Adjunct Faculty Joins AFT/NEA Union
Some 150 adjunct faculty at St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights, N.Y., voted 2-1 in recent days to join the St. Francis Adjunct Faculty Union, an affiliate of the New York State United Teachers, AFT and the National Education Association (NEA).
The part-time faculty members are concerned about low wages, infrequent paychecks, lack of access to health insurance and other benefits their full-time colleagues enjoy, including office and storage space.
Says Michael Fontana, an adjunct in fine arts:
A union at St. Francis will give adjunct faculty the opportunity to speak to the administration with one collective voice about issues which we deem important. We are denied access to health care, regular pay increases, and a fair approach to pay compensation based on experience and time in service to the college and we need a union to right these wrongs.
20,000 University of Wisconsin Faculty Gain Bargaining Rights
More than 20,000 faculty members at two midwestern universities are one step closer to good union contracts. Yesterday, Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle signed the state’s biennial budget, which includes a provision extending collective bargaining rights to more than 20,000 University of Wisconsin (UW) faculty, academic staff and research assistants.
The same day, some 430 instructors and adjunct faculty at Western Michigan University (WMU) voted for the Professional Instructors Organization (PIO), an AFT affiliate, to represent them.
Part-Time Faculty at Two New York Colleges Join AFT
Part-time and adjunct faculty teaching at two private colleges, the Manhattan School of Music (MSM) and Cooper Union (CU), voted recently to join the New York State United Teachers, an affiliate of AFT and the National Education Association. The faculty members at both schools are all accomplished artists and working professionals who perform outside the college as well as teach.
The 150 part-time and adjunct faculty who teach in the MSM precollege program work on year-to-year contracts and make about half the pay of the regular faculty. In 2002, management cut off the precollege faculty’s access to health insurance that once had been available to all MSM teachers who taught at least 10 hours.
