Organizing P/Timers a Top Priority?!? Not at AFT.

Over the past seven years, AFT has added 125,000 new members total. About 15-20 percent of those have been part-time faculty. To call this major growth is simply not accurate. In 1992, AFT represented 30,000 part-time faculty, and there were 325,000 part-timers. Today, 70 percent of all college faculty are off the tenure-track, some 750,000 faculty, and AFT represents 60,000 of them. If anything, AFT has watched the opportunity for growth pass it by.

I am sure the AFT’s Mr. Gold has access to the actual data from AFT state affiliates. So when he tells InsideHigherEd.com that, “the need to vigorously organize contingent faculty conforms to our own view and is the reason why contingent faculty organizing is AFT’s top organizing priority in higher education,” he knows he is feeding you a line.

From coast-to-coast literally, AFT affiliated unions are simply not organizing part-time faculty. The affiliates are doing little but collecting millions in union dues. The problem starts at the top. For example, in 2007, AFT spent just 29 percent of its annual $198 million in revenue on organizing new locals and representing the members the union already represents. Last year, it cost AFT members $49 million to pay the union’s operating expenses. The lack of spending on organizing and representation filters down.

West Coast: In Washington State, over the past seven years, AFT Washington has added 390 new members (in a state where there are 10,000 part-timers). Across the country, at CUNY, over the past five years, the PSC has added 1,400 new members total. At CUNY, 15,000 faculty AFT members have paid $40 million in union dues over the past five years, and in that time the union has bargained a total 10-12 percent pay raise, plus a paid office hour for part-time faculty. It doesn’t take a part-timer who teaches statistics for $65 an hour at CUNY to figure out that the pay raise and office hour don’t come anywhere close to $40 million dollars.

CUNY’s state affiliate, NYSUT, organized 1,000 part-timers at Pace and has promptly let the group twist in the wind for four years without a contract, while single-handedly managing to influence New York State property tax law. Evidently, Pace’s president is a tougher nut for NYSUT leaders to crack than all of the members of the Albany Assembly put together.

Mr. Gold’s can’t seriously expect anyone to believe that such dismal organizing numbers demonstrate a focus on the organization of contingent faculty. Well, that’s why the union doesn’t make the numbers easy to find.

Finally, that Mr. Gold said he agreed that “contingent faculty leaders, whether in shared locals or not, deserve strong support from their full-time tenured colleagues” is particularly ironic today. Yesterday, the unified local leaders at Western Washington University (a new AFT affiliate) bargained themselves raises 12-14 times larger than the raises they bargained for the NTT faculty union members. Such bargaining practices are the rule in AFT affiliated locals, unfortunately.

It would nice to see AFT leaders challenged on the facts, as opposed to being allowed to simply spout platitudes, spin and sound bites—when the work of the national office, as well as AFT’s own affiliates demonstrate clearly otherwise.

P.D. Lesko, Executive Editor, at 12:45 pm EDT on June 3, 2008

Correcting the record

Just for the record, AFT has added not 125,000 members as PD Lesko reported but twice that number, 249,951 members, over the last seven years. While Lesko said that “from coast to coast literally, AFT affiliated unions are simply not organizing part-time faculty,” the fact is that AFT has organized 22 contingent faculty affiliates across the country in the last seven years. Just in the last few months, we’ve won adjunct elections at Henry Ford Community College in Michigan, Rhode Island College and County College of Morris, New Jersey. In all these cases, our locals are trying to win the best contracts they can. While we sometimes come up short of where we’d like to be, we can say with certainty that the working conditions of our members have improved because they’ve had a union and surveys of our contingent faculty members show a high level of support for their unions’ efforts. Of course, if our locals were able to win 200% increases for contingents in any given year, people like Lesko would say it just shows how greedy we are for more dues money.

The higher education staff and elected leaders of AFT, in Washington, DC and the states, work with extraordinary dedication and smarts every day to organize and win fair compensation and professional treatment for contingent faculty. No one can change the reality of that commitment. AFT has organized more contingent faculty than any other union. Through our FACE campaign, we work continually to bring together tenured and non-tenured faculty to reverse the academic staffing crisis. Yes, it is true that we haven’t organized nearly as many contingent faculty members as we want to—that, in fact, we lost comparative ground for some years—and it is also true that our affiliates can not negotiate every contractual gain they would like to. But to portray every advance as sham and every failure as indicative of our true bad character is as wrong as most of the facts in this response.

Lawrence Gold, Higher Education Director at American Federation of Teachers, at 7:20 pm EDT on June 3, 2008

The Record Needs No Correction

Mr. Gold,

The numbers I quote come from the AFT disclosures filed yearly with the federal government. Since 2002, the disclosures have been signed by Edward McElroy. Your comment implies Mr. McElroy doesn’t know the total membership of his own union. According to the disclosures signed by Mr. McElroy and filed by AFT, in 2001 the union represented 736,418 members; by 2007 total membership had grown to 832,058. That growth in total membership in nowhere near the 249,951 new members you quote.

As for the 200 percent additional pay for temporary faculty....there are AFT locals that could do that now, if leaders would just stop negotiating equal percentage raises. CUNY is a perfect example; by dividing the money won for salary increases more equitably, CUNY’s 5400 part-time union members could enjoy pro-rata pay within a few years.

Finally, organizing part-time faculty is not a panacea; members must be represented equitably. These numbers and the division of pay gains and perks within locals demonstrate this all too clearly. Again, the information I quoted concerning the state locals comes from disclosures filed with the federal government by those locals. The disclosures were all signed by the presidents of both of those unions. Organizing fewer than 400 new members over a seven year period in a state with 10,000 part-timers earned that state’s union leader an appointment to the AFT’s Higher Education Policy Group. Why? Why are there no part-time faculty on the AFT’s Higher Education Policy Group?

I know there’s hard work aplenty at AFT; we publish profiles of hardworking part-time faculty union leaders all the time, and interviews. I’m just trying to find organizing numbers and contracts that show that the hard work of the leaders at locals around the country benefits those adjunct faculty whom AFT represents.

AFT gains are not shams; the data from AFT and contracts negotiated by AFT local leaders simply show the gains often benefit full-time faculty much more than part-time faculty. It’s a long-standing trend. It existed before you had your job. I’m just optimistic enough to believe that trends can change when enough people are privy to the facts.

P.D. Lesko, Executive Editor at Adjunct Advocate, at 10:05 pm EDT on June 3, 2008