FACE Talk has now officially moved to be part of the new and improved Faculty and College Excellence website. C'mon over and check it out!
We are going to keep this site up for a few weeks to catch folks who come here looking for news and discussion about academic staffing, but then it is to blog-oblivion for this version of the site.
Hope you will check out the new site, bookmark it, change your blog rolls, etc. and thanks for checking back in with us.
The FACE Talk Team
Here are a few stories we are keeping our eyes on while we get ready to move this blog over the weekend.
Sometimes the loudest voice of all is the one that makes hardly a sound. Like the rustle of ballots piling up for the Henry Ford Community College Adjunct Faculty Organization (AFO) when the Michigan Employment Relations Commission counted them up May 7. The vote was a resounding 334 to 41 in a unit of 580.
The AFO began organizing less than a year ago, dismayed by impossibly low pay scales that maxed out at $1,700 a course, lack of job security and health insurance and no access to office space for preparation work or to meet with students. The adjuncts sought help the Henry Ford Community College Federation of Teachers, the full-time faculty union at HFCC and from its affiliate, AFT Michigan.
Even though Dearborn is a union town and the instructional faculty have been unionized for more than 40 years, the administration fought the adjuncts, says Mary Beck, AFO interim president. First the college intimidated the adjuncts, sending out a letter sprinkled with veiled threats. Then, after cards were filed for an election, the college attempted to whittle down who would be eligible to vote and be part of the unit.
Continue reading "A Resounding Win for Adjuncts at Henry Ford" »
You often hear about legislators who leave their positions only to end up lobbying for the very same causes in some K street lobbying firm. Of course that career path isn't limited to members of Congress. Today AFL-CIO Now reports that former chair of the National Labor Relations Board, Robert Battista, who led the decision to take away the protections of the National Labor Relations Act from graduate employees in private universities, has joined one of the most notorious anti-union law firms in the country. More evidence that the Bush NLRB should have been renamed the National Management Rights Expansion Board if they wanted to accurately reflect their mission for the last seven years.
We are going to be in a bit of a slowdown here at FACE Talk as we prepare for the big move. Yup, that's right, this weekend we combine the old FACE site and this blog into one new official home. We will have more for you on the change soon.
A quick stroll around "teh internets" this morning finds a few interesting tidbits you should check out.
Well, that should be enough to get the week started--or did I miss something?
Today the Chronicle of Higher Education released a Special Supplement on Admissions and Student Aid. Now given the fact that college costs are soaring and our financial aid system is somewhat of a mess—if that is what you call it when paying for higher education starts to look like mortgaging a house—the Supplement is certainly timely. But the article and issue that caught my attention as I read through it had neither to do with college costs nor financial aid. It had to do with something we all know is looming: the projected post-echo-boom enrollment drop.
According to an article in the Supplement entitled “After the Deluge, the Drought” (sorry, subscription required):
As the last of the baby boomers’ children make their way through high school, the number of new graduates is expected to peak this year at 3.34 million. It is then expected to decline gradually until 2015. [snip]
In addition:
The number of white graduates, however, is expected to decline for the foreseeable future, from 1.9 million this year to 1.59 million by 2022, the commission says. During that same period, the percentage of graduates with no family history of attending college is expected to rise.
Okay . . . so what does this have to do with academic staffing? Over the jump we go.
Continue reading "Academic Staffing in a Post-Echo-Boom World" »
We usually look to our brothers and sisters in Canada with mild envy for their universal healthcare and their superior labor law, but this time, they need some support. In Montreal, some 2,000 plus Teaching Assistants at McGill University, members of the Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM) TA union, have been on strike for the last three weeks.
AGSEM has been negotiating for over seven months for protection from unpaid overtime, recognition of their role as educators, paid training, access to office space to perform their duties and meet with their students, caps on the size of discussion-based conferences, the right to call in sick, and wages that are comparable to the average wage at competing universities in Canada and to other workers performing similar duties in Quebec.
According to Marie Blais, vice-president of AGSEM’s parent union, the Fédération nationale des enseignantes et enseignants du Québec (FNEEQ-CSN), there have been more than 150 picketers on the line every day.
Their spirits are high, but they have faced many challenges from McGill's Administration. The Administration has fostered a climate of fear and alienation among the McGill community, informing the faculty and instructors not to talk to TAs about their negotiations. Before the strike was even called, the Administration ordered all instructors to have their TAs return papers to the departments and removed TAs from the online communication forum, WebCT.
Since the strike began, the Administration has increased its pressure tactics; first requiring professors and instructors to scab, and then by firing all TAs who were employed as exam invigilators. AGSEM is currently pursuing legal action against these actions, which striking employees are protected against by the Quebec Labour Code. However, it has not prevented the Administration from further threatening striking employees with more layoffs, this time for TAs who hold summer appointments.
So how about sending a message up to the administration at McGill? Let them know that we believe that the AGSEM’s demands are reasonable, that McGill’s tactics are not only illegal but they run counter to the collegiality upon which the academy is based, and that we believe McGill should negotiate in good faith rather than creating a culture of fear among its employees.
Here are a few email addresses where you can direct your communications:
You can also contact the executive committee of the Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill at agsem@web.net if you or your local are looking for other ways to show your support.
Today, the Delta Cost Project, an initiative of the Lumina Foundation for Education, released The Growing Imbalance: Recent Trends in U.S. Postsecondary Education Finance. Jane Wellman, executive director of the project, told Inside Higher Ed that “while the data are not shocking to those who work in the field, ‘a lot of people will be surprised that the big driver of spending is not instruction.’”
Not surprisingly, if you read the report, specifically the section on Direct Instructional costs which are “those [costs] going directly to faculty and departmental administration,” you find that the academic staffing trend away from full-time, tenure-track faculty to underpaid contingent faculty is a key factor.
If you don’t have time to read the report, follow me over the jump for a few key findings.
Continue reading "Rising College Costs, Falling Investment in Faculty" »
After a marathon bargaining session, the Wayne State University Union of Part-Time Faculty (UPTF) and the Wayne State University administration came to a tentative agreement today.
"The UPTF appreciates the administration bargaining in good faith with us and we hope this bodes well for our future relationship," said Amanda Hiber, a part-time faculty member in the English Department at WSU and the union's Communications Committee Chair.
The first round of negotiations was heated at times, but the union held together to gain their first contract, which includes salary increases, job security provisions, and access to professional development funds.
On behalf of UPTF, Hiber thanked “all of the union’s labor-community-student allies who have and continue to stand in solidarity with our union. During our first contract campaign, in numerous ways our allies stood with us, including attending demonstrations and engaging in a nationwide letter/postcard campaign."
The UPTF was organized between May 2004 and the spring of 2007. In April 2007, part-time faculty voted by a 90 percent majority for the union. The UPTF, which represents nearly 900 adjuncts at the Michigan university, is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).
For updates and background information: www.uptf.org.
