1. Do you support paying a living wage for all City workers including part-time, temporary, seasonal, and contracted workers? (The ACLC defines a living wage as 125% of the Federal Poverty Level – currently $15.08 an hour) 

Yes. Increasing wages paid directly or indirectly by the City of Gainesville continues to be the single most efficient tool the city has to impact income inequality in our community. By the time the city completes moving the overall wage floor to $15/hour, literally millions of dollars will have been added to the incomes of some of the previously lowest-paid workers in Gainesville. This is also part of what has made it a challenge to achieve: Those millions of dollars came from other parts of the budget and/or increased revenue. 

2. The Gainesville Living Wage Ordinance for contractors has so many loopholes that it applies to almost no contracts the City currently has. To address this issue, the City of Gainesville started to look into updating the Ordinance in December 2015, but no action has been taken until December 2018 when a six-month study was started. What will you do to ensure the timely and effective changes needed to the Gainesville’s Living Wage Ordinance? 

I will continue to pressure the city manager and utility general manager to bring to the commission the necessary estimates to understand what the true budgetary cost of this will be – not to consider postponing past another fiscal year, but so the community can understand the full impact. 

3. What other ideas do you have to help improve wages and benefits for workers throughout our community? 

The largest employer, by far, in our region and our city is the University of Florida and UF Health. Combined with Santa Fe College, they represent tens of thousands of workers. Moving the lowest-paid of those workers – be they part-time/temporary OPS workers, adjunct instructors or others – to the equivalent of $15 per hour will have a huge impact on income inequality in Gainesville. There is nothing else that come close to this as a tool for changing lives in our region. I will continue to support programs like GEAP (Gainesville Entrepreneurship and Adversity Program) that promote and nurture the creation and growth of diverse local business in our community, and I have ideas for targeted business incubators, but there is nothing that can compare to harnessing the economic engine that is UF when it comes growing wages. 

4. What do you envision as the role of large local employers in Gainesville in helping to improve wages, benefit workers, and reduce inequalities? How have/would you encourage these large local employers to address these issues? 

As addressed in question three, the largest employers in the Gainesville area are primarily public-sector institutions. If we can improve the wage floor for each of the “Friendship Seven” to a living wage, competition for those jobs will force other large employers to raise wages as well. 

5. Do you support providing paid administrative leave for part-time, temporary, seasonal, and contracted City workers in the event of emergency work closures (e.g., hours missed due to a natural disaster)? 

Yes, if a worker has cleared their schedule on behalf of the city and foregone other opportunities the city (and any employer) should be responsible for the time it has claimed. 

6. If you are an employer: Do you pay all your workers a living wage? If you do not: How are you making an effort to do so? 

My current employment is as a city commissioner, and as such I bear responsibility for more than 2,000 workers. We have a plan to bring all of them to at least a living wage. 

7. Do you support a “Renters Bill of Rights’” which would: Offer an alternative to costly courts to settle disputes over security deposits and damages. 

Yes, I believe this is a benefit to both the renter and the landlord. 

1. Protect renters from high utility bills by enacting policies that require landlords to make basic investments in energy and water efficiency. 

Yes, I support this in principle, but details will be vital to a successful implementation. The intent is to improve efficiency and conservation, not to raise costs that might be passed on to renters. 

1. Require universal licensing and safety/health inspections of all rental property. 

Yes, as above in B, I support the concept, and will insist on a careful implementation that does not accidentally create upward rental pressure. 

1. Offer protections against discrimination based on source of income and citizenship status. 

Yes. 

1. Ensure greater disclosure of renters’ rights and responsibilities. 

Yes, prominent inclusion of an easily-understood disclosure of a renters’ rights document with every lease is something we should already require as a city. 

8. What are some additional policies the City of Gainesville can enact to improve access to quality, safe affordable housing in our community? 

The primary policies city government can implement to improve housing affordability and availability – and that are within our honest reach – have to do with land use and zoning. Rental affordability can be directly impacted in a relatively short time by permitting Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs or Mother-in-Law suites/”Granny Flats”) citywide, Single Room Occupancy development/Rooming Houses in carefully selected areas (not only in East Gainesville) and multi-family development (preferably two to eight units at a time as to be sensitive to neighborhood needs) in many areas where they make sense, but not only in or near existing pockets of poverty. These are the most significant things the city can do to increase the quantity and variety of housing stock in my opinion. 

9. Do you support a local hiring preference that includes the use of certified apprenticeship programs for taxpayer funded projects? 

Yes. I’ve been working with the Central Labor Council to bring such an ordinance through the city commission’s policy development process. I hope we can continue to make progress and make this a reality in our community. 

10. Do you support offering free RTS bus passes for K-12 students and/or making RTS free for all Gainesville residents at the point of service? How can the City of Gainesville improve public transportation for people who rely on it and don’t work for UF? 

Yes. I recently made a motion to remove RTS fares for everyone 18 or younger and everyone 65 or older. While that motion did not pass, I will continue to work toward this initial goal with the intent of including it in the 2021 budget. I see it as a step toward removal of the rate structure entirely. In a careful analysis, the system likely spends more on the process of collecting and accounting for payment than rates bring in. The city’s current transit plan includes expansion of the current “First Mile/Last Mile” pilot into four more zones around the city. This will bring on-demand small-bus service to areas that need it most. 

11. What is your position on SB168, which is the law that requires local governments to comply with ICE and detain people without a warrant? 

I oppose it

12. What would you do to advance healthcare outcomes in black and brown communities as well as racial equity overall in our community? What steps can the City of Gainesville take to address unequal access to quality food? 

Improving Gainesville’s income gap, access to affordable housing and transit will directly and positively impact access to both health care and food while still keeping the city working on services that are within the city’s responsibility. The city is currently working hard on facing and improving racial equity through a variety of measures. I am pleased to serve on the racial equity committee, and I look forward to implementing the work we’ve been researching. 

13. What will you do to ensure UF is a better corporate citizen in Gainesville (e.g., payments in lieu of taxes, moving more services to GRU, etc.)? 

The current relationship between UF and the City of Gainesville is more positive than it has been in many years, and there is greater opportunity to improve it right now than I remember there ever being. UF is a top-ten (paid) user of each of GRU’s utility services, and without the revenue UF provides our transit system RTS would barely exist. Still, there is always room to improve, and much of it is fairly obvious. The best thing anyone in Gainesville can do to move more money from UF to the city, whether an “in lieu of taxes” program or greater purchase of GRU services is to advocate those programs through the legislature. We should continue to improve communication with a plan leading to better cooperation in providing services to city residents. 

14. How will you work with UF to ensure better access to affordable, quality housing in Gainesville? 

One potential way UF and the city might be able to impact workforce housing is to work together on funding for a community land trust. We can also work together on implementation of the Renters’ Rights package discussed above.

 

Hello Labor Coalition! My name is Rosa Hernandez and I am your new Coordinator! I am originally from Fort Lauderdale, Florida although I did spend half of my life in Western Michigan. I am currently a graduating senior at the University of Florida and will hopefully attain my Economics degree this December. I came to start organizing officially when Donald Trump Jr. came to campus and I was approached by No Nazis at UF to help lead the student protest. This opportunity gave me a more focused vision of what my leftist politics should logically lead to which is actual physical organizing for the material benefit of my community. Thankfully I was given the privilege to continue that journey here at the ACLC! In my free time I love to spend time with my lovely cat, Lenin and watching ridiculous amount of time watching film reviews (I’m a huge film snob, its my worst trait!). If you ever see me please do not hesitate to introduce yourself!

Featured speakers: Dr. Zoharah Simmons and Prof. Dan Harmeling: Racism and Sexism in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

Workshop for antiracist social justice activists; December 14, 12-6pm, at: GAINESVILLE VINEYARD, 1100 SE 17th drive, Gainesville, FL 32641

Donations: $5-15 sliding scale
LUNCH IS PROVIDED

For more info: contact Faye Williams (352) 226-2623, sisterspace1515@yahoo.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/812643795849165/
https://www.facebook.com/mamasclubgainesville/

Sponsors:
• M.A.M.A.’s Club
• Third House Books
• GNV Rooted In Love Leaders (GRILL)

Open to organizations and individuals

This is the preliminary set of priorities, and we will be surveying membership to determine who wants to be engaged and how! Please share your thoughts with us at a meeting,via phone or email, and/or in the upcoming survey!

ACLC Strategic Plan 2019-2021, DRAFT

Living Wage

Strategy: The ACLC will continue to pressure our community’s 10 largest employers to commit to paying their workers a living wage.  We define that wage as 125% of poverty level, plus health benefits.  We will continue to shore up and build upon victories at the City and County level, but move overall focus of the campaign to UF and Santa Fe.

Status: existing committee; please join! 

Holding UF accountable 

Strategy: Build power to have UF pay its share for fire services, by using GRU (water, power), and more to ensure that UF contributes to the local area. This will operate in connection with the Living Wage committee for their work on a living wage at UF.

Status: needs a chair, volunteers to join the group, and determine next steps

Climate Justice

Strategy: ACLC members are heavily engaged in Climate Justice, and it affects all areas of our lives and world. 

Status: needs a chair, volunteers to join the group, and determine next steps

Housing, Renters’ Rights and Tenants Unions

Strategy: Collaborate with other local groups/coalitions/individuals who are working on this issue, decide whether to form our own working group or to join forces. Particular areas of interest supported by ACLC members include inclusionary zoning and renters’ rights, including basic energy efficiency standards for rental properties, and organizing to build power with tenants unions.

Status: existing committee; please join! 

Just Health Care 

Strategy: Help defeat Republican wealthcare reforms and efforts to undermine Medicare & Medicaid while continuing to advocate for Medicare for all as an alternative to the Affordable Care Act. Investigate CHOICES program as a potential local remedy if Republicans are successful in gutting the Affordable Care Act.

Status: existing committee; please join! 

Election Reform at State and Local Level

Strategy: The ACLC will form an “Election Reform” working group and begin development of concrete reforms at the local and county level, including ranked choice voting,  citizen-financed elections, and ethics reforms.

Status: needs a chair, volunteers to join the group, and determine next steps

-Jason Fults, Glynn Hayes

Santa Fe College Senate representatives for adjunct faculty and part-time staff

As reported in Today @Santa Fe, the results of the recent union election were 259 (61%) against and 167 (39%) for joining the union.  That is approximately 67% voter turnout, which is reportedly among the highest that SEIU has ever seen in such an election.  We respect the adjuncts’ decision and, along with adjunct leaders, intend to continue our ongoing efforts to seek improvements for all workers at Santa Fe.  We are proud to have been part of an important conversation and to stand together for dignity and equity for Santa Fe’s most precarious instructional workforce.  Since the election, we have heard from many adjuncts, full-time faculty, and community members inquiring why the results were so lopsided and we believe that everyone deserves to hear a more complete reporting than what we received in Today @Santa Fe.  We welcome anyone’s feedback if you feel that we have omitted any pertinent details or misrepresented any facts.

In direct contradiction of the College Senate’s request, the administration, aided by an outside law firm that specializes in “union avoidance,” waged a successful, full-scale effort to beat back this union drive.  The effort included personal appeals from our outgoing President as well as other members of the administration, some department chairs and full-time faculty, and personnel from Human Resources. Unfortunately, fear tactics and misinformation were employed liberally in an effort to maintain current power relations.  Collective bargaining would have required our Board to sit down as legal equals with adjuncts to create a legally binding agreement. Ultimately, the Board maintains a lot of management rights and power even with collective bargaining, but having to meet as equals with our adjuncts, who make up the majority of the College’s instructional workforce–teaching classes, running labs, and helping students change the course of their lives–was apparently deemed too threatening for those who run this institution.  It remains unclear what the College’s total expenditures were in terms of staff time, mailings, and payments for outside consultation, but those numbers should be made available to the College community, students, and taxpayers, and should be viewed in the context of the improvements in wages and benefits that we have advocated for on behalf of our part-time faculty and staff.

There are portions of the overall bargaining unit that bear closer attention, particularly law enforcement and the health sciences.  SEIU argued that these faculty should not be included in the bargaining unit, as their pay packages and working conditions differ significantly from most of the College’s other adjuncts.  Many if not most of those adjuncts also work full-time jobs elsewhere and already have access to union representation and/or livable wages and benefits. These adjuncts were included in the bargaining unit at the request of the College.

With regard to law enforcement, as first responders, law enforcement adjuncts have their addresses protected from FOIA requests. As such, almost all criminal justice adjuncts’ ballots were delivered to them at work.  In the weeks leading up to the election, law enforcement adjuncts teaching advanced and specialized law enforcement training received a 24% raise from the College. They were made aware of this raise in an Aug. 20th email from Lela Frye that also encouraged them to vote “no” for the union.  In the days preceding the union ballots’ arrival, the College held a beginning-of-the-semester meeting with criminal justice adjuncts where the College’s position on the adjunct union was again made clear. Most of the ballots for the union election were delivered to the individuals following this departmental meeting.  The turnout in this election from law enforcement was approximately 82% of eligible voters or 73 votes. 

Some adjuncts in the health sciences reported being told that an adjunct union might affect their critical need stipends and that, “…if the union is approved, they will be forced to level the playing field and healthcare adjuncts will take a hit.”  This misinformation failed to note that critical need stipends have never been affected nor under discussion from any of the six colleges/universities where adjunct faculty are represented by SEIU. Any raises that might have been won from bargaining would have been in addition to critical need. Furthermore, all adjuncts would have gotten the chance to elect a representative bargaining committee and ratify or reject a bargained contract.  The turnout in this election from health sciences was as follows: Cardiovascular 86%, Dental 83%, Radiology 60%, Nursing 57%, Physical Therapy 42%, Surgical Tech 40%, and Respiratory 38%, for a total of 72 votes.

Adjuncts in other departments reported captive meetings with their department chairs or full-time faculty “team leaders” where they were urged to vote “no” and were warned that a successful union effort would “…change adjuncts’ relationship with the department for the worse and prevent them from being able to be involved in departmental decisions.”  We know, based on a copy of a memo that was circulated, that department chairs were urged by the administration to have such meetings with their adjunct faculty and to encourage them to vote “no” for the union. Overall turnout for adjunct faculty not in the health sciences or law enforcement was 66%. 

And finally, it bears mentioning that SEIU’s overall organizing strategy was sorely lacking and found to be off-putting to many of our adjunct faculty.  Numerous people reported that they felt harassed by SEIU organizers as they attempted to contact them at their home and/or place of work. It is worth noting that in any union campaign, employers have far easier access to employees than the union supporters do. While employees have no obligation to speak to organizers or colleagues about the union, they do have an obligation to speak to their supervisors.  Often, home visits are the only opportunity for union organizers or supporters to reach workers in a neutral setting. Large sectors of the adjunct workforce had little relationship with anyone on the union organizing committee and were only getting their information from supervisors who were sometimes less than forthcoming about how collective bargaining works and what it means to have a union. SEIU’s campaign obviously needed a stronger foundation in more areas of the College before moving forward with an election. 

What’s done is done, and it will be left to the Florida Public Employees Relations Commission to determine whether any of the College’s actions were in violation of the law, and if so, how those violations will be addressed.  However, the bottom-line is that this College has successfully added a page to the anti-union playbook that is being used by higher education and other employers throughout the U.S. Whether they will deliver on their promises of improved conditions and a stronger role for our adjuncts in shared governance now that this union drive is behind us will be revealed in the coming months.

Dear Mayor and Commissioners
First, please know that I have been busy with family for nearly two months and have been absent from important city discussions and events. I hear that things have been tough. We as a caring community need to continue moving forward for the benefit of all. 
Towards that end, I continue to support the renters initiative.  As a landlord who has been paying the Landlord Fee of $147/year/per property, I don’t buy into the hype that the fee will significantly impact the profitability of property owners.  If it does, the owner likely needs to reconsider their business model.  Many hours of research and discussion and many bright brains have gone into the ordinance. The requirements for properties are reasonable.  The cost of enacting energy efficiency methods and materials will help the renter short term and the property owner long term. The methods will reduce the wear and tear on HVACs and, when replacement is needed, may allow for a new system to be a smaller system, thus lowering cost. Energy efficiency in rentals is also a very important in our goal of being a sustainable city.  
Please know that out of your sight I continue to be involved in social justice and environmental issues. As always, please let me know if I can be of assistance to you.

Janice Garry

Join the ACLC in fighting for a living wage for all employees at the University of Florida by signing out petition below! If you would like to help us with this campaign, please contact info@laborcoalition.org.

May 2019

The Alachua County NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Committee (ECJC) focuses on community issues affecting the quality of life and economic equity for all citizens in Gainesville and Alachua County.  Environmental Justice recognizes that environmental benefits and burdens are not shared equally among all residents.Consequently, Environmental Justice issues are also civil and human rights issues. 

NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Committee Support for the Renter’s Rights and Responsibilities Initiative.

A home is not only where the heart is, it is where a basic sense of stability as an individual and a community begins. Mental health, physical health, and the capacity to be a productive citizen starts in a stable, safe, affordable home for each individual and each family. In this age of climate crisis, it is also where environmental sustainability begins.

In Gainesville, as in all cities, there is a shared necessity for citizens to be adequately employed and for businesses to have a productive workforce. Stable housing directly contributes to an adult’s well-being and productivity in the work setting and a child’s capacity to learn in school for future job performance.  In terms of sustainability, Gainesville is participating in the Sierra Club Ready for 100 initiative and has a goal of 100% renewable energy by 2045. Sustainable homes will contribute to the success of this goal.

Simply put, it behooves every single citizen and business in Gainesville to have stable, safe, sustainable, affordable housing.

Some 50% of Gainesville inhabitants live in rental housing. New housing developments cater to students and residents with ample resources.  The area of focus for the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Committee (ECJC) is the many long term residents who have limited resources for housing. There is an abundant quantity of older homes that are not properly rehabilitated or maintained, particularly on the east side of Gainesville. Some of them are rentals and some lie vacant as untapped potential. Housing prices and rent are on the rise but are not supported by higher wages. Affordable housing is less and less available. Real lives are affected. Businesses are affected. Schools are affected. We are affected. The fundamental need for housing needs help.

The short supply of affordable rentals is not the only challenge. There are lousy landlords and lousy renters.  Some renters pay more for their utilities bill than they pay for rent because of poor or no insulation, leaky windows, leaky plumbing and/or old appliances. Some landlords don’t have a realistic business model that includes money for property maintenance and improvements. Some renters don’t know how or don’t care about things like changing AC filters, smoke detector batteries and general home care.  You might be surprised to know that there is no state or local licensure for landlords. Hair stylists and nail technicians have to have a license. Lawn services have to have a license. But there is no license for landlords.  Even though owning a safe, energy conserving property is a lot more complicated than those other businesses. Does that make sense?

A City Commission Rental Housing Subcommittee has been meeting for several months.  Citizens, landlords and management companies have been welcome. The goal is to create a program with a balance between the needs and responsibilities of renters and landlords. The Alachua County Labor Coalition has also participated. They have a position paper, Safe & Healthy Housing for All that can be read here:  https://laborcoalition.org/safehealthyhousing/our-position/.  

The NAACP ECJC is on board with requiring landlords to have minimum standards for safe and energy efficient rentals.  We also support identifying renter’s rights and responsibilities. We think that there should be universal landlord licensing with a small fee that would be deposited into an account for running the rental properties program. We think that some sort of inspection system to verify the minimum safety and energy efficiency standards of a rental should be in place. Properties that don’t have problems could have less frequent inspections. We think there should be a written document that outlines the landlord/renter responsibilities that would be signed along with the lease agreement.  Problems between a landlord and renter might be handled through arbitration similar to the Alachua County’s very successful Wage Recovery Ordinance.

The NAACP ECJC thinks that a Renter’s Rights and Responsibilities program would serve landlords, renters and our community well.  It would also encourage Gainesville’s goal of energy sustainability while we continue to grow. We have a vision of quality housing for renters that is also a good business for landlords. Rental homes would contribute to environmental sustainability in our beautiful city. Together we can do this.

Nkwanda JahNkwanda

Chairperson, NAACP ECJC

Dear Dr Sasser, 

I totally support the efforts of the Santa Fe adjuncts to form a union. Their working conditions/terms are close to slave labor and must stop. Quit standing in the way of their forming a union that can advocate for the employment rights they deserve.   Below is the review of a new book, The Adjunct Underclass, by Herb Childress. I would strongly encourage that you read this book and that your Board of Trustees read this book and be educated about the conditions under which adjuncts work. The review describes movements to unionize happening all over the country. Allies of the adjuncts in the Gainesville community will not stop organizing to bring about justice for these hard working but grossly underpaid professors.     It is time that you and the trustees do the right thing! 

Sincerely,

Miriam Welly Elliott

Gainesville, FL

Underpaid Adjunct Professors Sleep in Cars and Rely on Public Aid

BY Eve Ottenberg, Truthout

PUBLISHED June 10, 2019Adjunct professors are the minimum-wage temp workers of academia. Underpaid, overworked, with no benefits and no job security, their numbers have ballooned in recent decades. They are part of what Herb Childress calls “hope labor,” in his new book, The Adjunct Underclass. Childress quotes researchers who define hope labor as “un- or under-compensated work carried out in the present, often for experience or exposure, in the hope that future employment opportunities may follow.” For most adjuncts, that hope comes to nothing. Childress compares the catastrophe of gig economy college teaching to gig-based employment in other industries like medicine or taxis. He argues that adjunct teachers are the Uber drivers of academia. “College teaching has become primarily a pickup job … like running chores for TaskRabbit,” he writes, reporting that 25 percent of adjuncts depend on some form of public assistance. His book brings to mind the nearly starving, peripatetic scholars, wandering from one university to another, teaching and begging, in medieval Europe. The Adjunct Underclass summarizes The Pittsburgh Post Gazette’s account of the death of Margaret Mary Vojtko, who died at the age of eighty-three from cancer she could not afford to treat. She died at her home, for which she could not afford electricity. She had taught French at Duquesne University for twenty-five years, never making more than twenty-thousand dollars a year for her six or more courses and never receiving health benefits or retirement contributions. Childress discusses homeless adjunct professors who sleep in their cars. He cites the San Francisco Chronicle and the example of English professor Ellen Tara James Penny. While teaching four courses per semester at San Jose University in Fall 2017, Penny “often drives to a parking lot to grade papers. When it’s dark, she’ll use a headlamp from Home Depot, so she can continue her work. At night she’ll re-park in a residential neighborhood and sleep in her 2004 Volvo. She keeps the car neat to avoid suspicion.”Some adjunct professors turn to sex work to augment their income. Childress refers to a Guardian story about a “middle-aged” adjunct whose income dwindled dramatically when her course load was cut in half. About to be evicted, she told The Guardian, “In my mind I was like, I’ve had one-night stands, how bad can it be?… And it wasn’t that bad.” Many adjuncts toil at multiple campuses in a semester, commuting hundreds of miles each day, working essentially nonstop except for sleep, as they teach, grade papers and answer multitudinous student emails. “The figure of 45 contract hours is a fiction that conceals 350 hours of work, maybe 400 and maybe more,” Childress writes. “A $3,600 pretax stipend with no benefits like healthcare or retirement contributions, spread over 400 hours of work, comes to $9 per hour.” As a result, adjuncts are organizing. This spring, adjunct professors at several Minnesota colleges began agitating for unions, as reported by the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Minnesota’s first adjunct union, at Hamline University, has pursued negotiations for a second contract since July 2018. Meanwhile in January, New York City-based Mercy College adjunct teachers started a drive to join the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Recently, Fordham University adjuncts ratified their first contract, which mandates substantial pay increases. “Nationally about seventy new faculty bargaining units — all but one for nontenure faculty — have sprung up on private campuses since 2012,” according to the Star Tribune.By 2016, gig faculty labor at more than 60 schools was organized by SEIU. In March 2018, “University of South Florida adjuncts voted to form a union…. On April 13 adjunct faculty at the University of Chicago ratified their first union contract … adjuncts at Loyola University in Chicago,” also reached an agreement, according to the Johns Hopkins notice. And Labor Notes recently reported that this past April, international student workers were key to the success of the University of Illinois at Chicago graduate employees strike. Unionization is sweeping the gig faculty labor force, despite fierce management opposition that does not want to cede money or power to what Childress calls “the scavengers, the bottom feeders, paid by the course as the need arises.” Overworked and impermanent, no matter how excellent their teaching skills, adjuncts lack opportunities to form the sort of lasting mentoring relationships with students that are associated with tenured faculty. So, students suffer. And these students are predominately low-income at community colleges, which employ more adjuncts than four-year schools — at some, 90 percent of their faculty. Adjuncts, Childress writes, “are camouflaged to look exactly like their [tenure track] counterparts,” so students and parents don’t know the difference. This affects lots of students, because there are so many adjuncts. “More than one million people are now working as contingent faculty [in the U.S.] … providing a cheap labor source, even while students’ tuition has skyrocketed,” according to a congressional Democratic staffer quoted by Childress. This faculty precariat constitutes almost three-quarters of community college teachers who instruct, in turn, 40 percent of all undergraduates. “If community colleges prepare students to mirror their faculty’s lives as isolated individuals, scratching out a tenuous survival,” Childress writes, “the state [universities] also prepare students to mirror their own faculty’s lives, with secure enough jobs that provide for the mortgage, the gold clubs and the new SUV every few years.” Affluent liberal arts colleges have far fewer adjuncts, while Ivies and other elite universities are certainly not training their students for a precarious survival. Stanford education professor David Labaree, quoted by Childress, says “stratification is at the heart of American education. It’s the price we pay for the system’s broad accessibility.” Just as 100 million economically precarious Americans cling to the bottom rungs of the U.S. economy, so too in U.S. education, precarious gig faculty labor teaches those low-income students who can scrape together community college tuition. Clearly community college students have the greatest need for close mentoring relationships with their professors, but, as Childress observes, they are the least likely to get it, since more of their professors are adjuncts. Ironically, it is students at elite colleges, among the least needy, who get the most professorial attention. Meanwhile, and not coincidentally, this devaluation of teaching parallels the profession’s feminization. Many adjuncts are women. Childress cites “rising discrimination against occupations after the entry of women.” This has happened in medicine, education, law and veterinary practice. Research “shows college grads entering male-dominated fields at starting salaries far greater than those of college grads entering female-dominated field.” Women’s work is not considered important. This explains why when women enter an occupation, the pay and the standing decline. The public-school model provides the best approach. Early on public education became feminized, thus devalued and underpaid. But it unionized completely. Adjuncts in higher ed should do the same, because barring the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, no help other than unions awaits them. The Adjunct Underclass lists five ways that universities have whittled away teacher pay: fewer people, longer hours; workers redefined as independent contractors; de-bundled professional activities and the creation of paraprofessionals; outsourced non-core functions; replacement of humans and space with technology. And of course, the glut of Ph.D.-credentialed teachers puts downward pressure on pay. Yet colleges and universities still crank out Ph.D.s, tens of thousands ever year. And every year many, many of those people don’t get jobs. They join a pool of surplus educational labor that constantly swells: There are more unemployed adjuncts every year, their increasing numbers putting downward pressure on pay. Years of study, papers, exams, the dissertation, followed by ferocious competition for academic employment scraps: It’s high time this sector of the work-force unionized widely, got some benefits for its precarious piece-work and recognized that tenure is, for most, an impossible and destructive dream.  

Eve Ottenberg is a journalist who has reviewed books for The New York Times Book Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker‘s “Briefly Noted” section, USA Today, and many other newspapers and magazines. She is also a novelist. Two of her novels, Dead in Iraq and The Walkout, deal explicitly with recent political issues. Two others, Sojourn at Dusk and Dark Is the Night focus on 1960s political activism.