Organizing Labor Thoughts

I have never been an adjunct. I think it's crucial to say this at the beginning because this means I am writing about an incredibly important issue in higher education from a perspective that is not informed by the direct experience of being an adjunct. Sure, I have been a teaching assistant for a total of seven years, and those seven years were interrupted by a three-year stint as a lecturer. Neither of these positions were permanent, and it was always clear that they were not supposed to be permanent. But these were not adjunct positions. When I was a lecturer, I had health benefits and a 401k. When I was a teaching assistant, at least during my doctoral degree-seeking years, I had something that resembled health benefits and the pay was, at least for a position of that sort, not awful. Both of these positions fall quite firmly in the contingent labor category, but they were not adjunct positions.

In addition, until two months ago, I have never taught in a department that relied on adjunct labor to meet the majority of its lower undergraduate needs. The other two institutions where I have taught depended on precisely the two kinds of positions that I've held, and while all forms of contingent labor present their challenges, this means that I am now working in what for me is a brand new environment. And based on the national trend in higher education, that makes me an oddity.

The English department I just joined as a tenure-track faculty member in August does not have a graduate program, so we do not have a readily available supply of graduate students to teach courses for a stipend. We do employ lecturers (all of whom are currently ranked as senior lecturers), and it is heartening to see that those positions provide long-term stability, positions that have enabled those lecturers to become active participants in shaping the policies and curriculum of the English department, especially the writing program. But we do not have very many lecturer lines, nor do we have many tenure-track lines.

What we do have, as most colleges and universities in the US do as well, is a writing program that provides courses that all students must take. And the math is really very simple. If there aren't that many full-time faculty members available to staff the classes we are obligated to fill, then that means either we advocate for more full-time lines or we start hiring part-time instructors. My purpose for this post is not to focus on the complicated (well, not that complicated) economics of higher education, so suffice it to say that it is easier to hire short-term, part-time instructors than it is to run searches for and provide full benefits for full-time faculty.

So what is my purpose for this post? As most readers of this blog will be aware, last week, a long-time adjunct at Duquesne University named Margaret Mary Vojtke died, impoverished by her struggle with cancer. Daniel Kovalik, a lawyer who represents the United Steelworkers union, published an op-ed that harshly condemned the university for propagating a system of labor that makes it possible for Vojtke, a college instructor, to make so little that she could not support herself. This op-ed has acted as a spark that has ignited a national discussion about the exploitative system of adjunct labor that higher education now depends on.

The question I find myself asking, over and over again, is what can I do about this? What can I do to help to find a way to improve the material conditions of instructors, both full-time and part-time? How can I, as a junior faculty member who will soon administer a writing program that is absolutely dependent on part-time instructors, provide those instructors with opportunities for professional development? How can I advocate for more full-time lines when universities are slashing budgets, especially for any unit even remotely associated with the humanities, that word that has become almost as dirty and decadent in common parlance as liberal? How can I be content being one of the 25 percent as a tenure-track faculty member, when most reports indicate that nearly 75 percent of college instructors have little or no job security?

I want to end this post with those questions rather than answers, mostly because I really don't have any answers. I would offer a shrug and say "I'm new," but, for as tragic as Margaret Mary Vojtke's death was, this isn't a new problem. My own field has sought ways to answer these questions for decades, from abolishing first-year writing courses to disbursing writing instruction throughout the university. Writing program administrators have long tried to balance the pragmatic and immediate needs to make sure courses had teachers and the ethical needs to make sure those teachers are both well-trained and well-compensated.

When I set out to write this post, I had many other points to make--not all people become and remain adjuncts for the same reasons; national efforts to organize adjunct labor already exist--but as I began to write this, I realized that what I find most immediately pertinent about this issue, and what seems most in keeping with the very notion of this blog, is that I need to figure out how to make a stand on adjunct labor that is neither patronizingly protective of adjuncts or dismissive of the very real problems that this situation presents. What is certainly clear is that I will write about this again.

Please share your thoughts in comments below.