A special joint session of the New York State Assembly drew a record-breaking crowd to testify on the topic of adjunct issues. Sponsored by the Higher Education and the Labor committees, the hearing was held in Manhattan on March 9. More than 150 people attended, and 75 testified. They described their lives and the challenges they face working at institutions like the State and the City Universities of New York, Long Island University, the Fashion Institute of Technology and New York University.

At the last minute, Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan, the labor committee chair, bowed out leaving only Assemblyman Edward Sullivan to accept testimony. In addition to examining salary and benefits concerns of part-timers, the hearing also explored the idea of changing state disability and unemployment laws so that part-timers can be covered.

Under current law, part-timers at CUNY can be dropped from the payroll after a week of being sick, which then also removes them from being eligible for health benefits. They are not eligible for disability insurance.

Nor can part-timers collect unemployment insurance during the months they are not working, because colleges and universities routinely provide letters that offer a "reasonable assurance" of future employment. These letters allow institutions to bar part-timers from collecting unemployment, even though all parties know that employment is contingent on enrollment, funding and program continuation.

Those who testified pointed out that part-timers are teaching the majority of courses at the community colleges and the majority of introductory courses at the senior colleges. Yet because of the meager pay and benefits, the work of part-timers subsidizes the public and private higher education institutions in the state.

At SUNY, the most recent contract negotiated by the United University Professions brought important gains to part-timers, says Eileen Landy, co-chair of the United University Professions/AFT part-time concerns committee. These include improvements to health insurance, leave, retirement programs, professional development and raises. For the future, however, the union has as its top priority pressing for funding both to fairly compensate part-timers and to establish 70 percent full-time university-wide teaching levels. The goal would be to provide a stable educational environment and better opportunities for part-timers to move into full-time jobs.

Part-timers at CUNY lack health benefits, office space and adequate pay, pointed out Cecelia McCall, a Professional Staff Congress/AFT officer. The union is trying to address these problems in current contract negotiations, she said, but they are symptomatic of a callous attitude on the part of the university and the state. "Adjuncts literally carry their offices on their backs, and the university is being carried on their backs as well," she noted.

Professional employees at the University of New Mexico were so sure that unionizing was the only answer to years of being underpaid and underestimated that they did the extraordinary. Overcoming numerous obstacles, they hurdled to an overwhelming victory this March.

The obstacles? To begin with, New Mexico has no collective bargaining law for public employees. Add to this the employer's policy at the University of New Mexico, which is that 60 percent of all eligible voters must vote in collective bargaining elections for the votes even to be tallied. For the United Staff-University of New Mexico organizing committee, that meant creating a network to turn out a vote of approximately 630 of the 1,050 eligible members of US-UNM. The university has its main campus in Albuquerque and campuses in four other cities. The employees, who range from academic advisors, financial aid officers, library information specialists, tutors and childcare workers, are spread out over 100 different building sites. The university, which had hired a union-busting law firm early on, would not allow any union staff or activists inside the buildings to get out the vote on the day of the election.

The union strengthened its base by bringing together a large organizing committee, inoculating its leaders against the expected barrage of intimidation from management and seeking help from area labor unions, says Ona Savage, a committee member who is an academic advisor in the English department. "The labor union was terrific," she says. "It gave us hope and supported our efforts." Volunteers from nurses and police unions helped make home visits and build the database of eligible voters. On election day, the local AFL-CIO sent out 50 volunteers to act as poll watchers and drive people to the voting sites.

On election day, 658 cast their ballots. The vote was 531 for US-UNM and the New Mexico Federation of Education Employees/AFT to 127 for no agent.

The union will address the low morale resulting from years of being paid salaries the university has determined are 12 percent below what private employers pay in the area (while administrators are paid at top-of-the-scale levels).

Kaseman says the union is in the process of collecting cards from another unit needing representation on campus--the 700 technical workers. They hope for an election before the year is out.

The AFT is celebrating a significant victory in the Maryland Legislature--passage of a bill giving non-teaching employees in the University System of Maryland the right to organize and join unions.

Specifically, on April 6, legislators in the Maryland State Assembly overwhelmingly passed SB 207, the vehicle that delivered Gov. Parris Glendening's 2001 state-of-the-state promise to institute collective bargaining for thousands of employees working for the state's institutions of higher education. Although the AFT tried to have an amendment added that would include teaching faculty and graduate employees, the amendment to the bill failed.

The victory--won in the final days of this year's legislative session--is due in large part to the grassroots legislative action of the AFT and other AFL-CIO affiliates in the state. AFT-Maryland implemented a legislative action campaign involving union members from every AFT constituency, including the Maryland Professional Employees Council and the Maryland Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals. E-mails, letters, and phone calls were directed to Maryland lawmakers detailing the need for collective bargaining for the university system's non-faculty and non-managerial employees, including sworn police officers, support staff and custodial staff.

To bolster this correspondence, union representatives attended every legislative hearing where they were readily available to respond to any lawmakers' questions about the collective bargaining process. AFT officials presenting formal testimony at the first Senate hearing on the bill in early March included: AFT vice president Lorretta Johnson, president of AFT-Maryland; AFT vice president Bill Scheuerman, president of the AFT's United University Professions in New York; Debra Perry, president of the AFT's Maryland Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals; Kathy McDonald, founder of the Graduate, Adjunct and Lecturer/Organized Labor organizing committee at the University of Maryland, College Park.

With collective bargaining rights secured, the union will begin organizing eligible workers on the 13 campuses of the state's university system, as well as at Baltimore City Community College, Morgan State University and St. Mary's College. Meanwhile, the union will continue to work for legislation that would allow University System of Maryland faculty to organize.

Faculty at the University of Vermont, who were the subject of the March cover story in AFT On Campus, brought a tumultuous academic year to a close with a vote for stability. In mid-April, 298 of a unit of 612 full-time faculty voted to be represented by the UVM United Academics against a vote of 269 for no agent. The union is jointly affiliated with the AFT and the American Association of University Professors. "Throughout this campaign, faculty have said they wanted a voice in the university," says history professor Mark Stoler. "With this vote, their voice will be heard."