Reply to The Human Cost of Higher Education

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[quote=Anonymous]There is a reason that wages have stagnated as the number of workers in a union has plummetted.

These things don't just happen. And we don't need to tolerate them.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/Do-Unions-Help-Adjuncts-/243566

..."We analyzed collective-bargaining agreements ratified between 2010 and 2016 at 35 colleges and universities.

Adjunct faculty won salary increases at every institution we looked at. A 2018 survey by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources shows that U.S. faculty members this year are earning only 1.7 percent more than last year, a figure that is below the current rate of inflation. Unionized faculty have negotiated steady increases that are significantly higher, and some of the steepest gains have come from unions formed within the last few years.

At Rutgers University, where adjuncts are in a longstanding union affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers and the American Association of University Professors, instructors with 12 semesters of teaching experience at the university gained a 5 percent raise, plus increases of around 2 percent over the remaining two years of the contract. At Hamline University in Minnesota, adjuncts affiliated with SEIU also won pay raises — most received a 15 percent increase in the first year and then saw their base pay increase by 20 percent the second year.

Other SEIU-affiliated adjunct unions also enjoyed large increases: at Washington University in St. Louis, some adjuncts won a 26-percent increase over the subsequent four years; Boston University adjuncts won pay raises of between 29 percent and 68 percent over the three-year period covered by their contract; in California, Mills College adjuncts gained a wage scale that rewards seniority, with raises ranging from 1.75 percent to 60 percent.

Adjunct faculty members also increased their benefits at most institutions in our sample. Eighty-nine percent of the contracts we examined include provisions allowing part-time faculty to receive health insurance. At Northeastern University, adjuncts who work 30 hours or more per week won health-insurance plans, and part-time faculty gained the right to participate in the university’s basic retirement plan after two years of service. Lecturers in the California State University system who teach at least half time for four consecutive quarters or three consecutive semesters receive health-care benefits and participate in the university’s voluntary retirement program.

Ninety-seven percent of the collective-bargaining agreements in our sample provided increased job security for contingent faculty. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign agreed to offer multiyear contracts "whenever appropriate" to adjunct faculty. At Florida A&M University, instructors and lecturers may receive "two- to five-year fixed multi-year appointments." George Washington University agreed that part-time faculty in their second consecutive academic year of teaching would be reappointed to courses they had previously taught and denied reappointment only under limited, specified circumstances. ..."[/quote]

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