Many thanks for the suggestions on the Academic Labor Bookshelf. Later in the summer, I’ll reissue it, revised, expanded, and with commentary.
A couple of weeks back, I linked to a report by Phil Jack on AFT’s Face Talk about the case of Margaret West, a 20-year veteran part-timer at Edmonds Community College in Washington State, and the incoming president of its AFT union local, a mixed unit that bargains for faculty serving both tenurably and nontenurably. She has joined administrators to testify on behalf of education funding and led the faculty team in six bargaining negotiations.
Even though her performance had won her several guarantees of continuing employment under her AFT contract’s “Assurance of Employment” clause, the new dean of her college didn’t renew West’s contract when it came up, on the verge of her becoming the first faculty member serving part-time to helm the local. Asked why, the dean consulted his diploma from the Dick Cheney school of human relations, thrust out his lower lip, and shrugged.
“Because I can,” he said.
But maybe he can’t. As Jack explains in his follow-up, AFT Washington is slamming the administration with a publicity campaign, two grievances, an unfair labor practice charge, and a human-rights complaint on the grounds of age discrimination.
“All of this activity and attention has also resulted in several legislators and the Governor’s office beginning to look into the situation,” Jack says.
In my first post, I asked about the “Assurance of Employment” clause, and subsequently discussed it with the president of Washington AFT, Sandra Schroeder.
She explained that it is only a term-to-term guarantee for faculty serving part-time. “It only ‘assures’ employment for a year at a time,” she noted.
Schroeder called the bargaining climate in Washington–which legally limits the scope of bargaining to a cat-fight over the raise pool between institutions and bargaining units–”hellaciously hard,” especially at the two-year schools, “which are ground zero for the worst of the academic staffing crisis.”
“We would all say Edmonds ‘assurance’ needs to be strengthened,” she said, “but it is slow going.”
Recently:
- 30 Seconds From Humiliation
- Certify, Re-Tool, or Stand and Fight
- Ivory Tower Inc, Coerce U, and other Recent Reviews
- ‘Adjuncts’ to the Barricades!
- Pushback
- I’ll be Watching You
- Ballad of the Dissertators
- The Churchill Case Goes To Trial
- AAUP and the Ward Churchill case
- AP Profile of Cary Nelson
