Seeking equity for part-time/adjunct faculty
Delegates adopt historic resolution

A highlight of the AFT convention was the overwhelming vote of delegates to adopt The Standards of Good Practice in the Employment of Part-time/Adjunct Faculty: A Blueprint for Raising Standards and Ensuring Financial and Professional Equity.

The report lays out facts and figures documenting the increasing exploitation of part-time and adjunct faculty. They teach more than 50 percent of courses in community colleges and make up 43 percent of the entire professoriate. The increase in their use has coincided with a decline in the number of tenured faculty and the embrace of a corporate view of how academic institutions should be managed.

"The overuse and abuse of adjuncts has changed higher education--and unions such as ours," said AFT vice president William Scheuerman, president of the United University Professions/AFT, in voicing his support for the passage of the resolution on the standards. "The institutions where our full- and part-time members teach will have to change."

The report is the work of the AFT higher education program and policy council. Last year, it appointed a task force to issue standards that would strengthen the hand of unions representing part-timers before management and boards, at the bargaining table and with state legislatures. The task force, which was chaired by Lou Stollar, president of the United College Employees of the Fashion Institute of Technology/AFT, appointed an advisory group of part-time and adjunct faculty leaders to help frame the issues and write the report. They circulated drafts over the course of the year, and discussed and expanded the standards and rationales.

The standards fall into four categories: compensation, employment, professional responsibility and support, and the role part-timers play in their unions. The report calls for equitable pay scales, hiring and evaluation procedures for part-timers modeled on the procedures used for full-time faculty, a seniority system, pay for office hours and for time spent serving on committees.

Concerns over violation of the basic principles of equity and fairness in the use of part-timers "have been around for years," notes David Boetcher, president of the Madison (Wis.) Area Technical College Part-Time Teachers Union. And adjuncts have used these concerns to frame demands for change. "The depth with which they're treated here, though, will help people use it in negotiations" and in other practical forums, says Boetcher, who served on the AFT advisory committee. In fact, AFT unions in California and Washington state have been successful at getting their legislatures to take up the issues of pay equity and pay for office hours.

What's new about this report, Boetcher notes, is the section dealing with the rights of part-timers in unions. "To be able to go to management and say, 'my union treats us equally, why can't you?' is a great model."

Below are the standards called for in the report and approved by delegates at the 2002 convention. To download a complete copy of the report, go to www.aft.org/higher_ed.
 

Standards of compensation

1. Part-time/adjunct faculty should be paid a salary proportionate to that paid full-time tenured faculty of the same qualifications for doing the same work.

2. Part-time/adjunct faculty should receive prorated sick leave and pay for holidays and breaks.

3. Part-time/adjunct faculty should receive proportionate healthcare and pension benefits.

4. Part-time/adjunct faculty should be paid for holding office hours for student conferences.

5. In the absence of full pro rata pay, part-time/adjunct faculty who participate in institutional committee work should be compensated for doing so. (See also Standards of Professional Responsibility and Support, below.)

6. Part-time/adjunct faculty should have unemployment insurance available to them when they are not on the college payroll.
    

Terms of employment

1. Part-time/adjunct faculty members should be hired initially with the same care and subjected to the same interview process as any other applicant to the department.

2. A probationary period of time should be set for the evaluation of part-time/adjunct faculty members, after which they will achieve a form of job security.

3. Upon successfully completing a probationary period, part-time/adjunct faculty should achieve a form of seniority.

4. Once seniority is achieved, part-time/adjunct faculty should be subject to non-reappointment in only two circumstances: if the courses taught are not being offered, or for cause, utilizing all due process protections.

5. Part-time/adjunct faculty should be permitted to order their own texts and design their own courses unless these are departmental decisions, in which case part-time/adjunct faculty should be invited to participate in the deliberations.

6. Qualified part-time/adjunct faculty who have successfully completed a probationary period should be given preference in consideration for full-time positions in accordance with the requirements of the position, the needs of the department and the part-time/adjunct faculty member's seniority.
    

Standards of professional responsibility and support

1. Upon initial appointment, part-time/adjunct faculty members should be oriented to the institution and to the department, to the curriculum and support services, to the institution's governance and structure, and to the department's expectations regarding the successful performance of their duties.

2. To ensure adequate preparation time, class assignments should be made, whenever possible, using the same calendar and timeline accorded full-time faculty.

3. Part-time/adjunct faculty should be provided suitable office space and should have paid office hours to meet with their students.

4. Part-time/adjunct faculty who have achieved seniority and the job security that goes with it should be invited to participate in departmental meetings and other committees with voting privileges and should be compensated for doing so.

5. Part-time/adjunct faculty should have access to secretarial and technological support services necessary to the fulfillment of their responsibilities as well as to adequate supplies, to the library and to other campus privileges.

6. Part-time/adjunct faculty should have opportunities and financial support to participate in conferences and workshops for their professional development, to apply for grants and to participate in the institution's tuition support program.
    

Ensuring full rights for part-timers/adjuncts within their unions

1. National unions seeking to organize part-time adjunct faculty members should be committed to sustain a vigorous organizing campaign at the campus and to make a priority of part-time/adjunct organizing nationally.

2. Where full-time and part-time/adjunct faculty members are in the same union on campus, the part-time/adjunct faculty must have full voting rights on all union matters, including the election of officers and the ratification of contracts.

3. Where full-time and part-time/adjunct faculty members are in the same union on campus, part-time members should be actively encouraged to participate in all union affairs.

4. Where full-time and part-time/adjunct faculty members are in the same union on campus, the part-time/adjunct faculty have a right to expect that their union, including the full-time faculty, will push for full implementation of the standards of good employment practice outlined in this report.

5. Where the full-time and part-time/adjunct faculty members at an institution are not in the same union, regular communication and information exchange should be established between representatives of the full-time and part-time/adjunct faculty.

6. Given the rewards that come from developing an effective union, membership dues for part-time/adjunct faculty should be set at a high enough level for the local union to be strong, while at the same time taking into account the limited compensation part-time/adjunct faculty receive.

7. All faculty unions on campus should take responsibility for initiating programs aimed at increasing understanding between full-time and part-time/adjunct faculty members.

8. National, state and local higher education unions should provide information to, and advocate on behalf of, part-time/adjunct faculty applying for unemployment insurance during periods when they are not teaching.