnover rate for adjuncts is over 25% of the entire adjunct faculty.  With such turnover, such colleges lose the long term institutional knowledge and the value of veteran teaching needed to provide educational integrity.

AB 1690, if passed, will provide adjuncts who have taught successfully for six semesters with rehire rights.  Moreover, it will establish rehire priority on a seniority basis, consistent with how full-time public educators are treated.  Furthermore, it will provide those instructors who might stumble in their work a one-semester improvement plan of great benefit to incoming instructors who might struggle to find their footing initially, but who then become great adjuncts and sometime, even better full-time instructors.

Some argue against such a bill, claiming that it takes away an administrator’s flexibility to schedule classes, but in a number of colleges have negotiated similar rehire policies and administrators were still able to schedule classes. I point to the present rehire policy in the San Diego Community College District, which has been working successfully for close to ten years.

Another argument made is that AB1690 would prevent local unions from negotiating better rehire rights, but AB1690 only sets a minimum base, and one far better than what many districts have been able to negotiate.

One might also note that in terms of student success, the San Diego Community College District has a higher Student Completion/Success rate than Southwestern, and a number of studies have linked greater access to instructors with institutional knowledge to higher student Completion/success rates.

In truth, what a lack of rehire rights creates, beyond the afore-mentioned problems, is the potential for nepotism and unchecked discrimination, which is not what California aspires to. In fact, just in terms of union grievances submitted by adjuncts over rehire-related issues in the San Diego District is relatively small, and much smaller for the 2100+ adjuncts in the district, compared with the 760 adjuncts in the Southwestern district where the rehire policy has no seniority clause and only a vague statement on “consistency of assignment.”

A final argument made against AB 1690 is that it will cost money in order for lists to be made for scheduling.  This is in fact untrue. The San Diego Community College District accrued no additional costs as a result of having a similar rehire rights policy.  Rehire lists are kept by Deans and schedulers, like Department Chairs, who in many cases already have this data.  The reporting of this data would be no different than the district reporting when adjuncts have reached certain steps or columns when their pay is determined.

The passage of AB1690 will not end adjunct instructors being hired on an “as needed” basis, but it will provide adjuncts with the notion that under reasonable conditions, they can expect to keep teaching when they do a good job, and that these good adjuncts will be available to help students achieve their goals.

Sincerely,

Geoffery Johnson

Adjunct Rep San Diego Mesa College, (AFT 1931)

Executive Adjunct Rep Southwestern College (SCEA/CTA/NEA)

Member, California Federation of Teachers Part-Time Committee

Member, AFT National Part-Time Caucus

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Crossing the Divide: The Converstation that Adjunct and Full-time Faculty Need to Have

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Good Adjuncts:

In our great battle against the exploitation we experience, perhaps our biggest challenge is reaching across what I will refer to her as “the big divide,” or the differences in perception between full-time and adjunct/contingent faculty.

What exactly are these differences in perception? Well, first of all, let me say what they generally aren’t on the whole.

Some of the angrier of adjuncts (and by the way, it’s OK to be angry, but  I would advise it’s better to be angry and strategic), will conclude that most full-timers operate with the assumption that they are full-timers because they are simply “the best” and deserving of the privileges of higher salary, job security, and good benefits.

On the other hand, full-timers will conclude that adjuncts are “simply mad because they couldn’t get a full-time job,” can never be satisfied, and either don’t or can’t appreciate the additional outside-of-the-classroom duties and responsibilities that come with the full-time job.

The number of full-timers who I have met who wholly and openly subscribe to the above view I can count on one hand.  Conversely, the number of adjuncts who I would say wholly fit the aforementioned full-time perception is also in the single digits.

Why is it out there? It’s because adjuncts and full-timers don’t talk to each other nearly enough.

With regard to the adjunct issue, the biggest sense I have is that nearly all full-timers agree that the system is unfair, exploitative, and none of them would like to return to working as an adjunct.  Many of them are truly pained over the fact that they work alongside people who are every bit as qualified as they are, and sometimes even more so.  The hiring process, with all its byzantine twists and turns, is something they take seriously, but they feel frustrated by the fact it produces only a few full-timers, and that it’s not narrowing the diversity gap. They despair of the institution filling the gaps in the loss of full-time positions with increasing numbers of adjunct and contingent jobs.  At the same time, in part because of the loss of full time instructors, and because of the corporate creep of results-based learning based on largely  abstract and numerical data, many full-timers are feeling extremely harried and overburdened, and feel that if they’re going to be forced to endure this nonsense, then at least they should be fairly compensated for it.  Many like and highly respect their adjunct colleagues.

As for adjuncts, yeah, there are people angry about not getting a full-time job, but the bigger problem is that the overall lack of pay has created enormous strains on their life from basic living health.  Further, they are angry because even when they do good work, or even work in unpaid, outside-of-the-classroom capacities, there’s no guarantee they will even have a job the following semester, let alone even getting closer to that coveted full-time position.  Often they feel further tweaked when they’re hit up in evaluations for not always being up to speed with the latest teaching trends and technology, despite the fact they have no time or money.  That said, adjuncts do care deeply about their departments (even the ones who don’t show up to the department meetings which are often scheduled which they are least convenient to adjuncts).  They like to see their students and the program succeed, and will just as be inclined to talk about curricular development and student progress as they will bitch about the sorry nature of their jobs.  Many would love to sit and do (where possible), sit on committees.  Many also like their full-time colleagues.

OK, now that said, here’s where the real divide is.  Most full-timers, while acknowledging that full-timers are underpaid and work under bad conditions, feel that the essential task to solving the problem is to create more full-time  positions, and reduce adjunct labor to preferably around 25% of instruction.  This sort of thinking operates around the notion that an adjunct is an incomplete worker used to deal provide instruction in the face of a paucity in funding.  In other words, the solution is to “make the adjunct whole” by converting them to a full-time position.

As for adjuncts in general, the view, as you may know, is very different.  Adjuncts know that there is no magic fairy that’s going to float down from the sky and supply the billions of dollars it would take to create the tens of thousands of full-time faculty jobs to realize the dream of 75/25 full-time/adjunct instruction.  The fact of the matter is, even under the best of conditions, the realization of more full-time jobs will be slow and steady, and then only if budgeting priorities and the general will of the people will call for it.  This still means, in many cases, up to 200+adjuncts applying for one full-time job.

Maybe more importantly, what it means is that adjuncts and their vast numbers aren’t going away any time soon.  Sure, most adjuncts want a full-time job, and they also want to win the lottery.

Adjuncts want full-timers to realize that they have more than wishes-they have immediate needs, and the most glaring is better, and dare we say it, equal pay.  In fairness, equal pay is almost the same pipe dream, but a steady movement towards that goal by incrementally increasing adjunct pay in relation to full-time pay is doable, as is adding, slowly but surely more full-time positions.

In other words, adjuncts, at least reasonably thinking ones, see it not as a case of either/or (full-time positions/equity pay), but both/and.

This is not immediately easy for many full-timers to fully accept for a number of reasons.  To them, the immediate challenge to their own work conditions is the lack of full-time colleagues, which hurts everything from their workload, to their union numbers, to control over their lives.  They want more pay for what they clearly see as more work, and its understandable.  At the same time however, to increase adjuncts wages so that they are more equitable to full-time pay means having to get the money from somewhere, and this is where the real challenge comes.

I know, I know, I hear my adjunct legions screaming, “Who cares about what they want? To pay us equitably, even if this means lesser pay for full-timers, is simply correcting a past wrong.” Perhaps, but good luck selling that idea, and if you were a full-timer, with the increased pressures you’re facing, would you buy it? I also know that some of you may argue that it would simply be a matter of adjuncts overtaking their locals. In both my locals, adjuncts far outnumber full-timers, but from what I’ve seen, there’s no imminent possibility of that happening, nor is it likely it would actually make things better.

The way equity pay has to be sold is that it needs to be combined with the increase of full-time jobs, and it has to create avenues where adjuncts (who are paid) can step into outside-of-the-classroom roles that were exclusively reserved for full-timers.  The workload on full-time faculty needs to be eased. Equity pay should also, for the most part, be driven by statewide funding measures rather than forcing unions into fighting among their members.  This is where adjuncts and full-timers alike need to come together and sell equity as for the good of learning environment, students, and the community as a whole.

This doesn’t mean that local unions should singly address equity in their own contracts. The state needs to help and lead the way. It was after all, at least in California, the state legislature that created adjuncts, not local community colleges.

This is where adjunct-full-time conversations need to lead.  How does it start? I would suggest at first, one-on-one, and it’s going to take time, listening as well as speaking, and holding our adjuncts breaths at moments.  We can do this, and quite honestly, we must.

Geoff Johnson,

A “Good” Adjunct

 

 

 

 

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Adjunct Engagement Via the General Membership Meeting, or Rather, the Lack Thereof

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Good Adjuncts:

Having sat on the executive councils of two different wall-to-wall (adjunct/full-time) locals affiliated with two different national unions, one of the most glaringly obvious things that I see happen, and it’s perhaps the one thing that most “radicalizes” adjuncts to the extent that they no longer see their union as a tool for change, is how adjuncts, or adjunct issues become “compartmentalized.”

Perhaps an easy way to understand this is as follows.  You are an adjunct concerned about a vast array of issues which, to be honest, really makes you angry, like, “Why am I paid so much less than my full-time colleague, why do I have poor or no job security, and why do I get no benefits? ” You then take it upon yourself to go to a union meeting, expecting to get answers and hearing some kind of plan or active strategy.

When you get to the meeting though, what you hear instead are minutes, financial reports, perhaps a reference to negotiations, or some sort of union issue that seems far removed to the adjunct.  Then there may or may not be the discussion of political action which seems only tangentially connected to the issue of adjuncts, like a call for a support for hotel, grocery, or healthcare workers.  Often after that, and usually at the end of said meeting, there will be the “adjunct” or “part-time” report which, if given, may simply refer to an upcoming unemployment workshop.  And with that, the adjunct leaves, and we may be lucky if they come to another meeting.

In fairness to the local unions, much of the stuff on a meeting agenda is what unions must deal with as they involve the whole body.  Further, just walking into a single meeting without some sort of context to what the union has been/is dealing with is going to leave anyone, adjunct or no, confused.  Additionally, these calls for the support of outside groups are critical down the road for the their reciprocal support of local governing board candidates, state legislators, and propositions/and initiatives which can affect institutional funding and state policy positively, and generally, the bigger the local, the more they need to “play the game.”

Further, there are also macro-issues tied to accreditation, program review, resource allocation, planning, tenure review, etc. which affect the campus as a whole, and will affect adjuncts, but not with an immediacy that many adjuncts will see.

For example, many adjuncts were angry about all the attention being given in one of my locals to the accreditation fight at the City College of San Francisco.  I had to tell them that one of the reasons that City College was under assault was the accrediting board’s assertion that it paid its adjuncts too much, which was 85% of full-time pay, making it one of the most equitable institutions in the country with regard to adjunct pay.

In this regard, particularly if the other issues appear to be more immanent, the adjunct report will get de-prioritized.

But really, there are some problems here.  As an adjunct rep, I am the one, in at least one of the locals, giving the dreaded “adjunct report.”  Now I don’t know how many other people giving reports get “spoken to” after meetings, but I on occasion do.  Sometimes, it’s generally “meant well,” but I’ll get old things like, “you don’t want to sound too angry,” or “make sure that you’re inclusive,” and I could go on.

Thing that gets me about this is that often I’m in the process of trying to talk people up into taking action, for things like Campus Equity Week, Adjunct Action Day, Union Membership Drives, Signature Campaigns, for Letters to Politicians , etc.  Because these items require a high degree of participation and buy-in, in addition to being time sensitive, it’s more or less necessary that one is passionate.  And by the way, not once have I ever in a general meeting called out full-timers, though I have profusely thanked them on occasion for their support.  (And to be fair on this point, sometimes I’ve gotten more help from full-timers than adjuncts on these issues, adjuncts). There’s sort of this sense I get at times that when I speak, I have to be watchful for the “there he goes again . . .” look, or this unspoken suspicion that I’m suddenly going to go off on full-time faculty.

The statement that really gets me, (and it is never said to me, but is apparently said by other full-timers who will in turn talk to full-timers who talk to me) is the whine, “Why do we have to talk so much about part-time issues?”

Hmmm, I don’t know.  Your local’s membership is 70%+ adjunct.  Whenever there’s a loss of funding, full-timers are worried about whether or not they’ll take a salary cut or lose their COLA.  They might even see their class cuts go up.  For adjuncts at that point, the central concern is this—“Am I going to have a job next semester?”  Oh, and there’s also that pay disparity and general job security thing, and the fact that, despite strong adjunct opposition to it, such that it can be expressed, they keep hiring fewer full-timers and more part-timers.

The fact of the matter is you don’t talk about it enough, or more importantly, don’t consider adjunctifcation for what it really is—an existential threat to tenure, full-time employment, the labor movement, and the middle class.

But now I’m going to say something a bit shocking, and seemingly contradictory.  The general meeting is never going to be, in and of itself, an effective tool for engaging adjuncts.

Most adjuncts, because of the precarious nature of their work, can’t make these meetings in the first place.  Second of all, the few adjuncts who do show up to meetings have a very limited understanding  of how unions, particularly teachers’ unions, have to operate in dealing with management and the general public.  Too many have this notion that if you just get together and demand something in force you’re going to get it, like in the movie Norma Rae.  Third, adjuncts are angry at what are often wide varieties of slights, and as people who are every bit as smart and inquisitive as the full-time colleagues, they have ideas and questions as to why certain things have or haven’t been done (and too often they have to no affect, or simply can’t be done, but the adjunct doesn’t know this, or know why).

With regard to all three of these points, adjunct engagement needs to be better shaped to meet adjuncts if adjuncts are ever going to get more involved in helping themselves.

First, outside of the general meetings, there need to be times when adjuncts can simply hook up with other members of union leadership, and no, not just the adjunct rep.  If you were to substitute white and black for full-time/part-time and applied that model, just how do you suppose that would come off?

Second, instead of just having adjuncts come to a big meeting, having smaller meet-ups at varying times in different locations would help.  How about coffee and donuts on a Tuesday morning in an adjunct workroom, or at an off-site extension?  How about a brown bag lunch? Hell, couldn’t we just get a full-timer to walk into an adjunct workroom and just hang out and talk for a few minutes about work conditions with no agenda?

Third, create smaller meetings built around one or two items specific to adjunct concerns.  One meeting could simply be educational, like “What’s the negotiation process about?”  Another could be “Adjunct Vent Your Spleen Day,” etc.

Now I will say in closing, that if you adjuncts out there are waiting for full-timers to have his dawn on them and come to you, you will be waiting in futility.  You need to make it happen.  Suggest it, then demand it.  If nothing happens, then educate yourselves and get people among you to go to meetings.  By the way, I’ll still be out there trying to realize each of the three proposals I just made, but I’m one person.

Create the engagement you need and deserve.  It doesn’t happen without you.

Geoff Johnson

A “Good” Adjunct

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It’s About All of Us: Tell Your Students What You Are

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I’m posting the latest  from mixinminao (Geoff Johnson) because he is having some technical difficulties with his computer. Here is the hardest working activist in America’s latest post:

Most of you reading this are serious adjunct/contingent activists who are all too aware of how damaging adjunct working conditions are to your life economically, physically, emotionally, psychically. . . and I could go on.  You may also be aware of how it hurts students, the institution, and contract/full-time employees as well.  You may also be aware that people have written about this at length and that in the face of it, movement on much of the issue has been, with but a few exceptions, glacial at best.

Part of this is because every time we broach the issue on our campuses during activist events like Campus Equity Week or Adjunct Action Day, we spend more time having to tell students what an adjunct is, than being able to get students to actively work towards the reduction of adjunct instruction, and the betterment of adjunct working conditions.

At the beginning of every term, I ask the students in my classes on the first day how many of them know what an “adjunct” (what I choose to call myself) is.  Because of the heightened activism on my local campuses, I will now be lucky if I can get three or more students out of a class of 30 who can tell me; and I, unlike 90% of my colleagues actually ask my students about the term.  Most teachers, maybe think that to ask and answer such a question is “whining.”  What this effectively means is that these adjunct instructors have decided that these work conditions, as injurious as they are to not only to the students, the institution, and society, are really about themselves.  In other words, these adjuncts internalize their exploitation and put on the “brave face” to make their teaching appear “seamless” in quality comparison with the full-time instructor.  It’s as if students shouldn’t know that, unlike the full-time instructor:

  1. You have other jobs to go to, which significantly limits your students’ access to you.
  2. You may teach more classes than a full-timer out of necessity, meaning:
  3. You will need more time to return graded work with fewer comments
  4. You may appear harried or even disorganized when you come into class
  5. You teach at multiple sites, so:
  6. You may not be fully aware of the outside institutional resources for students
  7. Know enough about other instructors to recommend to motivated students
  8. Be fully aware of what is taught in prerequisite or follow-up classes

The fact of the matter is that it is and should be our job to inform students of these realities. Contrary to what many may believe, it’s not as if students are going to flee from your classes in droves.  Many students are tied to your classes because of their own tight schedules, and because so many of us teach at peak times with classes that are already impacted.  Many students have no choice but to take your classes, so do the right thing, tell them, prepare them.  Make it clear that you will do your best to provide that student with a quality education, but that the institution creates barriers and limits generally unseen, but nonetheless there.

At the same time, there is another problem, and many instructors particularly at the community college level can attest to this: many of our students are themselves working effectively as adjunct or contingent labor.  Even when students are informed about the adjunct situation, many of them will feel to a degree more resentful than sympathetic, and when one starts talking to students about this, it’s easy to understand why.

Few if any students have the stable, 40 hour-week-job (and if they’re students, it’s often better they don’t).  The bigger problem though is that many work at jobs for which full-time or stable employment is not an option.  In order to avoid having to provide insurance for their employees, or in some cases, to simply keep them “hungry for hours,” businesses will purposefully under-employ students who are also underpaid with respect to being able to cover basic needs.  Further, these jobs will lack any kind of security.  Even at better businesses which will provide an elite few workers full-time employment and benefits, there is a sort of two-tier-ification going on in which the vast majority will work the part-time, underpaid, no benefit job (sound familiar adjuncts?)

For some students, the jobs they work aren’t even jobs, but rather “gigs”.  All hail the rise of the “independent contractor” who works for outfits like Uber and Lyft.  These ‘contractors” are our students, and they quite often get paid worse than us and treated even more shabbily.

Now I can hear some adjuncts say, “…but they’re students,” and/or “these are transitional jobs.”  To them I say, “You need to talk to your students.”  Many of them have been doing this for years, and many may finish with degrees and still find themselves doing such work for a time. I would also say you need to look at the world beyond yourself.  The term “starving students” used to be more of a figurative than literal statement.  Recent reports show that up to 10% of students in the CSU or California State University system are homeless.  This is the largest four-year system in the country, with over 300,000 students.  We’re talking about 30,000 people with lives and aspirations and families in just one state school system.  And I’m not including the one in five have food security issues.

And yes, there are homeless adjuncts in California, but 30,000?  Do one in five California adjuncts have food security issues?

To reach these students, we need to ask for more than understanding.  We need to show empathy, and we need to show that we care about their lives, not just as students in our classrooms, but as people, sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, and the very future of our nation.

And this all ties back to labor contingency.  A main contributor to the problems associated with the record income and wealth inequity in this country is that labor contingency which we all know too well in academia is exploding in the general workforce.  In a recent report given on the NPR program Marketplace, it was stated that up to 35% of the nation’s workforce is contingent labor with it expected to rise to 65-70% in the coming decades if unabated.  When people wonder why, in spite of falling employment wages have not risen, here’s one of their answers as to why.

In some respects, I would argue that labor contingency is potentially as serious and destabilizing a force as global warming.  Funny, but if people actually thought of it in those terms, would we have to waste our time as activists telling students “what an adjunct is”?

In short you need to make your students SEE your situation, and you need to SEE theirs.  To truly make any progress on the adjunct/contingent front, we need to do it from the beginning.  See this task for what it is: a moral, social, and yes a PROFESSIONAL obligation.

 

 

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How to Screw an Adjunct Part III: Creative Scheduling

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Good Adjuncts,

So now that you’ve got “priority of assignment” and a degree of seniority, think you’re safe? Well, get on the wrong side of a dean and or scheduler and you might find there’s yet another way to screw an adjunct—call it “creative” scheduling.

Now any adjunct who has worked at an institution for more than five years is no stranger to the odd schedule or two. What I’m talking about is when the schedule is used against you like a weapon.

Perhaps the most venal example of this I’ve seen of late was the case of a few adjuncts who their dean, as I have mentioned before, had unsuccessfully tried to remove by effectively questioning their equivalency status. As it turned out, the dean had previously scheduled them for classes that would have worked with their schedule, which like most adjuncts, is an interesting patchwork of classes all over the place.

When their equivalency status was put into question, they were pulled from those classes. Resolving the equivalency issue with these adjuncts actually took over a month. During this time, some of the teachers’ classes were re-assigned, while another, fearing the loss of income, took classes in her previously scheduled time slot.
The union managed to prevail on the equivalency issue, but by this time, the damage was done, and two of these adjuncts were given offerings at times that were either highly inconvenient, or simply impossible to take due to a scheduling conflict. One adjunct was able to make it work, the other had to refuse the assignment, which along with the lost classes meant the loss of her hiring priority. In the end, the dean got her wish—this adjunct wasn’t going to be working at the college anymore.

All of the adjuncts I mentioned here had “Priority of Assignment.” In theory, they have a guarantee for work. Still, contrary to popular notion, “Priority of Assignment,” which is sometimes also called “Vesting” at some colleges, is not, as some deans, department chairs, and VP’s of Instruction try to define it, “tenure for adjuncts.” A full-timer with tenure is more or less guaranteed a job for which they are evaluated once every three years, and then must be absolutely appalling in order to get fired. And when I say appalling, I could speak of such teachers who taught strictly from books, would go months without returning any student work, and were either confusing or extremely condescending to their students.

An adjunct with “priority of assignment” is a teacher that is only promised a certain number of classes in a following term provided there is a need for the classes. There’s nothing which says that dean can’t effectively offer you classes at a different time or location. This means the dean, should he or she have the notion to, can schedule an adjunct where they will because a guarantee of load is not the same as a guarantee of specific classes.

Before I go further, I don’t want to make all deans or schedulers (usually department chairs) out to be devious, agenda-driven people. In fact, this is generally a very small number of deans and schedulers. Most dean and schedulers, quite frankly, are very busy and have other things to do, and prefer consistency when scheduling, and so they want to keep as many people in predictable and preferred places as possible.

Still, this doesn’t mean that they can’t or won’t use the schedule as a weapon.

In many ways, the bigger problem with a schedule is that once a scheduler has put you in a certain place with certain classes, you can be sure that you will always get those classes, or have to tread very lightly in requesting changes. This is how people who are qualified to teach a variety of classes may get forced to languish with a certain class or classes with no real hope of change.

What can be even worse is if you’re put into an off-campus assignment, you may find yourself effectively removed from departmental culture for years, particularly if the department chooses to schedule its meetings midday and midweek. And without that departmental connection, one can get hurt in the evaluations process, or lack the information to present oneself as a credible candidate for a full-time position.

Perhaps worst of all in this regard is if you’re teaching a lower level basic skills class that gets converted to self-study or is simply eliminated. This is in fact when deans begin to get devious as they realize they may not have the classes they want you to take, and realize that they must displace less senior teachers in order to absorb you into classes you have never taught.

As I’ve said here, even with priority of assignment, a union’s hands can be tied. What’s a solution? Well, to a degree having priority of assignment with senior adjuncts getting their load before less senior adjuncts helps. What’s more important is for an adjunct to keep connected with their deans and schedulers, and by this, I don’t mean, kiss their ass. Check in with them now and again. Be friendly, and stay connected with the department. Let them know when you can be flexible, and when you can, be so, without being a doormat (i.e. taking that five week-class taught at a hog plant for five hours a meeting on Saturday afternoons.)

Sometimes Good Adjuncts, the only weapon we really have is to be proactive.

Geoff Johnson
A “Good” Adjunct

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Many Roads to Plow: My Speech at SD Mesa College

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Let me start by stating that nothing of what you’ll hear is any kind of personal complaint. In fact, I told myself a while ago that no one had expected me here and that the life with liberty and adjuncts for all was ultimately my choice.

So, what should I tell you about part-time professors, these critical thinkers in critical state, freeway flyers navigating neo-liberal detours?

I should probably tell you that being paid by the course at about one-third of the rate a full-time colleague would receive does not sound fair. In other words, college can get three professors for the price of one—no wonder, such a bargain of Wal-Mart proportions has turned 73% of the entire college faculty nationwide into adjuncts. And most of us are as qualified as the fortunate 27%. Worse still, there are only few courses that an adjunct is allowed to teach each semester at a certain school. And once the economy turns south, the precious few courses available for adjuncts to teach become even scarcer.

I should probably tell you that for most adjuncts, the end of a semester doesn’t give much relief, but rather stirs anxiety because adjuncts’ meager income tapers off fast and it’s never clear if jobs will be available next term. My recent winter break is a good example: I had looked forward to it, to the time it would free for writing. By the second week of January, though, two of my spring classes got on the brink of cancellation due to low enrollment. This discovery effectively deterred me from the projects so dear to me. Still, winter challenges for my adjunct self were not over just yet. In the middle of January, I got a note from Harvard that my son was selected for clinical trials. Of course, I could not deny him this life-improving opportunity, and soon we found ourselves sightseeing in the snowstorms on the Atlantic coast. . .

.              .              .              .              .              .              .              .              .              .              .

Hardly had we boarded the westbound jet at Logan Airport, our captain announced that the flight had to wait for crews to plow away the snow. A barely employed and nearly snowed-in freeway flyer, I just sat there—it was a Saturday, after all—peering through the impossible snowfall, pondering all that shoveling ahead.

Thank you for coming! We all need to work together to plow our roads clear!

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How to Screw an Adjunct Part II: That Awkward, Off-Campus Assignment

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Good Adjuncts:

While in the last essay I talked primarily about how older adjuncts are victimized by Deans, Department Chairs, and other faculty for being effectively “obsolete,” there is a practice which, whether intentionally or no, works as either a sort of “trial by fire” for new adjuncts, or a “we’re sending you to Australia” for any adjunct that runs afoul of the powers that be—that awkward off-campus assignment.

I recall my own experience with this. In May of 2002, I had just come back from living in Japan for nine years and was looking for a teaching position. Considering that it was already May and that the scheduling for Fall Semester classes had been done months prior, there had appeared to be no chance I would get any work at all. I stress this because the scheduler who gave me the class did and does in fact care about adjuncts and was in fact doing me a great kindness to give me anything at all. I will however say that this is often not the case. I will also say that the assignment I got was still a bit of a challenge.

Having taught English either at the college level, or for academic purposes abroad for some 15 years prior, I was a bit seasoned, but I wasn’t entirely prepared to be teaching a class at the MCRD, or Marine Corps Recruiting Depot, where I was to teach almost exclusively older military personnel from different branches of the service. Some were straight arrow career folks, others were “I joined the service, now get me outta here,” and I had one guy who had some interesting theories about the pyramids…, but I digress. The bigger issue is that I was encouraged to teach a theme-based English course based around the topic of “California” and save one person, none of the students was from California, or had in fact lived anywhere but in or around a military base in California for more than five years. One young woman in the class, born and bred in Alabama, was in the Navy and lived on the ship. Of California she knew of the San Diego Embarcadero and the MCRD.

To add to the fun, the room I taught in had a broken TV and VCR, a filthy whiteboard, no computers, and had stadium-style seating with 30+ year old furniture, and had the general cleanliness of a fraternity house. Further, because we were off campus, it made the research-writing component of the course difficult because no one had access to the library. For one class, I actually arranged a field trip to the local library so that students could go off and work there independently with my guidance. When we got to the library, just before the students went to their separate areas, I was informed by the head librarian that this is not how “things are done.” We all still stayed in the library and worked, under a watchful eye, with the librarian in the back of her head likely realizing, after I told her about the situation, that for me to have them write a research paper without guidance in how to do research was like making “bricks without straw.”

And no, because it was an evening class and the school didn’t have the facilities as yet, doing the generic library studies class wasn’t an option.

Anyway, I survived that class, in part because I was so used to dealing with curricular chaos and lack of planning in Japan where I learned you just have to make do. The problem is, many adjuncts don’t, especially new adjuncts, which too often means after just one semester the adjunct is not simply an ex-adjunct, but an ex-teacher.

I must confess that I quite often get complaints like these from other adjuncts, or ex-adjuncts who have lost classes with a particular school because of being put into a situation for which they were never ready.

First, let’s take a look generally at who new adjuncts are and where they have come from.

Most new adjuncts are people who have just finished up an MA or PhD, or are in the process of completing the latter. If they have had any teaching experience at all, it has most likely been with groups of college undergraduates, mostly around the ages of 18-20 who came to college directly out of high school, and who have been inculcated in college culture. I won’t even touch the socio-economic, cultural diversity issues here except say, life in urban community colleges means greater socio-economic and cultural diversity issues are more significant. These adjuncts are more likely to have a presumption that community college students have would the same level of preparedness or connectedness to education and the classroom environment, and as many of these new adjuncts must quickly learn, they do not.

Now add to this problem that a class off campus, often with poor local resources, taking place at night or on a weekend, and you may have an idea that the new, and relatively untrained instructor can quickly be in trouble.

Why does this happen? The reason is two-fold–One dealing with administrators, the other with full-timer culture.

Most Vice Presidents of Instruction at California Community Colleges, and you can assume it applies nationwide, are constantly chasing funding. They’re after getting those would-be students in classes (provided they can pack the classes as much as possible), and so, to put it mildly, they will often great “creative” with class offerings.

Now don’t get me wrong, as community colleges, by their very mission are there to educate the community, they should be reaching out to students by having classes in evenings, on weekends, and at times, at schools or centers, where they can better serve their communities. However, this idea has led to some very dubious sorts of situations. Having classes at places like military centers is great, but too often, when it comes to resources, neither the military or the community college district will care about providing the proper resources, each assuming it’s the other party’s responsibility. Having classes at high schools to provide students with that “college” experience (why not just let them take a college class directly?), really only works if the students are actually college ready.

I knew of one poor adjunct who taught a Math class at a high school where many of the students had chosen the class simply because their buddies, boyfriends, or girlfriends were in it. If he left the room, he had to worry about students drawing a penis on the board. Being as he was fresh out of graduate school, he found himself flummoxed and angry. Further, the department chair who gave him the class never visited the site. At the end of the day, the teacher did OK on his peer evaluation (by a teacher other than the department head), but as he didn’t build rapport with the students, the high school principal of the program wanted him gone, and so he was. Now he could have been given an on-campus Math class with a more mature student body the next semester, but he was simply not re-hired.

The problem I have with this, more than anything else, is that I have the impression this was a person who could have been a good teacher in time and an asset to his department. I also think that, in light of the situation, that a seasoned full-time instructor would have been a better fit.

Well now why doesn’t that happen?

Now we have to talk about full-time culture. As full-timers are effectively the anointed ones, they get first choice in classes. Now clearly, full-timers need to get the numbers of classes they are required to, and in that sense they should have priority, but at the same time, if you are working for a single institution which has more or less guaranteed lifetime employment barring some really egregious teaching or behavior, that should obligate you to serve the best interests of the institution by on regular occasion teaching an occasional off-campus assignment, or at least trading off on it with some of your other full-time colleagues. In truth, most full-timers try to schedule their classes to start after 9:00 AM and finish around 3:00 PM, and if they can swing it, not get scheduled for any classes on Friday.

To be fair, I know many a full-timer who don’t do this, but I sadly know even more who do.

This means adjuncts having to teach on the margins, often by what can best be called the old “horseshoe” schedule, where he/she will teach a class at 7:00 AM or 8:00 AM, perhaps go teach on another campus, if they can get the work, then show up in the evening for that special 7:00-10:00 PM class. It is these classes, at the far ends of the schedule, which are more likely off campus, and in the realm of the adjunct.

And understand why adjuncts do this—it’s a case of desperation and that extremely misplaced notion that if I “take one for the team” that they (a hiring committee) will think highly of you come full-time job opening time.

And I know this because this is why I took those classes.

When I came back from Japan, I was so desperate to find work to support my family that I would have taught English from 12:00-4:00 AM in a broom closet in a liquor store, and I not so jokingly told my scheduler this. If teaching such a class like this is the pedagogical equivalent of selling a kidney, let’s just say there’s been an active organ market in academia for some time now.

I also had some strange notion that the full-time faculty appreciated me, and I suppose the scheduler may have, but mostly to the extent that he didn’t have to pull his hair out finding an another adjunct ready to fall on his/her own sword.

In the end though, all I did, besides support my family, was insure the practice of that “awkward off- campus” assignment could persist.

Administrators and full-time faculty need to sit down at a big table and really start thinking about how their behavior in regard to first offering, then staffing these classes does not serve the best interests of the institution. If you’re going to offer these classes at off-campus sites, ensure that the proper resources will be there for a teacher to do his/her job. Second, think seriously about the student population that’s going to be served and whether they are actually ready for such coursework, or if it’s really necessary for the community college to be involved away from its main domain. Third, staff more of these classes with veteran full-timers who know these populations and are more ready for the job. And finally, if you’re going to put a young adjunct out there, MENTOR HIM OR HER. Don’t just assign and forget and hope that things will turn out alright.

The adjunct you help might just become the full-time employee that will shine for you.

Geoff Johnson

A “Good” Adjunct

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My Adjunct Action Day Speech at Mesa

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Dear Students, Full-time Faculty, Classified, Administrators, and of Course Adjuncts:

Approximately one year ago, when for the first time on a widespread scale such rallies as these took place, I was to a degree excited by the chance to speak out along with my colleague and fellow adjunct John Hoskins to draw attention to the adjunct condition.

Sadly, it’s a year later, and there are still so many students out there who don’t know the meaning of the term, or how it has become synonymous with teacher exploitation, marginalization, and the rationing of instruction.

The adjunct, or so called “part-time” instructor is a teacher, who like his/her full-time counterparts, must possess either a Master’s or Doctorate degree, so that he/she can teach to more or less the same student population in subjects, which he or she, has the same level of expertise. In truth, the student taught by either will rarely know which one is the full-timer and which one is the adjunct unless the teacher in question tells him or her.

However, unlike, and this is the word, unlike the full-time instructor, the adjunct is limited to teaching no more than 67% of a full-time load in one district, for fear of having to give them, like a full-timer, a long term employment contract, full health benefits which can extend to his/her family, occasional sabbaticals, and some cases, a structured early retirement plan

The adjunct is given no long term contract, and in many districts, no rehire rights (meaning that that you can be fired for any reason, like for example, the Dean having a family friend in mind for your job). It means living a life and a career in four to six month spurts for years and even decades. While a smattering of schools will give health benefits to adjuncts who maintain 50% or greater loads for more than a year, most schools offer adjuncts no health benefits at all. There are no sabbaticals for adjuncts, and for adjuncts, retirement comes when an older adjunct is simply not rehired, and he/she has been given the message that it’s time to go away.

More significantly, the adjunct is paid only for the time he/she spends in the classroom, with extremely limited if any compensation given for office hours and professional development, and no compensation for hours spent grading or doing research. To be fair, officially full timers are not paid for these things, but they are paid to maintain a minimum 30 hours on a campus, and when salaries are awarded, the adjunct will be paid at a rate  that is effectively ½ to 1/3 of what his/her full-time colleague makes.

Were this not enough to consider, know that in many cases these teachers also do not enjoy designated office space to work with their students.

There are hidden costs to being an adjunct too. Because of the low pay and limited work at any one institution, the adjunct may commute to over four campuses in a week, driving over 300 miles. The gas, the wear and tear on his/her car, the hours of lost time are all costs borne by the adjuncts. Further, when the adjunct cannot receive the health benefits the full-time employee receives, he/she must bear those additional costs out-of-pocket.

Often salary increases, when spread across-the-board for faculty, further the disparity, as the 2% salary increase for the $70,000/year full-timer will receive a $1400 increase, which the adjunct who teaches 60% at a 50% rate for an annual salary of 21,000/year will receive just $410. Unfortunately, at the store, both the adjunct and the full-time pay the same rate for milk.

Please do not misunderstand, I do not condemn or wish to deny my fellow full-timers of their wages, for they do earn their money. AFT has fought to reduce this disparity, as reflected in our last contract, which brought significantly rose adjunct salaries, and office hours. I condemn a system which from the start has used the “adjunct” as a cheap tool to provide only a half-fulfilled promise of educational equity.

I once believed that the “adjunct” was originally created as the status given to a moonlighting instructor, like a local businessman who once a week came to the community college to impart his vocational knowledge, and that as budgets were tight, a sort of fiscal creep set in, which over 40 years of time created the present climate in which now 70% of all community college instructors are adjuncts living and working at academia’s edges.

The truth is, at least in California, that in 1967, when the California legislature deemed it legal to hire adjunct instructors, it was so that schools could collect federal funds while not having to pay the full wages and benefits accorded full-timers. The system of adjunctification, you see, was not created by accident, or by a simple slouching towards budgetary pressures. It was from the start, as it is today, a system of exploitation by design.

And the costs of this system to adjuncts has been mighty. Forget the lost wages or lack of benefits—think instead of teachers toiling for years in hope of the full-time job that for many will never come, think of the adjunct living in apartment after apartment, and driving one broken down car after another, hoping his/her car will make it to the next teaching assignment. Think even more of the adjunct without health insurance who never gets that chest pain checked out until she learns its stage three cancer, think of the adjunct who loses a classes do to layoffs at one college, and having the ignoble status of being a working teacher, yet homeless and living in a station wagon with her three children ages 6 through 17. Think these are children who have ambitions like you own.

And trust me, I could tell you stories like this several times over.

Now, after telling you all this, I suppose what you know about an adjunct is negative.

What you also need to know is that, for the most part, an adjunct, is a person who loves to teach and so much so that even when making $15 an hour or less for the actual work that he/she does, he/she looks forward to the next teaching assignment, not simply for the promise of salary, but the opportunity to make a difference in people’s live, and in the community. (And as an aside, no worker should be making less than $15 dollars an hour, including adjuncts, especially when we aspire to the idea that our citizens should be taxpayers, and not dependent on government assistance.)   As for the love of the job that adjuncts feel and the empowerment that can come from it, I think of the older student I had in a remedial class who never thought of herself as a writer, who wrote an essay about stopping herself from a third suicide attempt that to this day leaves me almost speechless.

The adjunct is that person who will do extra office hours, or show up on off days for unpaid professional and curriculum development, not out of obligation, or sometimes even a desire to get a full-time job, but because it’s the right thing to do for the students, the college, the community.

And contrary to the notion of the “adjunct” as a temporary worker, many adjuncts have worked at specific schools for decades, some far longer than any full-time instructor, like one of my colleagues at Mesa College, who has been teaching since 1963. And they leave special marks not just on the students they teach, but everyone around them.

I tell you this so that you know that today, while I would naturally like to see both equal pay for equal duties between adjuncts and full-timers, and in fact, a reduction/conversion of adjuncts to full-timers. My request today is a bit simpler to fulfill.

During the economic recession of 2008-13, the loss of funding to community colleges meant the loss of thousands of jobs for adjuncts, while students at Mesa would face waiting lists in excess of 15 students to get that one class they needed for graduation. What brought an end to this situation was the monies that came into the system as a result of Prop 30, a temporary tax measure which will expire in its entirety by the end of 2017. Without these monies, we could see a return to unemployed adjuncts and students without classes.

Today we have before you petition form calling for an extension of the progressive tax component of Prop 30. Please sign these petitions so that we can get it on the ballot in November, and then help us pass it so that we can teach you.

In addition, we are asking you to send letters in support of AB1690, a job security bill which gives an adjunct, after six semesters of successful evaluations, rehire rights based on seniority, and in the event of a weak evaluation, a chance to improve. This bill, if passed, will not make convert any adjuncts into full-timers, but it makes it possible for those good teachers who happen to be still classified as adjuncts on the job, and doing their good work.

Really, all I’m asking you to do today is to make it possible for us, as adjuncts, to continue in making a difference in your lives. Considering what we endure, can you grant us that?