Abstract
Kim Tolley employs the term “adjunct” to include graduate student employees, and part- and full-time contingent faculty who are hired off the tenure track. For readers not familiar with the working conditions of adjuncts, Professors in the Gig Economy documents how adjuncts at a variety of institutions have increasingly turned to unions to ameliorate their conditions, for example, low pay, lack of office space and equipment, lack of input into decision-making and governance, and lack of stability in appointments. Unions ranging from the American Federation of Teachers to the United Auto Workers have been active in organizing adjuncts.
Simply stated “(t)he overall goal of this volume is to offer new insights and evidence for considering the causes, processes and outcomes of unionization among contingent faculty in American higher education” (p. x). In addition to unions, a number of academic and professional associations have started to pay attention to adjuncts, for example, criticized the growth in the reliance on adjuncts, provided special rewards, and development programs. However, “improvement to working conditions have been few and far between” (p. ix). To achieve the goal of this collection, Tolley has brought together scholars from education, labor history, economics, religious studies, and law who have been involved in attempts to improve the lot of adjuncts. The first-hand involvement of the various authors enhances their contribution as does the clear writing and explanations of applicable labor laws. At the same time, repetition of working conditions and the history of unionization weakens the impact of a number of chapters.
Part I comprises four chapters and is titled, “The Changing Academic Workforce: Influences and Outcomes.” In the first chapter A. J. Angulo provides the recent historical setting for the growth of adjunct faculty. With the signing of the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 (GI Bill) by President Roosevelt, higher education entered a golden era of growth. This era peaked in the 1960s. Internal changes in universities, for example, student demands and external changes in the political and economic spheres led, in the 1970s, to a situation in which, “the seller’s market for professors came to an end. The age of the adjunct was under way” (p. 9). A numerical feel for these changes is provided by Adriana Kezar and Tom Depaola.
For instance, they point out that in 1969, nontenure track positions accounted for approximately 22% of the faculty, however, by 2011, “70.8 percent of faculty were ineligible for tenure” (p. 30).
The remaining three chapters in Part I document the impact of a reliance on adjunct faculty on student learning, the history of collective bargaining, and provide a review of labor laws as they apply to the unionization of adjuncts. The last of these three chapters (chap. 4) provides Gregory M. Saltzman with an opportunity to speculate about the negative impact of the then newly elected Donald Trump.
Part II titled, “Unionization in Private and Public Institutions” comprises six case studies of unionization. Three of these are at private schools—Georgetown University, Notre Dame de Namur University, and Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The Georgetown case (chap. 5) presents the most innovative model. Rather than enter into conflict with the administration, the adjuncts argued their “unionization campaign in the context of the university’s own moral framework for employment relations, Georgetown’s Just Employment Policy (JEP)” (p. 88). The JEP is based on Catholic social teaching. The university did recognize the adjunct union. Adjuncts at secular universities may find analogous positions in mission and other statements to at least enhance their arguments concerning unionization. The final case studies explore complexities of unionization at three large public institutions—University of Illinois, Urbana – Champaign, City University of New York, and California State University, East Bay. Given their reliance on adjuncts, it is unfortunate that no community college was included.
Based on an examination of 35 union contracts negotiated between 2010 and 2016 (Appendix; Table 1), Tolley and Kristen Edwards found that over 95% addressed issues of salary and job security and that below 35% addressed issues of intellectual property and shared governance. I would suggest that the issues least likely to be addressed are those at the center of what differentiates colleges and universities from other institutions. In addition, none of the contracts addressed the issue of increasing the proportion of full-time faculty. Adjunct faculty existed before the term “gig economy” and are likely to exist for the foreseeable future. We now face the possibility of a Republican victory in at least one of the houses of Congress and of a second Trump administration. In terms of appointments to both the National Labor Relations Board and the U.S. Supreme Court, the foreseeable future does not look good for the union movement. We may have seen the golden age of adjunct unionization.