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Hearing on Contingent Faculty Held at Emerson College
In February, members of the Association's Committee on Part-Time and Non-Tenure-Track Appointments and AAUP president Jane Buck convened a public hearing on part-time faculty at Emerson College in Boston. A standing-room-only crowd packed the hearing room to present and hear testimony about contingent faculty issues at Emerson and in higher education generally. The Affiliated Faculty of Emerson College, which is affiliated with the AAUP, was certified as the collective bargaining unit for the institution's part-time faculty in 2001 and has been engaged in collective bargaining negotiations with the college administration for over a year.
Leslie Brokaw, a member of the chapter's negotiating committee, described the process of hammering out a contract with the college. As "a bunch of art and media professors" faced with a time-consuming process and a recalcitrant administration, Brokaw said, they were tempted to speed things up by proposing contract terms just slightly better than current working conditions at the college. Instead, the negotiating team started with a more ambitious proposal that addresses pay, job security, and benefits. "We're really grateful to see you all here because we sometimes feel it's just a half-dozen of us pushing a stone uphill," Brokaw told the assembly.
Other community members testified at the hearing, including state representative Patricia Jehlen, who remarked that workers in general are increasingly treated as commodities, and that corporations and universities want the workers to be there when they are needed and to disappear when they are not needed. Contingent faculty members from Emerson and other institutions spoke about their experiences as adjuncts.
Several Emerson students said that while they enjoy college life, what they are paying for is good teaching; "a college is only as good as its faculty," one concluded. Spokespeople for Emerson's student government association and the Emerson Police Association read statements of support for the part-time faculty union. José Guevara, a member of a Boston-area janitors' union, voiced his organization's support for the Emerson faculty, as did a representative of Boston Jobs with Justice, a workers' rights organization that assisted the janitors with their difficult negotiation last year. Members of the AAUP's Massachusetts conference spoke, and faculty members from nearby Curry College and the University of Massachusetts, Boston, said that they credit collective bargaining for their relatively good compensation and working conditions. Contingent faculty at Curry and UMass are unionized.
"Overwhelming support for the Emerson faculty was manifested at this event," says Flo Hatcher, the chair of the AAUP's Committee on Part-Time and Non-Tenure-Track Appointments. After hearing testimony, the panel issued a statement calling on the Emerson College administration to act in the best interest of the college and to bargain in good faith with the faculty.
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