Thousands of higher education activists and supporters across North America raised their banners for Campus Equity Week, Oct. 28-Nov. 3. The campaign to raise the public's awareness of the plight of contingent academic labor in the U.S. and Canada was one of the largest coalition efforts undertaken in years, with 18 American and four Canadian organizations and unions co-sponsoring the campaign.

AFT state and local federations were the biggest participants in the campaign, with more than 50 locals in 15 states mounting events. In many cases, they worked side by side with affiliates from the National Education Association and the American Association of University Professors. The groups brainstormed and held planning meetings for months in advance. They met with local newspaper editorial boards and sent out press releases and op-ed pieces. Some groups coordinated organizing and legislative agendas, timed to peak at the end of October. Others printed and displayed buttons and posters, wrote and performed plays and songs, donned costumes, handed out fact sheets, showed movies; still others sponsored lectures, roundtables and evenings of comic relief.

In Washington, D.C., the national AFT released Marching Toward Equity: Curbing the Exploitation and Overuse of Part-time and Non-tenured Faculty. That report chronicles the progress unions have made through state legislation and at the bargaining table. (To download a copy, go to www.aft.org/higher_ed/reports/.)

At the same time, the National Center for Education Statistics released the latest data on institutional use of full-time and part-time faculty. The NCES data show how lopsided faculty ratios have become in higher education. The percentage of part-time faculty members at colleges and universities has grown from about 33 percent of the total in 1987 to 43 percent in 1998. The study also shows an increasing reliance on graduate employees to provide undergraduate education at public research universities. In 1998, graduate employees taught 14 percent of those courses.

Another study released this year by the Coalition on the Academic Workforce shows the harsh economic reality part-time faculty face. CAW found that the majority of part-time faculty teaching in the liberal arts and sciences earn less than $3,000 per class and less than $20,000 per year--with no benefits.

That's working for peanuts, the Alaska Community College Federation of Teachers concluded. And to let people know how the union viewed that level of compensation, it printed up bright orange T-shirts with "No Peanuts for Adjuncts" emblazoned across the front. For Campus Equity Week, the national AFT picked up the metaphor and encouraged locals across the country to do so as well.

Whether it was the simplicity of the metaphor, the rightness of the cause, the timing of the actors or the fruit of plain old-fashioned hard work, the message of equity for part-timers was telegraphed around the country. Here is a smattering of events that tell the story of Campus Equity Week 2001.
 

MONDAY, OCT. 29
COPLEY PLAZA, BOSTON, MASS.

Jamming for Equity: Those who happened to pass through Boston's Copley Plaza on an unseasonably warm autumn day, got a good news/bad news message. The good news was in the melodies surrounding them, as some of the finest musicians in the region--who are also part-time faculty at the Berklee School of Music--provided a free concert at a lunchtime rally. The bad news was about the increasing problems being created in Massachusetts because the Legislature is not adequately funding higher education.

"Equal pay for equal work applies to the Ivory Towers of Boston and Cambridge just as much as the mills of Lawrence and New Bedford," said Kathy Kelley, president of the Massachusetts Federation of Teachers. "The state's higher education system is addicted to cheap labor."

Dan Georgianna, president of the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth Faculty Federation, spoke of the difficulty of "roads scholars," those who hold teaching jobs at multiple universities: "They are denied decent working conditions while their students are deprived of the full access to faculty they have a right to expect."

Berklee is an example of an institution that has gotten comparable pay and benefits for its full- and part-time faculty at the bargaining table, said Berklee faculty union president Mike Scott. Sweet music, indeed.
 

CHICAGO, ILL.

To kick off the week, the University Professionals of Illinois/AFT and the Cook County College Teachers Union/AFT held a rally in downtown Chicago in front of the James R. Thompson Center. A person in an elephant costume led a group of 50 activists who gave 1,500 bags of peanuts to passersby along with information about the conditions of part-time faculty in the state.

The public response was very telling, says Sue Kaufman, UPI secretary-treasurer. "Everyone said, 'this is terrible. College teachers should be paid more.'"

The following day, UPI president Mitch Vogel and other AFT local leaders were back at the same building to testify before the Illinois Board of Higher Education's Committee to Study Part-time and Nontenure-track Faculty. The committee has been holding hearings this fall and will release the results of its study and a survey in December.

Vogel presented the results of a short survey conducted by the Coalition for Consumer Rights, which showed that the Illinois public supports high standards in the hiring of all college teaching staff, including part-timers. State residents also support pro-rata pay for part-time faculty.
 

TUESDAY, OCT. 30
NEW YORK CITY AND ALBANY, N.Y.

The Professional Staff Congress/AFT invited scholars, union activists and part- and full-time faculty from inside the City University of New York and outside the state to a roundtable discussion on "Adjunct Equity in the University."

Despite many challenging years, CUNY, the faculty and staff union and the city of New York are facing some of the toughest circumstances ever. The city's economy is not recovering from the events of Sept. 11. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has called for a 15 percent budget cut at CUNY, and adjuncts realize that they would be among the first to go if the mayor's cut stands.

Yet the PSC is in the midst of a membership drive to build its adjunct ranks, with the goal of strengthening both the union and the university (see related story, page 3). At the roundtable, the most persistent question tackled was how to address the changing work force structure of higher education and the changing structure of a union that absorbs enormous numbers of part-time or adjunct faculty into its ranks.

One answer came from PSC president Barbara Bowen. "By improving the conditions for part-timers, you create less of an incentive for managers to hire them in the first place," she said.

Another issue that arose concerned seniority and job security for part-timers--people who are frequently hired on the basis of a phone call the day before or the day after classes have started for the semester.

Upstate in Albany, the United University Professions/AFT sponsored a panel discussion the same evening on "Part-time Faculty: Substantial Contributions, Insubstantial Rewards."

UUP president William Scheuerman noted that one mark of a strong university is a core of full-time faculty. The union works tirelessly to build support in the state Legislature for adequate faculty lines. However, in the last round of contract negotiations, the union was able to win one of the strongest comprehensive packages of pay and benefits for part-time faculty in the country. Mainstreaming part-time faculty into the academic community, he said, improves the quality of education and helps attract and retain the best faculty.
 

SEATTLE, WASH.

Since making part-time faculty issues the number one item on its legislative agenda in 1998 and 1999, the Washington Federation of Teachers has been moving forward--and keeping score. On the second day of Campus Equity Week, it had a ceremony to honor two legislators that the federation believes have done the most for part-time faculty. From their respective positions as chairs of the state House and Senate Higher Education Committees, Rep. Phyllis Gutierrez Kenney and Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles have led the battles for salary and fringe benefit increases.

The WFT also handed out report cards to the 29 community and technical colleges to let them know how much progress they've made in the past five years on the path to equity.

A few years ago, the state injected $10 million into a fund to address the pay inequity issue. To get the funds, colleges had to match what the state put in. Not all of them did.

"The top 10 or 12 colleges are mostly ours," says WFT field representative Wendy Radar-Konofalski, speaking of institutions where faculty are represented by WFT unions. "It's a tribute to our locals where they've put a great effort into bargaining this."

In honor of the state's part-time teaching force, at the WFT's request the governor declared Oct. 29 Adjunct and Part-time Faculty Recognition Day.
 

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 31
MADISON,WIS.

Drawing a crowd: Madison Area Technical College Part-time Faculty Federation planned a series of events to please, tease and educate a crowd. A rally at the state Capitol Tuesday evening was held to drum up support for a bill to be introduced this session by state Sen. Gary George. The bill is for pay equity and fair benefits for part-time instructors in the statewide technical college system.

MATCPTFF has represented 1,600 part-timers since 1996. "Our colleges refuse to deal with the idea of pay equity," says David Boetcher, president of the union. "They want to pay an hourly rate. No health insurance, no pension, no link to the full-time scale. We think the college has the money to do it. We're trying to get the state Legislature to say 'you've got the money--spend it on the part-timers!'"

The Capitol event also had an extra come-on to attract supporters. Showing up was the only way to get a free ticket to attend a presentation by political satirist Michael Moore the following night at the University of Wisconsin. His appearance was co-sponsored by the University of Wisconsin Teaching Assistants' Association.

Moore regaled his audience with stories about the rise of labor, its essential role in building the middle class and the assault on labor that is occurring in America today. He urged people in the audience to get behind legislative efforts to address equity issues for part-timers.
 

ELSEWHERE IN MADISON, WIS.

Promising to shock, astonish and bewilder one and all, the UW Teaching Assistants' Association held a Freak Show in observance of Campus Equity Week and Halloween. They featured such spectacles as the World's Smallest and Most Overcrowded Office, the Incredible Shrinking Pay Raise, the Oldest Limited-Term Employee on the Planet and the Tattooed TA.

The limited-term employee looks 80 but the university says she's only 31, because she hasn't put in enough consecutive terms to qualify for health insurance or retirement benefits. The Tattooed TA has his schedule, appointments and lecture notes etched on his body because he doesn't have an office and doesn't have time to write things down. And the Incredible Shrinking Pay Raise floats in a specimen glass and can only be seen with a magnifying glass.
 

EL CAJON, OCEANSIDE, SAN DIEGO AND CHULA VISTA, CALIF.

Perhaps one of the most daring experiences of Campus Equity Week was that had by California Assemblywoman Charlene Zettel, who traveled with "Freeway Flyer" David Milroy to three of his four weekly teaching jobs. Milroy is a French instructor who teaches at Grossmont College, Palomar College, Mesa College and Southwestern College. He drives about 500 miles a week.

"My goodness," Zettel told Milroy at one point. "I'm tired just thinking about what you have to do to make a living."

To mark Campus Equity Week, Milroy provided the Freeway Flyer Tour. Unlike his grueling teaching schedule, however, these stops featured receptions with local elected officials and interested students and faculty. They all met with local faculty union leaders and got a chance to learn about the plight of part-timers and what the state is doing to address the situation.

Last year, Gov. Gray Davis saw to it that $57 million was allocated to improve part-time salaries at community colleges. This will improve salaries by about 5 percent if all the colleges do it, says Roy Latas, president of the new AFT faculty local at Palomar. It's a start.

There is other legislation under consideration that would help address part-time/full-time inequities in California. Assembly Bill 907 would force institutions to give part-timers annual contracts and rehiring rights. It would also limit the use of the temporary faculty category in the job listings of community colleges. Another bill would enforce a provision of the state's 1978 College Reform bill, 1725, which says that the ideal ratio of full-time to part-time teachers instructing courses would be 75-to-25.

The California part-timers hope that events like Campus Equity Week and the Freeway Flyer Tour will help propel those bills through the Legislature.